When Roster Gaps Aren’t Shortages – and Other Opportunities
- alexjames160
- Mar 23
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 21
Most roster gaps and agency costs in aged care are avoidable. New Effort Management Analysis (EMA) used at facilities showed that workforce inefficiencies are consistently around 20%, cost providers between $5-$15 a day per customer - and are avoidable.
THE COMMITTMENT administrators and frontline managers apply in aged care facilities is impressive. Not only do they clearly care about our elderly; they also work very hard to deliver quality services, meet government requirements, attain star ratings, avoid over-working staff while minimising agency alternatives - and remain financially solvent. Some even fill roster gaps on their day off. They're proud, but they're also exhausted. SO IMAGINE THE RELIEF if one of their greatest challenges could be easily solved - workforce ineffectiveness.
Workforce ineffectiveness revealed
A workforce is 100% effective, or optimised, when the number of people an organisation will ‘need’, ‘have’ and ‘use’ are the same. New effort management analysis (EMA) uses these factors to forecast workforce effectiveness, by calculating inefficiencies and linking these back to practical steps that roster clerks and frontline managers can take to reduce problems when planning and rostering.
EMA was conducted across multiple residential aged care facilities, owned by several providers. Initial findings resulted in unexpectedly high degrees of ineffectiveness, of around 80%, involving a range of inefficiencies. These results were assumed to be a one-off circumstance, until similar results were also found at other facilities. See Figure 1 below.
By linking to real world actions, providers participating in the analysis were empowered to make immediate improvements, supported by ongoing EMA monitoring.
Problems confirmed
Planning and rostering for care staff should be straightforward because demand for care changes slowly. However, EMA showed this is not the case, and that there is a significant opportunity for better roster performance. Likely reasons for the poor roster performance for include:
While roster clerks have most of the information they need, rosters were still compromised because of:
the complexity of workforce-shift information
factors beyond the clerks’ control e.g., shortages,
turnover, lack of training and time constraints.
Once rosters are compromised with gaps, compromise is assumed to be unavoidable, and the accepted standard becomes ‘close enough is good enough’. This is particularly true in an environment where the sector's workforce supply constraints are well publicised, where recruitment and attrition are ongoing challenges.
Managers have limited time to dive into the detail of roster issues, nor the evidence to drive accountability.
The Cost of Poor Rostering
EMA proved workforce inefficiencies are common, yet avoidable. Astonishingly, more than half of the gaps in shifts could have been filled by available workers that hadn't been assigned to a shift that had gaps that were filled by agency workers. The implication was that true capacity shortages were rarer than what was being reported to senior management. Other findings included allocating too many staff in a shift, extreme overtime and rostering unavailable staff.
The cost? EMA calculated inefficiencies in carer workforce rosters averaged $5-$15 per bed, per day - roughly 2-3 times the benchmark care margin.
Implications
Despite using modern rostering tools, similar issues were identified at all facilities, and could be prevalent across the sector.
Ultimately, to ease the roster challenge, clerks and frontline managers need support, including simple steps to take - before the roster is published - to close gaps, cut excess, and focus their recruitment efforts.
Senior managers need to know what steps were taken, and that value has not been left on the table.
The power of EMA
With EMA insights, planning and rostering is now simpler because:
roster clerks will know:
when, where, and why the roster is inefficient,
how to self-correct the roster before management review,
managers and executives can:
monitor effectiveness against organisational targets,
drill down to know when, where, and why the workforce is not effective,
Recruit with confidence, knowing how real shortfalls are.
As a consequence, the benefits of more effective workforces will bet:
staff receive consistent rosters with fewer excess hours.
providers have fewer financial and compliance worries, and
customers receive consistent quality care.
How does EMA work?
All that’s required is data describing how many staff a facility will ‘need’, ‘have’ and ‘use’. Data commonly used for this in aged care is:
shift demand (often AN-ACC minutes),
staff availability, and
the draft roster.
This data is analysed as a service, and once uploaded, is immediately returned as roster effectiveness, improvement steps and financial results. (No change or investment is required for frontline staff processes or software.)
Optimising future workforces
EMA has proven its value as a tool to understand and improve workforce effectiveness for aged care providers. Our goal is to expand availability of the service to more providers to support them as they deliver services, maintain margins and improve worker wellbeing.
with the support of three aged care providers and G5Strategic.
This blog is an expanded version, with charts and visuals, of the article published in Aged Care Today Magazine (March 2025, p. 58)
To enquire about this article email alex.james@centri.com.au or stephen@g5strategic.com.au
Download the Case Study
Want to see the workforce effectiveness data and charts from five real aged care facilities? Download the Case Study Results PDF
Could EMA help you? Take Step 1 (free) to confirm your workforce's suitability. Step 2 will then reveal how effective your workforce really is -and how to fix it. Step 3 is for organisations that thrive with EMA.
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