Aged Care

The demand for aged care in Australia has been quickly increasing as Australia’s population grows older and accesses aged care services. Additional to the number of people requiring aged care is the increase in the acute nature of aged care needs. With strong demand for in home aged care as well.

Aged care providers are facing challenges to ensure they have the right workforce and manage their workforce appropriately to deliver quality care. New technologies are enabling greater sophistication in processes relating to workforce planning, optimisation and management.

To have an optimum workforce, there are some important areas to consider:

  • Customer value proposition: clearly articulated benefits for customers (e.g. trade-offs between availability, reliability, responsiveness, price).
  • Employee value proposition: clearly articulated benefits for employees (e.g. employee engagement, consistent/ flexible hours, training, etc).
  • Organisational design: determine right team sizes, escalations paths and reporting lines and skill sets required.
  • KPIs, policies and incentives: establish standardised KPI frameworks to drive accountability across the business.
  • Recruitment and training: hiring driven by forecasted demand and existing supply base (by location, level and availability).
  • Demand planning and forecasting: demand forecasting should link into recruitment (demand and supply balancing, by location, time and level).
  • Service and talent optimisation: Ensuring that labour is utilised effectively (avoiding time and skill underutilisation).
  • Rostering and service scheduling: standardise scheduling processes to reduce labour costs (avoid rework and double-handling).
  • Scheduling efficiency and route optimisation for Home Care services.
  • Data and systems: accurate, complete and timely master data to enable effective service chain decision making.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put additional pressure on Australia’s aged care system. The consequences of this can be seen through staff shortages, which can be managed through the points raised above. Supply shortages in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is also causing a challenge for the sector. With an opportunity for many aged care providers to improve their capability to manage PPE by: forecasting demand, improving PPE quantity and location visibility, PPE reporting for management and executive, designing and implementing efficient physical movement of PPE through facilities, and having efficient storage of PPE.

GRA can help with improvements to workforce operational efficiency and PPE management with the following service offerings:

  • Forecasting demand
  • Rostering and scheduling
  • Workforce management
  • System implementations and reviews
  • Route optimisation
  • KPI and policy development
  • PPE continuity and pandemic response planning
  • Organisational structure design and implementation
  • External broker performance management and reporting

Testimonials

We invited GRA to run a workshop to educate the broader business on S&OP, help us design a next level S&OP process and map out the requirements and next steps to implementation. We have made significant progress with S&OP since the workshop, the key aspect is that it has been accepted at all levels and there is commitment to the process which was the big hurdle.

– Lee Rawstron, Head of Operations ANZ, Sinochem Australia

Typical results

  • 20-40% inventory investment reduction
  • increased service levels ranging up to 99.9%
  • 10%-15% reduction in supply chain operating costs
  • 5%-20% spend management savings
  • the ability to fund business initiatives from operating cash flow (OCF) improvements
  • improved return on capital employed (ROCE)
  • a minimum 3:1 ROI (10:1 to 30:1 typical)