Workforce Planning, Rostering & Scheduling in Health and Aged Care

Across Australia and New Zealand, health and aged care providers are facing a perfect storm. Demand for services continues to grow, patient and client acuity is increasing, workforce availability is tightening, and cost pressures show no sign of easing. At the centre of this challenge sits one critical capability: workforce planning, rostering and scheduling.

For many organisations, workforce management remains heavily manual, reactive and fragmented. Rosters are built week-to-week under pressure. Shortages are filled with overtime or agency labour. Service reliability depends on heroic effort from frontline staff and managers. While these approaches may keep services running in the short term, they are not sustainable.

Done well, workforce planning, rostering and scheduling can transform how health and aged care services operate. They can improve continuity of care, reduce workforce fatigue, lower costs, and create a more resilient operating model. Done poorly, they drive burnout, inefficiency, compliance risk and compromised care outcomes.

This article explores why workforce planning, rostering and scheduling are so challenging in health and aged care, what “good” really looks like, and how organisations across Australia and New Zealand can take a more structured, sustainable approach. It also outlines how Trace Consultants can help organisations lift capability in this critical area.

Why Workforce Management Is a Strategic Issue in Health and Aged Care

Workforce cost is the single largest cost line for most health and aged care organisations. In many cases, it represents 60–80 per cent of the total operating cost base. Yet despite its importance, workforce planning and scheduling is often treated as an administrative function rather than a strategic capability.

Several factors have elevated workforce management to an executive-level issue.

Growing and Changing Demand

Australia and New Zealand are experiencing ageing populations, increasing chronic disease, and rising demand for both acute and community-based care. Demand is not only increasing in volume but changing in shape — more complex needs, higher acuity, and greater variability day-to-day.

Persistent Workforce Shortages

Across nursing, allied health, care workers and support roles, labour markets remain tight. Recruitment pipelines are constrained, and competition for skilled staff is intense. Reliance on agency labour has increased, often at a significant cost premium.

Increasing Regulatory and Compliance Pressure

Health and aged care providers must comply with minimum staffing requirements, skill mix rules, fatigue management, award conditions and accreditation standards. Manual rostering processes struggle to consistently manage this complexity.

Rising Expectations of Quality and Continuity

Patients, residents, clients and families increasingly expect consistent care, familiar carers, and reliable service delivery. Poor rostering and high turnover undermine these expectations.

Workforce Burnout and Retention Risk

Inefficient rostering, excessive overtime, and poor shift allocation contribute directly to burnout and attrition — further worsening workforce shortages.

Understanding Workforce Planning, Rostering and Scheduling

Although often grouped together, workforce planning, rostering and scheduling are distinct — and all three must work together.

Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is about determining what workforce is required, by role, skill, location and time, to deliver the desired level of service. In health and aged care, this means translating demand for care into workforce requirements.

This includes:

• Understanding demand drivers (patients, residents, clients, acuity)
• Defining care models and service standards
• Determining required staffing levels and skill mix
• Planning workforce supply over the short, medium and long term

Without effective workforce planning, rostering becomes guesswork.

Rostering

Rostering is the process of allocating staff to shifts over a defined period, typically weeks or months. Good rostering balances service requirements, workforce availability, award conditions, employee preferences and cost.

In health and aged care, rostering must account for:

• Shift coverage requirements
• Skill and qualification constraints
• Fatigue rules and safe working limits
• Fairness and equity across staff
• Leave, training and non-productive time

Scheduling

Scheduling focuses on the day-to-day and intra-day deployment of staff — responding to unplanned absences, demand variability, and service disruptions. In community and home-based care, scheduling also includes route planning and travel optimisation.

Scheduling capability is critical for maintaining service reliability without excessive overtime or agency use.

How to Select the Right Technology

Selecting the right workforce planning, rostering and scheduling technology requires far more than comparing feature lists or responding to vendor demonstrations. Health and aged care organisations should start by clearly defining their future-state operating model — including care models, workforce structure, decision rights and performance expectations — before assessing technology options. The most effective solutions are those that align closely with how services are delivered on the ground, integrate cleanly with payroll, HR and finance systems, and support both forward planning and real-time operational decision-making. Ease of use for frontline managers is critical, as overly complex systems often drive workarounds and undermine adoption. Just as importantly, organisations should assess data quality requirements, implementation effort, scalability, and the level of ongoing configuration and governance required to keep the system fit for purpose as demand, regulations and workforce conditions evolve. Choosing the right technology is ultimately about enabling better decisions and sustainable workforce practices, not simply automating existing problems.

Common Challenges in Health and Aged Care Workforce Management

Across hospitals, aged care providers, community services and disability organisations, similar challenges consistently emerge.

Reactive, Short-term Focus

Many organisations operate in perpetual “firefighting” mode. Rosters are built to get through the next week rather than aligned to forecast demand or longer-term workforce plans.

Limited Demand Visibility

Demand for care is often poorly quantified or not translated into workforce terms. Historical rosters, rather than actual care demand, become the basis for future planning.

