What’s Next for Aged Care? Key Trends and How Smarter Workforce Planning Can Prepare Providers
Australia’s aged care sector is at a crossroads. By 2025, nearly a quarter of Australia’s population is expected to be over 65. That means a sharp rise in demand for aged care services across residential, in-home, and community settings. With this rapidly ageing population, increased regulatory scrutiny, and growing demand for high-quality care, providers are under mounting pressure to adapt.
The government’s ongoing reform agenda, including the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, aims to address these challenges, though the pressure on aged care providers is intensifying. New reforms place a stronger emphasis on flexible, client-centred care delivery, workforce efficiency, and service transparency, but these demands introduce new complexity that providers must actively manage to remain sustainable.
But, amidst the challenges lie opportunity, especially for those who invest in smarter workforce planning.
Let’s take a closer look at the trends shaping the future of aged care in Australia, and how strategic workforce planning can help providers stay ahead of the curve.
Tightening Regulation and Higher Standards
Since the findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the regulatory environment has shifted significantly. The introduction of the new Aged Care Act will mandate a stronger focus on person-centered care, transparency, and accountability. Providers will need to demonstrate clear workforce competencies and care outcomes.
New compliance laws include:
- New provider obligations and reporting based on the Statement of Rights, and
- More intense regulatory oversight.
These tighter regulations increase the operational pressure on providers, requiring smarter workforce planning, better resource allocation, and flexible service models that adapt quickly to client needs, exactly the areas where embedded optimisation tools like Biarri’s Rostering and Scheduling Solution can make a measurable impact.
Staff Shortages and Burnout
The aged care sector is grappling with widespread staff shortages, particularly among nurses, personal care workers, and allied health professionals. The challenge is not just recruitment, it’s retention too. Burnout, emotional fatigue, and limited career pathways are pushing workers out of the sector.
As of January 2025, the Fair Work Commission has enacted award wage increases that will affect approximately 400,000 aged care workers. While this aims to increase retention and reduce burnout among frontline workers, it places burden on providers who may need to increase charges for care and services rendered by nurses receiving increased award wages. The Commission, to combat this, is providing a subsidy increase in the Home Care Packages Program.
More than ever, it will be important for organisations to pay attention to how over- or under- scheduled their staff are. Over staffing leads to burnout, overtime payments, and unhappy workers. Under scheduling can cause issues with compliance and also lead to retention staffing issues.
This is where optimisation solutions help providers not just react but strategically balance workloads, minimise travel and idle time, and maximise each carer’s contracted hours, ensuring both compliance and staff wellbeing even as sector pressures rise.
Outdated Technology and Processes
The Aged Care Act reforms involve key technological changes within a fairly short timeframe. A Government Provider Management System (GPMS) will function as a centralised platform to streamline interactions between aged care providers and the government. The Act also mandates the development of a consolidated and sustainable IT network for standardised data sharing protocols.
All of this will take time for providers to update their digital systems, train staff, and ensure compliance with new standards. While aged care recipients will ultimately benefit from more personalised care plans, it puts a strain on provider resources to train and become ready for the digital shift.
The way to meet these digital expectations is to embed smarter, automated scheduling processes now so that reporting, compliance, and service delivery improvements happen in tandem, not as an afterthought.
How Smarter Workforce Optimisation Can Prepare Providers
Aged care in Australia is reforming quickly. Whether it’s trends in centralising technology, increasing reporting and compliance, or needing more staff to keep up with demand, there’s no denying the complex challenges providers face. The need for better workforce optimisation has never been more apparent.
Here are a few ways your organisation can get ahead of the above challenges:
Investing in training: With such a boom in the ageing population and the excessive burnout rates of frontline workers, it’s never been more important to recruit and retain long-term staff. Invest in continuous learning and ensure your staff are being utilised to their full potential. A robust scheduling tooling can alleviate growing pains as your team expands.
Leveraging technology to support, not replace: With the Aged Care Act putting more emphasis on individual-based care, technology should be used as a tool to enhance human connection and not hinder it. An embedded workforce optimisation tool enables this by ensuring clients are allotted time with their usual provider and not an unfamiliar face they may be uncomfortable with.
Creating data-driven workforce insights: Providers need real-time data on staffing levels, skills, and service demands. Workforce optimisation tools that offer analytics can help providers anticipate shortages, plan recruitment pipelines, and balance workloads more effectively.
When providers are empowered to manage this complexity proactively, matching caregivers more effectively, maximising service coverage, minimising waste, and helping aged care organisations thrive within the new compliance landscape.
A Time for Action
Those providers who invest now in smarter workforce planning will not only meet regulatory requirements, they will deliver better outcomes for older Australians and secure their organisation in a fluctuating market. The question isn’t if change is coming. Are you ready for it?
With an embedded optimisation solution like Biarri’s Rostering and Scheduling Solution, aged care providers can futureproof their scheduling, reduce operational burden, deliver flexible client-centred care, and meet funding model expectations with confidence. Ready to stay ahead of the curve? Schedule a meeting with us today to discover how Biarri’s solution can aid in smarter workforce planning while cutting costs, driving efficiency, and elevating the care experience for your clients.
TALK TO US ->