Aged Care providers need workforce management technology — here’s why

Through the lens of an Aged Care rostering manager 

It’s important to stand in the shoes of a manager in charge of operations and rostering in this sector, even just for a moment. These individuals are responsible for planning, creating, approving, monitoring, and reporting on rosters. Picture this scene: 

It’s 11pm on a Saturday evening. Exhausted from not only coordinating workloads and ensuring staff have undertaken their duties, but also from the never-ending paperwork, you head back to your office and fill in records, reports, handover documents and finally, create rosters for the week. 

Suddenly, your phone chimes. It's a Registered Nurse (RN) advising you that they’ve been in an accident and cannot make their shift starting in 1 hour. In a panic, you realise you now need to find somebody to cover the shift — but it’s late notice. Not only do you need to stay back for a couple of hours until the next starter, but you’ll need to rearrange the roster to accommodate the sudden change of plans. As you're using spreadsheets to create and update rosters, it means making phone calls to anyone who might be available...

The WFM issues impacting Aged Care 

Sadly, this kind of scenario isn’t far off what Aged Care operators and the workers they employ face on a regular basis. As communities age, so does the demand for Aged Care services, workers, and facilities. This has caused a global talent shortage, compounded by a lack of new graduates and mass industry exoduses, especially following the pandemic.  

Working in Aged Care takes a toll on one’s mental health more than anything else. Stress, burnout, poor pay, excessive compliance, and administrative burdens are driving workers to attrition in droves. In Australia, it’s expected that up to 139,000 workers will leave the sector by 2026, with ‘stress’ ranked as the main reason for quitting.  

Since the Royal Commission into Aged Care in 2018, the industry has undergone major reform. The compliance and reporting obligations that emerged created a major time vacuum for providers, specifically with regards to the Australian National Aged Care Classification (AN-ACC).  

This framework aimed to link funding to the actual costs of providing care, as well as provide proof of the provider’s commitment to meeting minimum requirements. As a result, they were thereon required to provide:  

• Quarterly reports on ‘care minutes’. Each resident must receive at least 215 minutes of care, daily, with at least 44 minutes coming from a registered nurse (RN) 

• Monthly reports on the 24/7 registered nurse (RN) responsibility, including: 

• Each time there was no RN on-site and duty for 30 minutes of more 

• The reason for the absence of an on-site and on duty RN 

• The alternative arrangements that were made to ensure clinical care needs were met during the time that an RN was not on-site and on duty 

This is perhaps the greatest burden on Aged Care providers and workers at present. The admin and compliance management side of things have added layers of complexity, while a lack of flexibility and autonomy around shifts continues to impact work-life balance.

Humanforce are veterans in WFM technology 

Humanforce was the first rostering, time & attendance business in Australia. For 23 years, we have made the lives of frontline (‘deskless’) workers easier through our workforce management software suite — and continue to do so today. Here are two key software solutions, designed to make life easier for Aged Care providers.

Rostering & Scheduling

Shiftwork is mission critical in Aged Care. In a 24/7 industry that demands around-the-clock presence, staff are often required to work long, unsociable hours. Overtime and understaffing are common, despite the legal limits being 8 and 10 hours for day and night shifts, respectively. 

With the wellbeing of both elderly residents and employees on the line — and more recently, strict compliance responsibilities — there’s little margin for error when it comes to staffing. Providers need to ensure they have enough qualified and skilled workers on the floor at any given time.  

Humanforce’s Rostering & Scheduling solution is a modern, AI-powered scheduling solution that elevates workforce planning for Aged Care providers. Managers can create optimised, cost-effective, award-compliant rosters with just a few clicks — designed to keep rosters populated, employees engaged, and labour costs in check.  

Using sophisticated AI, rosters can be auto populated with suitably qualified and available talent who have specified their work preferences. It can even help forecast how many workers will be required based on historical data. Employees can bid for shifts based on their preferences, while managers can auto-generate rosters based on previous work patterns. This is especially handy if your workforce relies on a rotating roster. 

Labour costs are shown directly in the roster as it is being created, ensuring that managers can stay within budget. 

Finally, managers can switch to multi-view rostering for a top-down view of employee schedules and projected labour costs, granting them another avenue to precise rostering and lower labour costs. And this is all doable with intuitive, click-and-drag controls and automated alerts for rostering conflicts. 

With a solution like Rostering & Scheduling, there’s really no reason to be using pen-and-paper or archaic scheduling software.

Workforce Analytics 

For Aged Care teams who are already understaffed and overworked, the thought of having to prepare, collate, and submit monthly and quarterly compliance reports can be overwhelming. Humanforce’s Workforce Analytics solution exists to make the process much simpler for Aged Care providers, with features designed especially for these reporting obligations.  

Those in charge of reporting can monitor key datapoints required for reporting through the AN-ACC real-time dashboard, implemented by Humanforce in 2023. The dashboard includes: 

• Real-time visibility of adherence to care minute targets, based on time rostered and time worked 

• The ability to nominate which roles contribute to care minutes, and nominate the extent to which each role contributes to care through percentage allocations 

• Self-service file uploads for care minute targets and occupancy rates 

• The ability to view resident care minutes and RN care minutes against schedule in a single report to maintain star rating for facilities 

• The ability to identify excessive and insufficient resourcing to ensure cost-effective compliance 

• Flexibility to utilise API and integrate per residence per day (PRPD) data from external sources 

• The ability to exclude leave time and training hours 

• Beyond assisting with compliance obligations, there are numerous other benefits to providers using the dashboard. For example, HR and operations managers gain insights into labour demand and scheduled hours being worked, enabling them to respond quickly to changes in care requirements. 

These metrics can be viewed, compiled, and exported as reports as needed. Plus, while the AN-ACC dashboard is designed specifically for Aged Care providers, users benefit from the wider Workforce Analytics solution: detailed data and robust analytics, and a thorough reporting functionality that can be used out-of-the-box or customised according to your own requirements. 

Additionally, managers who head multiple departments or care homes in different locations can view key metrics such as absenteeism rate, tardiness, labour costs, shift acceptance rates, and many more — all via the same dashboard.

Talk to Humanforce today 

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK. 

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses. 

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.