Fragmented Processes and Systems

Workforce planning, rostering, payroll, HR and operational reporting are often disconnected. This creates duplication, manual workarounds and inconsistent data.

Over-reliance on Overtime and Agency Labour

When base rosters do not match demand, organisations rely on expensive short-term fixes. Over time, this inflates costs and accelerates burnout.

Poor Skill Mix Alignment

Rosters may meet headcount requirements but fail to align skills and experience with patient or resident needs — affecting quality and safety.

Lack of Performance Visibility

Many organisations struggle to answer basic questions:

• What is our true cost per hour of care?
• Where are we over- or under-staffed?
• How much of our workforce cost is reactive?
• Which services are most vulnerable to disruption?

Why Traditional Approaches No Longer Work

Historically, workforce management in health and aged care relied on experienced managers using spreadsheets, local knowledge and manual adjustments. While this approach worked in simpler environments, it is increasingly unsustainable.

The scale and complexity of modern service delivery — combined with workforce constraints and regulatory requirements — exceed what manual processes can reliably manage. More importantly, traditional approaches are not designed to optimise outcomes; they are designed to cope.

To move beyond coping, organisations must rethink workforce planning, rostering and scheduling as an integrated operating model capability.

Designing Workforce Models Around Care Demand

At the heart of effective workforce management is a simple principle: start with demand.

Translating Demand into Workforce Requirements

Demand in health and aged care may be driven by:

• Occupancy and acuity in residential settings
• Patient flows in hospitals
• Client schedules in community and home care
• Service level commitments and care minutes

Effective workforce planning translates this demand into:

• Required hours of care
• Skill mix by time of day and day of week
• Variability and peak requirements
• Minimum safe staffing levels

This creates a fact-based foundation for rostering decisions.

Aligning Care Models and Workforce Design

Different care models require different workforce structures. For example:

• Continuity-focused models prioritise stable assignments
• Flexible response models require multi-skilled staff
• Community models require travel and scheduling optimisation

Workforce planning must align explicitly to the chosen care model.

Building Better Rosters: Balancing Care, Cost and Workforce Experience

Good rostering is about trade-offs. There is no perfect roster — only better-informed decisions.

Key Principles of Effective Rostering

• Demand-aligned: Rosters reflect when care is actually needed
• Skill-appropriate: The right mix of qualifications and experience is available
• Fair and transparent: Staff understand how rosters are built
• Compliant by design: Awards and fatigue rules are embedded
• Cost-aware: Overtime and premium labour are minimised

Importantly, good rosters reduce the need for constant rework during execution.

Scheduling in Dynamic Care Environments

Even the best rosters cannot predict everything. Absences, demand spikes and unplanned events are inevitable.

Effective scheduling capability allows organisations to:

• Rapidly redeploy staff
• Minimise disruption to care continuity
• Reduce reliance on overtime and agency staff
• Maintain service quality under pressure

In community and aged care settings, scheduling also includes managing travel time, sequencing visits, and adjusting routes as conditions change.

The Role of Technology in Workforce Planning and Scheduling

Technology is a critical enabler — but only when implemented with a clear operating model in mind.

What Technology Should Enable

Rather than focusing on systems alone, organisations should focus on capability:

• Forecasting workforce requirements based on demand
• Building compliant, optimised rosters
• Managing real-time changes effectively
• Providing visibility into cost, utilisation and risk
• Supporting managers rather than burdening them

Why Technology Alone Is Not Enough

Many organisations invest in rostering systems but see limited improvement. This usually occurs because:

• Demand modelling is weak or absent
• Processes are poorly defined
• Data quality is inconsistent
• Change management is underestimated

Technology should support better decisions — not replace the need for them.

Measuring What Matters

Sustainable improvement requires clear performance measures.

Effective workforce metrics may include:

• Cost per hour of care delivered
• Overtime and agency utilisation
• Rostering stability
• Skill mix compliance
• Workforce utilisation
• Absenteeism and turnover
• Service reliability and continuity

Importantly, metrics should support learning and improvement, not just reporting.

How Trace Consultants Can Help

Trace Consultants works with health and aged care organisations across Australia and New Zealand to strengthen workforce planning, rostering and scheduling capability in a practical, sustainable way.

Trace supports organisations to:

• Understand demand drivers and care requirements
• Design workforce models aligned to care strategies
• Improve workforce planning and forecasting processes
• Redesign rostering and scheduling operating models
• Select and configure enabling technology
• Improve performance visibility and governance
• Reduce reliance on reactive labour solutions
• Build capability within management teams

Trace brings experience across hospitals, aged care providers, community services and disability organisations, with a strong understanding of the regulatory, operational and workforce realities unique to the sector.

Critically, Trace’s approach is independent and grounded in operational reality — focused on outcomes, not tools or theory.

Looking Ahead: Workforce Sustainability as a Competitive Advantage

The organisations that will thrive in health and aged care over the coming decade are those that treat workforce management as a core capability, not an administrative burden.

