Every so often a webinar guest says the thing the sector has been circling for years. Richard de Haast, CEO of Scalabrini, said it about twenty minutes into our August session: "I don't think the industry's got a recruitment problem. I think it's got a retention problem." You could almost hear the chat light up.
He was on the panel with Anthony Nguyen of Aged Care Recruitment Experts and psychologist Sue Jauncey of Appellon. For anyone who missed it, here's what stood out.
What the sector told us before we even started
We polled 123 organisations ahead of the session, and the answers set the tone. More than half had lost someone in the past year they believe they could have kept. Burnout and workload came in ahead of pay as the reason people leave. A third of respondents weren't sure why people leave at all, which might be the most telling number of the lot. And only 36% measure staff morale regularly.
Our Head of Data and Insights, Tyler Fisher, put the national picture around it. The Government's own modelling has aged care short around 18,000 full-time nurses by 2035, and that's after the 24/7 RN and care-minute obligations are accounted for, not before. One scenario jumped out: if every part-time nurse worked just one extra shift a fortnight, the national gap would shrink from 71,000 to 50,000. But as Tyler noted, "both of those levers help, but neither closes that gap on its own."
Then Richard showed the receipts
Four and a half years ago, Scalabrini's turnover was 39%. Today it's 9%. Agency is under 1% of worked hours. Overtime runs about 1.5%. And they've sponsored 12% of their workforce into permanent residency. "Everybody watches those moments," he told us, because sponsorship is a costly, visible sign that people are genuinely valued.
His challenge for directors deserves a place in a few board packs: "Boards should be asking executive teams, what is your labour turnover? Because that's an indicator of cultural healthiness."
And the line that's been quoted around our office ever since: "The behaviour you walk past is the behaviour you condone."
Why money keeps getting the blame
Sue Jauncey put words to something many of us have felt in exit interviews. "People say money when they don't know what else to say. They just know that they're not happy."
Her research keeps landing on the same two things behind job satisfaction: achievement and connection. "No organisation can meet the personal happiness of all of their staff," she said. "But what we can do is create conditions of achievement and connection." Cultures built on fault-finding get the revolving door. Cultures that notice the work get the discretionary effort.
And when you do have to recruit
Anthony's advice went against the grain, which is why it landed. Stop feeding your job ads through AI. "When everyone does the same thing, no one is standing out. If you're putting adverts through Gemini and ChatGPT, your voice is gone."
He was just as direct on lowball offers: "I don't know why there are some clients who like to haggle over a 5K. If they're not worth the extra 5K, why are they hiring them in the first place?"
Richard added a small experiment of his own. After a recent round with 66 applicants, he personally emailed everyone who missed out, before the automated rejection went through. Twelve per cent wrote back to thank him. Forty minutes of his time, and a job market full of people who now talk about the organisation differently at the weekend barbecue.
Where it all landed
The data says the workforce gap is structural and it's not going away. The panel says a surprising amount of the answer sits inside a provider's own four walls: track turnover like a board metric, build the conditions people stay for, and treat every candidate touchpoint as your brand, because it is. Or as Richard summed it up, "a lot of this is common sense, genuinely. It's common sense."
