workforce
What incentives can be put in place to make it more attractive for overseas workers to come here ? There ’ s a number of things that need to happen . One of them is increased wages and we ’ ve got the case going through the Fair Work Commission at the moment . If the outcome from that is a supported wage increase in the sector , that will really help to attract workers across the board to aged care . That ’ s something that we need to have happen .
But migration is not the only thing . We ’ ve seen a lot of talk around retirees and what can be done with pensions , and how we can bring in people from potential workforce areas like retirees who were registered nurses for instance , and would probably love to work in aged care . We hear from quite a few people who would like to do some work .
If you could just bring back those people and allow them to work part-time , that would raise the numbers incredibly in terms of your workforce . If we had more work done on increasing the participation of the large number of part-time workers in Australia , because we know that parttime workers are often underemployed and would potentially like to have more hours of work .
We need to do some work around understanding that population of the workforce and promoting aged care to them as well . The other groups of people are school leavers , both male and female . We need to move away from promoting it as some sort of feminised industry and ensuring that young people can see that there ’ s depth of roles and opportunities in aged care .
It ’ s not just the care workforce . It ’ s even those that are graduating from university . Many organisations in aged care have quite sophisticated workforces that have everything in the back of house around accounting and IT and all sorts of things . There are great jobs in aged care that are both altruistic , but also professional , as well .
In a conversation with the Sydney Morning Herald you spoke about how Australia might miss the boat in attracting overseas workers to countries such as Canada and New Zealand . I gave those examples but I think we are competing with all Western countries .
It ’ s just a natural progression from the lack of migratory movement during COVID , that now that the borders have opened up across the world we don ’ t want to miss the boat .
We need to be jumping onto this and getting people in as soon as we can , because otherwise we will potentially have countries like New Zealand , Canada or the UK actually accessing this workforce quicker than we can .
It ’ s very important that we can move on that quickly . We ’ ve got such low unemployment in the country and that seems to be happening across the world as well . So it ’ s a very competitive marketplace .
I believe you also had a conversation with the assistant Aged Care Minister Ged Kearney about attracting overseas workers . Do you think the government is doing enough at the moment ? I know that they ’ re having those conversations in government at the moment . What they look like , I don ’ t know , but it ’ s heartening to hear that that is what they ’ re thinking and doing . And I hope that we ’ ll see something happening soon .
Aside from increasing wages , what would you say are some good ways to retain the current workforce ? People can do a lot around the conditions of their work by allowing flexibility for the worker , allowing workers to have training that they require to make sure that they ’ re positioned properly in their workplace , and helping people to see a career pathway .
We are doing work in the council on understanding what the new jobs of the aged care sector will be . What are the traditional jobs morphing into as we see the changing dynamic of older people in care , with higher care needs , and baby boomers coming in who value different things than previous generations in aged care ?
We ’ ve done some work on that , and we ’ re about to have a report out for the council on our findings so far . However , we ’ re still in the very early stages of this process that we ’ re working through around making sure we can build a sector that has really strong career pathways mapped out for people ; so they can see the jobs that are coming through and know the possibilities of other jobs that they can move to over a lifetime of work in the sector .
If individual providers can also show what career pathways are available to their staff , that is a really important attraction and retention strategy because people often see themselves stuck in a lower paid care role with no opportunities to move to something else .
That doesn ’ t cost money . It ’ s actually about showing people the way , that there are other opportunities here . That involves them being supported by the proper training , and making sure that people have access to flexible working arrangements .
If people want more hours , it ’ s about trying to accommodate that in an organisation rather than having to go and shop around another organisations for work . People like that stability , and often listening to their workforce and understanding what their workforce wants is probably a key factor there .
What has the Aged Care Workforce Industry Council been doing to improve the workforce shortage issues , what are you planning to do in the future ? We ’ ve just released a workforce planning tool as well . It ’ s confidential , and providers can use that tool to plan what kind of workers they need across their organisation . I welcome people to go onto our website and do that because it ’ s there for people to use .
The other work that we are doing is building that understanding of the job for the future . We ’ re also building case studies and promoting the industry as an industry of choice with career pathways : showing real workers and real careers so that we can attract more people to show them what the sector is about .
I think all too often we hear only the negative stories out of aged care . And there are so many very positive stories . The majority of workers love their job while they ’ re working in it and they do a very good job , an excellent job . We need to show that and show the possibilities of those jobs available to them .
We ’ re also working on understanding more about the workforce , and we ’ re talking to the department at the moment to work together with the sector . The results of that will be coming out later in the year . ■
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