Effective workforce planning, rostering and scheduling enable:

• Better care outcomes
• More engaged and sustainable workforces
• Lower and more predictable costs
• Greater resilience in the face of disruption

The challenges are significant — but so is the opportunity.

By investing in the right foundations now, organisations can move beyond constant firefighting and build workforce models that support both care excellence and financial sustainability.

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Designing an Optimal Target Operating Model — Workforce Planning, Rostering & Scheduling. How to Drive Productivity in Financial Services

There are few moments more frustrating for an executive than watching a frontline team drown in peaks while chips sit idle in other parts of the operation. In financial services this tension is everywhere: customer contact spikes when product campaigns land, mortgage processing queues when the market turns, and back-office teams scramble at month-end and EOFY. Organisations either over-staff to be safe (and accept lower productivity), or under-staff and risk poor customer outcomes and compliance slips.

Getting workforce planning, rostering and scheduling right is not a tactical fix — it’s a core element of your Target Operating Model (TOM). Done well, it reduces cost per transaction, improves service levels and lowers operational risk. Done poorly, it creates churn, fatigue and regulatory exposure.

This article walks leaders in Australian and New Zealand financial services through a practical approach to designing an optimal TOM that balances control, flexibility and productivity. We’ll cover the strategic thinking, the nuts and bolts of demand and capacity, rostering principles, technology choices, governance, and the change programmes that make it stick. And we’ll explain how Trace Consultants partners with finance and operations teams to design and deliver these outcomes.

Why workforce design is strategic in financial services

Financial services organisations face a distinct set of challenges that make workforce design strategic, not merely operational:

• Regulatory & compliance obligations. Licensing, responsible-lending checks, KYC/AML, privacy and audit trails require trained people and robust processes. Errors are costly.
• Peaks and seasonality. Product launches, rate changes, tax season, and regulatory deadlines create predictable and unpredictable demand surges.
• Omnichannel customer journeys. Customers move fluidly between phone, chat, email and branch — staffing must reflect that complexity.
• Complex skill requirements. From front-line servicing and advice to complex settlement or claims processing, tasks require varying skill levels and accreditation.
• Remote and hybrid working. Flexibility has changed expectations. Rosters must support remote work while ensuring coverage and security.
• Cost and productivity pressure. Operating margins are under pressure; workforce costs are a dominant controllable item.

A TOM that embeds workforce planning as a strategic capability helps organisations meet regulatory obligations, deliver consistent customer experiences and do so at a lower total cost of ownership.

What a Target Operating Model for workforce looks like

A Target Operating Model for workforce planning, rostering and scheduling defines the people, processes, technology and governance needed to run the operation. Key components:

• Organisational design & roles: Clear role definitions, career paths and skill frameworks.
• Demand management: Forecasting models that translate business activity to staffing requirements.
• Capacity planning & supply: FTE model, contract workforce, cross-skilling and pool arrangements.
• Rostering & scheduling: Shift patterns, skill mixes, leave management, and intraday adjustments.
• Technology stack: Forecasting engines, WFM (workforce management) systems, intraday tools and integrations to HR/Payroll and CRM.
• Governance & KPIs: Clear performance measures, review cadence and escalation paths.
• Change & people strategy: Communication, training and cultural levers to embed new ways of working.

Designing a TOM means making choices across these elements that match strategic priorities: risk appetite, service ambitions, cost targets and employee experience.

Three planning horizons — strategic, tactical and operational

Good workforce planning operates on three horizons. Each requires distinct inputs and decisions.

1. Strategic (12–36 months):
   Focus: capability, headcount profile, operating model, long-term tech investment.
   Decisions: insource vs outsource, centres of excellence, investment in automation, strategic use of contingent labour.
2. Tactical (3–12 months):
   Focus: recruitment plan, training calendar, roster design changes, forecasting improvements.
   Decisions: hiring plans for seasonal peaks, cross-training initiatives, pilot new roster models.
3. Operational (daily/weekly):
   Focus: daily schedules, intraday adherence, real-time reallocation, leave cover and overtime.
   Decisions: shift swaps, surge plans, intraday redeployment.

The TOM needs to connect decisions across these horizons. A strategic decision to centralise processing should feed tactical hiring plans and daily rostering rules.

Demand forecasting — the root of good capacity planning

A roster is only as good as the demand forecasts that feed it. Forecasting in financial services must combine statistical models with business insight.

Key considerations for forecasting:

• Granularity: Forecast at the right level — by channel (phone, chat, email), by skill group (advisers, processors), by interval (15/30/60 minutes) and by location (site/region/remote pool).
• Drivers: Identify demand drivers — marketing campaigns, product changes, settlement cycles, regulatory deadlines, external events (rate cuts). Tag historical data with these drivers for model training.
• Seasonality & trends: Include weekly, monthly and annual seasonality. EOFY and end-of-month effects are common.
• Event overlays: Incorporate planned events (product launches) and scenarios for unplanned events (market volatility).
• Shrinkage & non-productive time: Model training, breaks, meetings, coaching and admin time. This “shrinkage” can be a large portion of paid time.
• Forecast blending: Combine statistical forecasts with managerial adjustments. Human insight is often necessary for one-off events.

