With annual staff turnover in Australian aged care exceeding 30%, providers are spending enormous sums replacing workers who leave within 12 months. The traditional approach of posting ads on generic job boards and hoping for the best simply isn't working. Recruitment in aged care needs to be smarter, faster, and more targeted.
The real cost of turnover goes far beyond recruitment fees. Every departing worker takes institutional knowledge with them, disrupts continuity of care for residents, and places extra pressure on the team left behind. Yet most providers focus exclusively on filling vacancies rather than preventing them in the first place.
The best recruitment tools for aged care in 2026 tackle the problem from both ends: helping you find the right people faster, and keeping your existing team engaged before they start looking elsewhere. This guide covers every major solution available to Australian aged care providers.
Ethyx applies the Transtheoretical Model of Change to the aged care workforce, a proven behavioural science framework that maps where each employee sits on their commitment journey, from first considering leaving through to fully re-engaged.
Key features include:
The science behind Ethyx is compelling. Rather than relying on lagging indicators like exit interviews or annual engagement surveys, it provides leading indicators of disengagement. A manager who can see that three team members have shifted from "committed" to "contemplating" can intervene with targeted support before those workers ever update their resumes.
In a sector where replacing a single worker costs between $10,000 and $25,000, preventing even a handful of resignations per year delivers significant return on investment.
Best for: Providers wanting to reduce turnover through science-based early intervention
Website: ethyx.com.au
hopstep is a recruitment marketplace built exclusively for healthcare and aged care providers. Every candidate on the platform is actively looking for work in your sector, eliminating the noise of generic job boards where your ad competes with thousands of unrelated roles.
Key features include:
The economics of hopstep make immediate sense for any provider regularly hiring. A single job ad on a major job board can cost hundreds of dollars with no guarantee of quality applicants. hopstep's flat-rate model means the more you hire, the more you save, and because candidates are pre-qualified as healthcare workers, your time isn't wasted sifting through irrelevant applications.
Best for: Providers wanting affordable, unlimited recruitment from a healthcare-specific talent pool
Website: hopstep.com
Sidekicker is reinventing how aged care providers hire temporary and casual staff. Backed by $25 million in investment from SEEK, the platform connects providers with a qualified pool of nurses, carers, and hospitality workers for both residential and home care shifts.
Key features include:
With over 250 aged care businesses using the platform and more than a million shifts completed, Sidekicker has proven the model works at scale. It's particularly valuable for covering unexpected absences, managing peak periods, and trialling workers before offering permanent roles.
Best for: Providers needing reliable temporary staff at lower cost than traditional agencies
Website: sidekicker.com
Mable is Australia's largest online platform connecting people who need aged care or disability support with local independent support workers. With over 16,000 workers on the platform, it offers providers and consumers direct access to a diverse, qualified workforce.
Key features include:
Mable works particularly well for home care providers and consumers managing their own Support at Home packages. The independent contractor model gives both parties flexibility, though providers should note they don't handle employment obligations.
Best for: Home care providers and consumers wanting direct access to independent support workers
Website: mable.com.au
Hireup takes a different approach to Mable by directly employing its workers, handling tax, superannuation, and insurance. Originally focused on disability support, Hireup has expanded into aged care with sector-specific training through its Hireup Academy.
Key features include:
Best for: Providers wanting fully employed, trained workers without managing employment compliance
Website: hireup.com.au
ELMO Software serves over 2,000 ANZ organisations and offers a complete HR platform covering recruitment, onboarding, learning, performance management, and payroll. Their aged care solution makes onboarding effortless and compliant by digitising forms, checks, and training.
Key features include:
ELMO is particularly strong for larger providers who want a single platform covering the entire employee lifecycle, from first application through to ongoing development and performance management.
Best for: Mid-to-large providers wanting one platform for recruitment, onboarding, learning, and HR
Website: elmosoftware.com.au
Humanforce is a workforce management platform built for shift-based industries. In aged care, it helps providers meet direct care minute targets through precise planning while addressing persistent vacancy rates through smarter internal shift coverage and workforce intelligence.
Key features include:
Best for: Providers wanting workforce optimisation that reduces reliance on external recruitment
Website: humanforce.com
ReadyTech Workforce is a next-generation platform offering end-to-end workforce solutions specifically for Australian aged care. It covers payroll, time and attendance, rostering, recruitment, talent management, and rewards while adhering to stringent regulatory requirements.
Key features include:
Best for: Providers wanting a unified workforce platform built specifically for Australian aged care
Website: readytech.io
FlowLogic provides workforce analytics specifically for aged care, turning raw HR and rostering data into actionable insights about recruitment needs, retention patterns, and workforce planning.
Key features include:
Best for: Providers wanting data-driven workforce decisions and retention analytics
Website: flowlogic.com.au
Sanctuary Recruitment is one of Australia's leading specialist aged care recruitment agencies, with over 10 years of experience building trusted partnerships connecting experienced aged care professionals with providers nationwide.
Key features include:
While technology platforms are transforming recruitment, specialist agencies like Sanctuary still play an important role for hard-to-fill senior roles, regional positions, and providers who need hands-on recruitment support.
Best for: Providers needing specialist recruitment expertise for permanent or senior roles
Website: sanctuaryrecruitment.com
The most cost-effective recruitment strategy is keeping the staff you already have. Tools like Ethyx that predict and prevent turnover deliver far greater ROI than any job board. If you're spending heavily on recruitment but not investing in retention intelligence, you're filling a bucket with a hole in it.
If you're hiring regularly across multiple sites, platforms with flat-rate pricing like hopstep make commercial sense. If you're filling one or two critical roles per year, a specialist agency may deliver better outcomes despite the higher per-placement cost.
Sidekicker and Mable excel at filling shifts and short-term needs. For permanent recruitment, hopstep and ELMO offer better long-term value. Many providers use a combination: a platform like hopstep for ongoing permanent recruitment, Sidekicker for temporary coverage, and Ethyx to reduce the need for either.
Consider your team's capacity to adopt new tools. Comprehensive platforms like ELMO and ReadyTech require more implementation effort but deliver broader value. Simpler tools like hopstep and Sidekicker can be operational within days.
Understanding the full cost of staff turnover helps justify investment in better recruitment and retention tools:
Research consistently shows the cost of replacing a single aged care worker sits between $10,000 and $25,000 when all factors are included. For a 100-bed facility with 30% annual turnover, that represents hundreds of thousands in avoidable costs each year.
The strongest providers in 2026 don't rely on a single recruitment tool. They build a layered strategy:
This layered approach addresses the workforce crisis from multiple angles, reducing costs, improving care continuity, and building a more stable, engaged workforce over time.
The aged care workforce crisis won't be solved by posting more job ads. It requires a fundamental shift in how providers think about recruitment and retention. The smartest organisations are investing in tools that prevent turnover (Ethyx), access sector-specific talent pools (hopstep), and optimise the workforce they already have.
The GenTech network brings together companies tackling different parts of this challenge. Ethyx uses behavioural science to predict and prevent staff turnover before it happens. hopstep gives providers unlimited access to healthcare-specific candidates at a fraction of traditional recruitment costs. Together with platforms like Sidekicker, Mable, and ELMO, aged care providers have more tools than ever to build and maintain the workforce their residents deserve.