The Financial Cost of Aged Care Staff Turnover in Australia

Aged care providers in Australia have spent the past several years absorbing wave after wave of reform — the Aged Care Quality Standards, mandatory care minutes, the new Aged Care Act, Support at Home — all while trying to hold onto staff in a workforce that everyone in the sector knows is under strain. Turnover sits underneath almost every other cost line a provider manages: agency spend, training spend, and increasingly, regulatory risk.

How big is the aged care turnover problem?

The most detailed intention-to-leave data on the Australian aged care workforce comes from A Perfect Storm: What's Driving Australia's Aged Care Staffing Crisis, a sector workforce survey of just over 1,000 aged care workers conducted in June–July 2021. It found that 17% of workers — roughly 47,000 people — planned to leave the industry within 12 months, rising to 40% within three years and 65% within five years. Those figures are now several years old and reform since then (higher award wages, mandated care minutes, the new regulatory model) has aimed directly at the pressures the survey identified, so current intention-to-leave rates should be read as likely improved rather than assumed unchanged. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing's more recent Aged Care Worker Survey 2024 confirms workforce strain remains a live issue for the sector, even as the government continues to track it closely through annual workforce census and survey data.

What's consistent across every version of this data, old and new, is the underlying pattern: aged care turnover is concentrated in direct care roles, it's higher among newer staff, and it's closely tied to workload, pay relativity and perceived career progression.

What turnover costs a provider

As with other markets, there's no single official "cost per leaver" figure published for Australian aged care specifically. The cost drivers, though, are well established and apply directly to residential and home care providers alike:

• Recruitment and screening — advertising, police checks, and onboarding administration repeated for every new hire.
• Agency and casual cover — typically the largest visible cost when permanent rosters can't be filled.
• Supervisory time — care managers and clinical leads covering shifts or reworking rosters instead of quality improvement work.
• Repeated mandatory training — every new starter needs induction, manual handling, infection control and other mandatory modules delivered again.
• Care-minutes exposure — providers now have to meet mandated care-minute targets per resident; chronic turnover makes hitting that target with a stable, competent roster materially harder.

Turnover and regulatory risk under the new Act

Turnover in Australian aged care is not just a cost problem — it's a compliance one. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission uses a risk-based compliance and enforcement approach: providers are assessed on consumer safety, governance, compliance history and how well they self-monitor and resolve issues. Where non-compliance is identified, the Commission can issue compliance notices requiring providers to fix problems within a set timeframe, and escalate through notices to remedy or agree, infringement notices, civil penalties, injunctions, and — at the most serious end — revocation of a provider's approval or accreditation. A workforce with high turnover is structurally harder to keep "compliant" in this framework, because training records, induction evidence and competency sign-off have to be rebuilt continuously rather than maintained.

Providers managing the shift to Support at Home program compliance are feeling this acutely — new documentation and worker screening requirements land hardest on providers that are already stretched by constant staff replacement.

Where CPD and structured training help

Providers that have made genuine progress on retention consistently invest in the same areas:

• Structured, well-paced induction so new direct care workers feel competent quickly rather than thrown into shifts under-prepared.
• Visible CPD and career pathways — from entry-level roles through to clinical or leadership progression — giving staff a reason to stay.
• Centralized training and competency tracking, so gaps are visible to management before they surface in a Commission audit.
• Flexible, online CPD delivery that fits shift patterns rather than pulling staff off the floor for a full day.

FAQs

What percentage of aged care workers plan to leave the industry?

A 2021 sector workforce survey (A Perfect Storm) found 17% planned to leave within 12 months, 40% within three years, and 65% within five years. These figures predate several major reforms aimed at retention, so they should be treated as a historical baseline rather than a current rate.

Does staff turnover put a provider at compliance risk?

Yes — indirectly but materially. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission's risk-based framework assesses governance and self-monitoring, both of which are harder to demonstrate with a constantly changing workforce and incomplete training records.

How does turnover affect mandated care minutes?

Meeting mandated care-minute targets depends on a stable, adequately trained roster. High turnover makes it harder to guarantee the mix of qualified staff needed to hit those targets consistently.

What's the most effective retention lever for aged care providers?

Structured induction and a visible CPD pathway. Poorly supported new starters are consistently the highest-risk group for early leaving, and investment here tends to pay back faster than any other retention initiative.

The bottom line

Australian aged care has been under sustained workforce pressure, and while reform has targeted the causes, turnover still carries a real cost — in agency spend, training repetition, and exposure under the Commission's risk-based compliance model. Providers that build retention into their training strategy, not just their pay strategy, are best placed to manage both.

Related reading: the true cost of care staff turnover in Ireland and what staff turnover really costs Canadian long-term care homes.