Output: a demand profile that translates into required staffing minutes by interval and by skill.

Capacity modelling and skill segmentation

Once you understand demand, you must translate it into capacity.

Activity-based capacity modelling:

• Task times & complexity: Define average handling times for typical tasks and variance. For advice or complaints, use longer, variance-aware estimates.
• Skill tiers: Segment roles into tiers (e.g. junior, senior, specialist). Each tier has different processing capability and escalation rules.
• Occupancy targets: Decide acceptable occupancy (the % of time agents are active). Too high = burnout; too low = wasted resource.
• Multi-skilling: Map skills across roles. Multi-skilled agents reduce queues and improve flexibility, but require investment in training.
• Contingency & reserve: Model contingency pools for sick leave, spikes and unplanned absences.

Capacity models should output required FTEs by role and timeframe, with clear assumptions documented for productivity, occupancy and shrinkage.

Rostering & scheduling design principles

Rostering shifts from an administrative chore to a productivity lever when designed well. Key principles:

1. Match supply to demand: Rosters should align staffing minutes to the forecast demand curve to avoid over- and under-staffing.
2. Skill mix alignment: Ensure the right number of each skill tier is rostered per interval (e.g. at least one senior for escalations).
3. Fairness and predictability: Rosters that respect employee preferences and entitlements improve retention and morale.
4. Minimise fragmentation: Excessively fragmented shifts increase handovers and reduce productivity.
5. Fatigue & wellbeing: Build fatigue rules — minimum rest, maximum consecutive shifts and consideration of commute times.
6. Flexibility built in: Design flexible blocks, split shifts or part-time blends to cater for hybrid work and peak coverage.
7. Cover for leave and training: Plan for routine and unexpected leave within roster templates.

Roster types common in financial services:

• Fixed template rosters: Predictable, easy to manage; suit transactional processing teams.
• Flexible block rosters: Employees work blocks that can be scheduled into demand peaks; balance flexibility with predictability.
• Split-shift rosters: Cover peaks mid-day and evening; useful for contact centres.
• On-call pools: For specialised skills or urgent remediation.
• Hybrid/remote rosters: Combine in-office presence for coaching and remote work for deep tasks.

Rostering must also be legally defensible — compliant with enterprise agreements, awards, and local employment practices in Australia and New Zealand.

Scheduling optimisation and intraday management

Scheduling optimisation uses algorithms to convert capacity plans into rostered shifts that meet constraints and preferences. Modern optimisers consider:

• Skill requirements per interval
• Minimum and maximum shift length
• Break patterns
• Employee availability and preferences
• Labour cost differences (penalty rates)
• Continuity and handover rules

Once the day begins, intraday management keeps performance on track:

• Adherence tools: Track scheduled vs actual, with alarms and dashboards.
• Real-time reallocation: Move staff between channels to close service gaps.
• Short-term hiring/contingent access: Quick access to casual pools or overtime for spikes.
• Supervisor dashboards: Prioritise activities: callbacks, triage, or reassignments.

Intraday capability is critical in financial services where a small surge can produce regulatory breaches or missed SLA windows.

Technology that enables modern workforce management

Technology is an enabler — but you must choose the right tools and integrate them well.

Essential WFM capabilities:

• Forecasting engine: Statistical models with scenario overlays and driver tagging.
• Schedule optimisation: Constrained optimisers that generate legally compliant rosters.
• Intraday management: Real-time dashboards, adherence, and shift swap approvals.
• Employee self-service: Shift bidding, swap, availability and leave requests.
• Skill management: Skill matrices, accreditations and training expiry tracking.
• Integration: Links to CRM, telephony, HRIS, payroll and BI tools.
• Analytics & reporting: Drillable dashboards for performance, productivity and costs.

Emerging tech to consider:

• AI forecasting: Better handling of short-term variability and event impact.
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Automate repetitive admin tasks to free up staff.
• Micro-scheduling & gig-style platforms: For highly flexible pools, though governance is required.
• Mobile apps: For shift notifications, verification and communications.

When selecting technology, focus on practicability: the system must fit your data maturity, integration capabilities and people capability to operate it.

Compliance, skills and training

In financial services, compliance is non-negotiable. The TOM must embed capability and controls:

• Accreditation tracking: Ensure staff only perform tasks for which they are accredited; track CPD and re-certification.
• Audit trails: Rostering and scheduling systems should maintain auditable logs for who did what and when.
• Quality frameworks: Link coaching, calibration and quality assurance into the rostered time (e.g. coaching windows).
• Training capacity: Account for learning time in capacity models and schedule training during low-demand windows.
• Security & privacy: Rosters should consider clearance levels and data-security requirements for remote staff.

