In response to workforce shortages, AHRI-award winning organisation NVC Group developed a pre-employment training program that fosters job readiness and is helping to build a sustainable talent pipeline. 

The pandemic years rocked the aged care sector: burning out community and healthcare workers and deepening early attrition and retention gaps. At the same time, long-awaited reforms were handed down at the government level. 

As a not-for-profit provider of aged and home care services in the NSW Mid North Coast, NVC Group was not immune. We struggled with filling ongoing shortfalls in clinical experience. 

These workforce shortages trickle down beyond our local community. With Australia set to face the challenges that come along with an ageing population that other nations are currently experiencing, building a stable, skilled and future-ready workforce will be critical to meet accelerating national demand.

In response to this, we shifted our approach. To reduce our reliance on external agency staff, we focused on bridging the gap between education and full-time employment in the sector.

This led to the development of the Care Ready program. 

Care Ready aims to nurture an individual’s job readiness before they enter a traineeship or employment. It connects an individual’s interest in a care career with building the actual capability to perform safely and confidently on the job. 

We also tapped into international talent through the PALM (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility) scheme, being the first regional not-for-profit aged care provider to do so. PALM participants from Fiji were prescreened to our pre-employment training program, with 25-30 per cent of Care Ready participants drawn from this cohort.

Our approach, which won us the Best Organisational Development and Change Strategy at the AHRI Awards in December last year, is helping to reduce early attrition, as well as contributing to a healthier sector. Here’s how we developed it.

Developing Care Ready 

Wilson Loyo

Because we were designing for the long term, not just temporarily plugging skills shortages, a collaborative approach was essential – particularly as we operate in a heavily regulated sector, with recent reforms impacting how we deliver our services, such as ensuring compliance with strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards and transitioning to an updated home care program.

From the development to implementation of the Care Ready program and engagement in the PALM scheme, we actively consulted and empowered our existing workforce to contribute. This consultative mindset goes all the way back to our roots as a community-owned organisation.

We conducted workshops and focus groups with frontline care staff, team leaders, and managers to better understand workforce challenges and training needs. From this, we learnt:

• Transition pathways needed to be clear from the outset to support career progression and retention.
• Linking learning to the PALM Scheme ensures staff receive recognition for skills gained, reinforcing achievement and professional growth.
• Tailored e-learning modules, integrated into the Care Ready Program, built confidence, capability and job satisfaction across all levels.
• Having flexibility around scheduling and workload management enhances staff wellbeing and reduces turnover.
• Ongoing professional development must be accessible to all to sustain a skilled workforce.

This approach ensures learning is structured, recognised and directly tied to improved care delivery. We set up regular surveys and forums to encourage ongoing feedback throughout implementation.

Our Board and executive leadership team also played a central role. As both of these initiatives intersect with complex regulatory requirements, we ensured visibility and accountability through consistent touchpoints and reporting to the board. 

Senior leaders contributed with establishing the operational frameworks to support PALM participants, not only helping to mitigate legal risk, but also aligning with our organisational strategy of delivering high-quality, person-centred care. 

Enhance your ability to support individuals and teams and drive organisational success through times of change with this course from AHRI.

Making progression clear

Since its introduction in 2021, Care Ready has been further shaped by new Aged Care Act reforms that came into effect late last year. 

Recognising the need to improve training and education standards, and to prioritise consumer rights, Care Ready lays the groundwork for participants to competently and confidently step into an aged care career.

To do this, we structured the program to ladder directly up to NVC Group’s Care Capability Model. This framework functions as a North Star for all employees, mapping the capabilities required at the individual, team and organisational level to deliver person-centred, compliant and outcomes-focused care. Many of these skills are drawn from nationally recognised units of competency. 

Delivered through our RTO, NV College, the Care Ready Program equips participants with five days of hands-on, on-the-job training and one day of theory and assessment, covering essential clinical skills such as infection control, safe manual handling and safe work practices. 

Care Ready has been particularly transformative for the PALM cohort group, many of whom had never had their skills formally recognised. Because the program is aligned with nationally accredited aged and disability care qualifications, these participants gain official qualifications, opening doors to new career opportunities while building confidence and professional capability.

With integrated e-learning modules, skills are recognised, measurable, and directly linked to workplace outcomes.

Risk management is layered into every phase of the program, with additional emphasis placed on emergency responses and resident rights. 

Upon completion, we support participants to pursue further qualifications and traineeships with local employers if they wish to transition into frontline care roles in aged and community care. 

By tying the program to accreditation pathways, we’re not just providing a generic training course. Care Ready strengthens our internal pipeline, one cohort at a time. 

“Recognising the need to improve training and education standards, and to prioritise consumer rights, Care Ready lays the groundwork for participants to competently and confidently step into an aged care career.”

Stronger skills, stronger care

Our involvement with the PALM scheme and development of Care Ready was the first of its kind, shifting how we’ve traditionally approached recruitment at NVC Group. 

For HR practitioners looking to implement a similar workforce planning program, here are a few takeaways I’d leave you with:

1. Design workforce strategies around capability, not vacancies: This reframes recruitment from short-term fixes, to laying the groundwork for a future-ready organisation.
2. Respond to cultural challenges with structure, not assumptions: After realising cultural support and pastoral needs were broader than expected, particularly for PALM workers, we formalised community cultural networks and pastoral care arrangements into the program structure.
3. Listen to your people: Continual wellbeing check-ins with participants let us know what was working (and what wasn’t).
4. Measure throughout: Consistently monitoring KPIs helped to uphold accountability, and are included in our reports to the board. For us, these were vacancy rates, retention, training completion and compliance with care standards rates.
5. Build managerial competencies: We coached managers on managing diverse teams, and how to navigate conversations around wellbeing and psychosocial risks. Workforce sustainability depends as much on leadership capability as it does on recruitment volume.

It’s been great to see that the program we’ve developed has generated strong workforce and operational results so far. For example:

• We’ve reduced the vacancy rate from 36 per cent to just nine per cent. This had a ripple down effect of reducing overtime hours by 20 per cent and decreasing reliance on external agency hiring. 
• Early departure rates among international workers are down by 10 per cent.
• 90 per cent of Care Ready participants report feeling supported in their roles due to the Care Ready program’s enhanced focus on mental and cultural wellbeing.
• Internal quality audits showed a 60 per cent increase in compliance with care standards, and resident satisfaction surveys indicated a 45 per cent rise in overall care experience ratings. A skilled, stable workforce translates directly into improved service delivery.

Winning the AHRI award for our work is testament to the hard work and commitment of my colleagues.

Our sector has undergone so much change over the past few years, as many of my HR colleagues in other industries can relate to, but if you stay focused on the organisational challenges and possess the flexibility to evolve, you’ll be able to work towards meaningful progress.

This article was originally published in the Feb/March 2026 edition of HRM Magazine.

Wilson Loyo is a People Support Manager at NVC Group with strong expertise across HR, ER/IR and organisational development and change. He holds a Bachelor of Business (HR) and an MBA from SCU, and was a Finalist for the 2025 AHRI HR Practitioner of the Year Award.