Introduction

The aged care sector in Australia continues to face significant challenges, albeit good progress is being made by some. There continues to be escalating demand for aged care services driven by an increasingly aging population and increased life expectancy.

The findings of the Royal Commission into aged care are starting to be addressed by every provider and recruitment of care workers and nurses continues to be a challenge. All of these factors continue to put significant pressure on the existing workforce and impacting their wellbeing and ability to deliver. Their continues to be an urgent need for pragmatic solutions to support onboarding new employees, lifting skills and capability and improving compliance quickly and at scale.

Our practical roadmap for tackling the aged care skills gap examines how scalable, evidence-based learning solutions can support aged care providers transform their employee experience and therefore the quality of the services they provide to their customers.

Check out below some key insights and highlights from our Guide to give you a flavour of what’s inside.

Deliver continuous learning

Today’s learning technology can both enable and support the aged care sector to deliver continuous learning. The right tools can offer frontline employees unfettered access to personalised content, real-time data capture, analysis and feedback on progress, supported by the powerful analytics of machine learning.

Using technology to gamify the learning experience

When it comes to learning, we are all motivated by different things. We engage in learning for different reasons. For example, we might be highly competitive with others, want to be the most knowledgeable person, like to be rewarded or enjoy gameplay and winning points. Using technology to gamify the learning experience, provide adaptive learning and create immersive experiences is proven to drive better engagement and learning outcomes.

Manage complexity, ambiguity and change

Navigating the ongoing impact of regulatory reform has placed even greater demands on aged care sector leaders. As such, leaders in the sector need a toolkit to manage complexity, ambiguity and change. As with all organisational leaders, they need to adopt a collaborative, flexible and inclusive approach to leadership and empower team members, patients, clients and stakeholders. There is also the constant need to meet organisational goals in accordance with the unique operating requirements of the aged care sector.

“According to a National Skills Commission report published at the end of 2022, the aged care and disability care sectors have more than 74,000 job vacancies, while job vacancies for nurses and aged care workers have doubled in the past three years”.

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More engaged and skilled workforce

Upskilling frontline workers enables them to more easily carry out their responsibilities and allows for two-way feedback to uplift standards and productivity, as well as to embed strong workplace cultural change. Having an effective method of providing this practical training with consistency, speed and personalisation leads to a more engaged and skilled workforce, encourages employee loyalty and leads to better customer and patient outcomes.

Embed and reinforce learning

Today, time away from the job to learn isn’t necessary as learning is brought into the workplace and delivered in short, sharp, repetitive formats designed to embed and reinforce learning.

Driving, embedding and achieving better aged care outcomes today involves combining the best of behavioural science with the convenience and personalisation that technology enables. Dive into the findings and recommendations from the tackling the aged care skills gap.

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Dive into the findings and recommendations from the tackling the aged care skills gap by downloading the guide.