Building capability is a continuous investment — catalogue skills, map career pathways and plan for capability ramp-up during recruitment.

People, culture and change management

The best-designed TOM will fail without a people program that addresses engagement and ownership.

Practical change levers:

• Stakeholder engagement: Involve HR, unions (if relevant), team leaders and staff early.
• Transparent rules & fairness: Publish roster principles and how preferences are treated.
• Pilot & iterate: Run pilots in a single team or site, gather data and refine before scaling.
• Training for leaders: Supervisors need coaching in intraday decision-making and using dashboards.
• Employee self-service: Empower staff with tools to manage availability and swaps; autonomy improves satisfaction.
• Wellbeing measures: Monitor overtime, leave balances and fatigue indicators.

Change is a process of building trust — clear communication, visible benefits and making it easier for managers and staff will win support.

Measuring productivity and performance

Productivity in workforce terms is more than headcount. Useful metrics include:

• Cost per transaction / per claim / per mortgage file processed.
• Output per labour hour (transactions or value-weighted tasks).
• Occupancy and utilisation rates.
• First contact resolution and average handling time (by channel & task).
• Schedule adherence and intraday variance.
• Quality & compliance scores.
• Employee engagement and attrition.
• FTE per workload (e.g. FTE per $m of AUM serviced).

Design a balanced scorecard that combines efficiency, quality, employee experience and risk. Importantly, show the link between workforce metrics and financial outcomes: productivity improvements should translate into lower cost per unit and improved margins.

Implementation roadmap — from design to steady state

A pragmatic implementation roadmap reduces execution risk.

1. Diagnostic (4–8 weeks): Current state mapping — activities, costs, systems and pain points.
2. Target design (6–12 weeks): Define TOM principles, role design, forecast methods, roster templates and tech roadmap.
3. Build & pilot (8–16 weeks): Configure tools, create training materials, pilot roster models in one or two teams.
4. Scale & integrate (12–24 weeks): Roll out across the organisation, integrate systems and institutionalise governance.
5. Optimise & sustain (ongoing): Continuous improvement cycles with periodic benchmarking.

Critical success factors: executive sponsorship, cross-functional governance, a realistic pilot that tests the hardest constraints, and a people plan that addresses change fatigue.

How Trace Consultants can help

Designing and delivering a Target Operating Model for financial services teams requires deep experience across finance, operations and technology. Trace Consultants supports organisations across the end-to-end journey:

• Diagnostics and current-state mapping: We analyse activity flows, time studies, cost baselines and performance to create a single source of truth for decisions.
• Demand and capacity modelling: Using activity-based models, we build transparent forecast and capacity models that capture shrinkage, training and contingency.
• Roster design and optimisation: We design rosters that align supply to demand while balancing fairness, compliance and cost. Our approach focuses on practical roster templates that supervisors can manage.
• Technology selection & configuration: Trace evaluates WFM and optimisation tools, helps procure the right fit for your data maturity, and configures systems to your constraints and rules. We’ve delivered workforce tools using Smart Excel and Microsoft Power Platforms for clients across services sectors to accelerate forecasting and rostering capability.
• Intraday & workforce operating model: We implement intraday processes, dashboards and shift escalation playbooks so your supervisors can keep the day on track.
• Change management & people strategy: We design communication plans, train leaders and embed employee self-service to secure adoption and reduce churn.
• KPI design & governance: We craft balanced scorecards and governance cadences that tie workforce performance to financial outcomes.
• Continuous improvement: After go-live, we run optimisation cycles, benchmarking and productivity programs to sustain benefits.

Trace’s approach is pragmatic: we focus on outcomes that are measurable, defensible and operationally sustainable. We don’t sell technology for its own sake — we recommend tools only where they solve a real problem and can be operated by your team.

Quick checklist — 12 pragmatic steps you can start today

1. Map your work. Capture the activities, frequencies and skill requirements for every team.
2. Get the data right. Pull historical demand by channel and interval and tag events that drive variation.
3. Model shrinkage. Don’t forget training, meetings and admin — it changes required FTE materially.
4. Segment skills. Define tiers and required accreditations for routing and escalations.
5. Pilot roster templates. Test one team before rolling out across the business.
6. Set occupancy targets. Pick sustainable targets and test sensitivity for service risk.
7. Invest in intraday. Start with simple adherence dashboards and work towards automated intraday suggestions.
8. Enable self-service. Give staff visibility of shifts and easy swap mechanisms.
9. Audit compliance. Ensure your roster rules meet EA/award and licensing obligations.
10. Link to finance. Translate productivity gains into cost per transaction and FTE reductions.
11. Train supervisors. They are the linchpin of intraday performance.
12. Plan for continuous improvement. Build fortnightly or monthly optimisation sprints.

Financial services organisations that treat workforce planning, rostering and scheduling as strategic elements of their Target Operating Model unlock three things: predictable customer experience, lower cost per unit of work, and reduced operational risk. The challenge is less about discovering new ideas than about doing the hard work of modelling, piloting and embedding new ways of working.

If you’re responsible for customer service, operations or finance in a bank, insurer or wealth manager, now is the time to move workforce capability from the “we’ll worry about it later” box to a formal TOM initiative. With the right design, technology and people plan, workforce optimisation becomes a sustainable source of productivity and a competitive advantage.

Trace Consultants works with Australian and New Zealand financial services leaders to design and implement TOMs that deliver measurable outcomes — from rigorous costing and forecasting through to roster optimisation, intraday controls and change management. If you’d like to explore how your TOM could be redesigned to deliver better service at lower cost, Trace Consultants can help map the path forward.

Want to understand where the biggest productivity gains live in your operation? Start with a short diagnostic: map one function, forecast demand for two weeks and model three roster alternatives. The numbers will tell the story.

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Workforce Planning, Rostering & Scheduling in Aged Care: Doing More With the Team You Already Have

A five-minute story most care managers will recognise

It’s 2:15pm on a Tuesday in Auckland. Morning shifts ran long, two residents required unplanned one-to-one supervision, and a physio referral turned into an urgent mobility review. Your afternoon roster looked fine on paper, yet by lunch the wheels were wobbling—clinical handovers ran over, one RN called in sick, and the coordinator is juggling swaps and agency calls while families wait for updates.

In home care, three suburbs away, the schedule looks tidy until one worker’s car won’t start and another is stuck across town. The system shows everyone allocated; the lived reality is missed meal support, rushed medication prompts, and a care recipient feeling forgotten.

When it works, workforce planning feels invisible. People are in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills—calm, present, and able to do their best work. Getting there is part science, part craft, and entirely worth the effort.

Why aged care workforce planning is different (and harder)

Every sector struggles with supply and demand. Aged care adds layers not found elsewhere:

• Care never stops. Demand is 24/7, and small disruptions have real human consequences.
• Complex rules. Awards and EBAs, mandated skill mixes, medication competencies, manual handling requirements, and ratio expectations all intersect.
• Unpredictable acuity. Falls, delirium, infections, and behavioural changes can spike demand within a shift.
• Home care logistics. Travel time, parking, route planning, and variable dwell times quickly multiply small inefficiencies.
• Thin margins. Funding changes and rising costs make labour efficiency the make-or-break lever.
• Workforce scarcity. Competing sectors, immigration settings, and cost of living pressures mean every hour must count—for quality and retention.

The way through isn’t magic software or more meetings. It’s a disciplined approach to demand forecasting, skill-mix and roster design, with simple rules teams can follow even on a busy day.

The three rhythms of an effective workforce model

Think about planning across three time horizons, each with its own cadence:

1. Strategic (quarterly to annual).
   Set the operating model and budget guardrails: service promises, funding assumptions, baseline staffing establishment by unit (or region), and target skill mix. Decide which services to in-house vs. partner, and where to centralise rostering vs. keep it close to the floor.
2. Tactical (weekly to monthly).
   Forecast demand and convert it to a forward roster: leave planning, shift patterns, and training days locked in; agency caps and overtime guardrails; home care demand clustered into efficient runs; surge plans noted.
3. Operational (daily to shift).
   Adjust to what today’s reality brings: add-on tasks, resident acuity changes, late discharges/admissions, call-ins. Use short-interval control—quick huddles with clear rules for redeployments, breaks, and escalation.

Nail the rhythms and your team spends less time firefighting and more time caring.

Forecast demand before you roster supply

Rostering without a demand view is guesswork. Start with these inputs:

• Residential care: Occupancy, acuity scores, behavioural support needs, clinical risk flags, allied health schedules, and mealtime/med-round patterns.
• Home care: Package levels, scheduled services, geography, dwelling access complexity, historical dwell time variance, and seasonal illness patterns.
• Constraints: Mandatory training, supervision ratios, medication endorsements, and known leave or appointment blocks.

Translate demand into workload drivers—for example: personal care minutes by acuity band, medication prompts per round, turns/repositioning counts, meal assistance counts, cleaning frequencies, and social support blocks. It doesn’t need to be perfect; it needs to be consistent and transparent.

Skill mix: safe, sustainable, and affordable

Good rosters manage three trade-offs at once:

• Safety and quality. Ensure an RN (or EN where appropriate) is present and truly available for clinical escalation, with PCWs/HCWs configured to cover predictable peaks—mornings, evenings, and weekends.
• Workload and wellbeing. Avoid patterns that drive fatigue: too many “clopen” turns, split shifts that chew family time, or long strings of high-acuity assignments.
• Cost discipline. Push as many hours as possible into ordinary time, reserve overtime for real peaks, and keep agency as a safety net, not a habit.

A practical principle for residential care: staff to the routine, buffer for the exception. Build rosters that comfortably handle core routines (personal care, meals, meds, activities), then design a small, flexible buffer for unpredictable events—float roles or short “swing” shifts that can be moved where the heat map says it’s needed.

The roster that “feels” right on the floor

Frontline teams can tell in minutes if a roster will work. It generally has these traits:

• Clear anchor points. Predictable start times for core roles; medication rounds and personal care clustered to avoid collisions.
• Short, smart overlaps. Handover windows sized to acuity—long enough to be safe, not so long they waste hours.
• Named responsibilities. Break coverage, clinical escalation points, and task ownership defined in advance.
• Balanced sequences. Rotas spread heavy tasks and high-acuity residents across the week and the team; time for catch-up or activities is protected.
• Simple rules. Swaps and redeployments follow standard patterns; everyone knows the triage triggers for calling in extra help.

Aim for “boringly reliable.” The shine comes from calm shifts, not clever patterns.

Home care: the hardest last mile

Great home care schedules look like good transport plans: you minimise total travel, hit time windows, and cover priority tasks. A few essentials:

• Geographic clustering. Lock “micro-catchments” so workers can build familiarity and reduce travel friction.
• Time-window realism. Not all services are truly time-critical; define flexible windows where safe.
• Dwell time libraries. Base durations on measured history, not wishful thinking; adjust for mobility, home layout, and social factors.
• Contingency minutes. Insert small buffers across a run rather than one big gap; it absorbs variance better.
• Client continuity. Fewer faces usually means better outcomes. Make continuity a scheduling objective, not a nice-to-have.
• Travel & pay compliance. Systematically capture kilometres and time between visits, and ensure pay rules reflect it correctly.

Routing tools help, but only if your data and rules are sound. Start small—optimise one region, learn, then scale.

Award, EBA and compliance—treat rules as design inputs

Australian and New Zealand providers manage a patchwork of awards, EBAs and local policies. Bake rules into roster design so compliance is automatic:

• Ordinary time limits, rest breaks and minimum breaks between shifts
• Span of hours, weekend and public holiday loadings
• Minimum engagement times (especially in home care)
• Overtime triggers and averaging arrangements
• Skill and supervision requirements for restricted tasks (e.g., medication)
• Qualifications currency and mandatory training

A workable approach: build a “rule bible” and translate it into configuration for your rostering system. Avoid manual patch-ups; they’re error-prone and morale-sapping.

Agency use: a safety net, not a strategy

Sometimes you need agency staff. But habitually relying on them erodes quality, culture and cash. Manage agency with intent:

• Set a cap. By site/region and shift type, so it’s a conscious choice to exceed it.
• Use a roster escalation ladder. Split shifts, redeployments, and overtime used in a consistent order before agency is called.
• Prefer known temps. Maintain a small, vetted pool to improve consistency.
• Measure substitution effects. Track medication error rates, incidents, and client feedback on agency-heavy days to inform decisions.

Often, the best agency reduction lever is better leave planning and earlier visibility of gaps.

Data and dashboards that matter

Dashboards shouldn’t be wallpaper. Keep them tight and action-oriented:

• Coverage & stability: Fill rate, unplanned vacancy hours, and roster changes inside 48 hours.
• Overtime & agency: Overtime hours as % of paid hours; agency hours and cost against cap.
• Quality & safety proxies: Medication round delays, missed/late visits, incident rates by hour of day, and care plan adherence.
• Workforce wellbeing: Balance of weekends/nights, consecutive days worked, cancelled shifts, and travel minutes per hour of work (home care).
• Financials: Labour cost per occupied bed day (residential) or per service hour (home care), and variance to plan.

Review weekly at the right level: site/regional leaders with rostering leads, not a top-down broadcast.

Technology: get the plumbing right before the chandelier

Rostering and scheduling platforms are powerful, but they don’t fix unclear processes. Prioritise:

1. Clean master data. People (skills, endorsements, availability), clients (care plans, time windows), locations, and pay rules.
2. Simple workflows. A small set of standard roster templates; clear leave request and approval paths; consistent swap rules.
3. Interoperability. Rostering talks to payroll, HRIS, care management, and finance; home care routing can import/export to the same source of truth.
4. Mobility. Staff can see shifts, accept changes, log travel, and confirm tasks in one place—without tapping through ten screens.
5. Auditability. System logs who changed what and when—vital for complaints, audits, and continuous improvement.

If you’re mid-implementation, resist customising away good discipline. Configure for your reality but keep the vendor-supported backbone intact.

Building a workforce that wants to stay

You won’t roster your way out of a retention problem, but your roster can make people stay:

• Predictability with flexibility. Publish rosters early, enable preferences where possible, and keep last-minute changes for genuine needs.
• Fairness you can see. Spread nights, weekends and public holidays equitably, and let the system prove it.
• A voice at the table. Frontline input into roster patterns and post-implementation reviews.
• Time to care. Rosters that budget minutes for relationship-building—not just task completion—lift morale and outcomes.
• Learning built-in. Protect training time and preceptorship; don’t make development something people must do “off the side of the desk”.

Retention is the cheapest workforce strategy you have. Treat it as a design objective.

A practical 90-day roadmap

Days 0–15: See it clearly

• Walk two sites and one home care region. Shadow a coordinator.
• Map the roster “hot spots”: missed visits, overtime clusters, agency spikes, and travel blowouts.
• Extract a clean baseline: paid hours, agency %, overtime %, labour per OB day/service hour, coverage gaps, and late changes.

Days 16–45: Stabilise the basics

• Clean master data for the biggest units/regions and build 3–5 standard roster templates per setting.
• Lock a leave planning cadence (quarterly) and a fortnightly roster freeze window.
• Stand up a daily 10-minute staffing huddle with a simple escalation ladder.
• In home care, pilot one micro-catchment: route plans with realistic dwell times and travel buffers.

Days 46–90: Build repeatable discipline

• Launch a weekly performance pack with five measures and three actions.
• Implement a small float/swing capacity in residential units to absorb predictable peaks.
• Introduce continuity targets in home care (e.g., top 20 clients see no more than three workers in a month).
• Negotiate agency caps and a preferred pool; align internal incentives to reduce agency first, not last.
• Publish a six-month workforce plan: skill mix, recruitment focus, and training commitments.

You’ll see relief inside weeks and cultural lift within three months.

Frequently asked (and fair) questions

“Can we really reduce agency without risking care?”
Yes—by improving forward visibility of gaps, locking leave earlier, and creating small internal buffers. Agency becomes the exception, not the habit.

“What’s the best roster pattern?”
There isn’t one. Your best pattern balances your routines, care model, physical layout, and funding. Build 3–5 standard templates and iterate using real-world feedback.

“Do we need new software?”
Maybe. But start by fixing process clarity, master data, and rules. Then decide whether your current system can support the discipline you need.

“How do we respect preferences and still cover the floor?”
Use preference windows rather than promises, bake fairness into the pattern, and be transparent about the trade-offs. People value honesty as much as flexibility.

“What’s the simplest metric to start with?”
Pick two: labour cost per OB day (or service hour) and agency % of total hours. Add one quality proxy (missed/late services) and one wellbeing measure (consecutive days or weekend balance).

The leadership behaviours that make it stick

• Walk the roster. Leaders join the huddles, ask about pinch points, and remove obstacles.
• Celebrate the boring wins. Quiet shifts, on-time rounds, and full coverage deserve a shout-out.
• Hold the line. Protect freeze windows and escalation ladders; don’t undo discipline with ad-hoc exceptions.
• Share the proof. Publish small monthly wins—reduced agency, fewer missed visits, happier teams.
• Keep changing one thing at a time. Iteration beats upheaval; swap in improvements gently and learn.

How Trace Consultants can help

Trace Consultants partners with aged care providers across Australia and New Zealand to design and embed practical workforce models—without adding bureaucracy or disrupting care.

Here’s how we typically support:

• Rapid workforce diagnostic. A 2–4 week, on-the-floor assessment of roster patterns, award/EBA rules in practice, agency reliance, home care routing, and data quality. We share a plain-English findings pack and a prioritised 90-day plan.
• Roster and scheduling redesign. Co-design of standard templates for residential and home care, alignment of handover windows, float/swing capacity, and realistic travel buffers and dwell times.
• Rule translation and system configuration. We convert your awards/EBAs and policies into system rules, simplify workflows, and harden integrations with payroll, HR, and care systems.
• Home care routing uplift. Micro-catchment design, route templates, continuity targets, and a practical process for handling on-day changes.
• Agency reduction program. Caps and governance, preferred pools, internal float development, and measurement of quality and cost impacts.
• Capability lift and change management. Rostering playbooks, coordinator coaching, and a leadership cadence that sustains improvement long after the project.

We focus on measurable outcomes—safer care, steadier shifts, and labour used where it matters most.

A short checklist you can use this week

• Are next fortnight’s rosters published and 80% stable?
• Do we have named float/swing capacity on our busiest units?
• Have we set a clear escalation ladder before calling agency?
• In home care, are two micro-catchments genuinely clustered with realistic dwell times?
• Can we show fairness on weekends/nights over the past eight weeks?
• Do our coordinators have a 10-minute daily huddle with a simple staffing board?
• Are we reporting one wellbeing and one quality proxy alongside cost and coverage?

If you can tick four or more, you’re on the right path. If not, you’ve got clear, achievable next steps.

Bringing it all together

Great rosters aren’t just tidy spreadsheets. They’re lived experiences: calmer corridors, unhurried meals, on-time meds, meaningful conversations, and teams who feel proud—not depleted—at the end of a shift. That doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of a workforce model that respects the work, uses people’s time wisely, and treats rules as guides, not obstacles.

Start small. Pick one unit or region. Clean the data, agree the rules, and lock two simple routines: a fortnightly roster rhythm and a daily huddle. Build a modest buffer, hold your freeze window, and measure only what you’ll act on. Progress compounds quickly when the basics are steady.

And if you want a partner to help you see the whole picture, make the right trade-offs, and embed the new rhythms, Trace Consultants is ready to work shoulder-to-shoulder with your team.

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