Aged care has a leadership problem it talks about constantly: workforce shortages, middle-management burnout and executive turnover.
At the same time, Australian employers are reporting skills shortages while continuing to place age-based limits on who they see as part of the available workforce.
Research published by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and Australian HR Institute (AHRI) in 2025 found 55 per cent of surveyed HR professionals reported hard-to-fill vacancies. Yet almost one in four now classified workers aged 51–55 as “older”, up from 10 per cent in 2023. Only 56 per cent said they were open to hiring workers aged 50–64 to a large extent.
The same research found older workers were rated highly for loyalty, reliability and their ability to cope with stress. Nearly 60 per cent of respondents said the departure of older workers had resulted in a loss of key skills, while only 13 per cent said their organisation consistently captured that knowledge.
The findings are not specific to aged care. But they have obvious implications for a sector already competing for experienced leadership.
When aged care executive recruitment becomes a filter
Aged care experience matters. Leaders need to understand regulation, funding, compliance and the realities of running an aged care organisation.
But leadership capability doesn’t begin and end with the industry someone has worked in.
A corporate executive moving into aged care will have a learning curve around its regulatory and funding environment. They may already know how to run a complex organisation, oversee budgets, lead teams through change, manage risk and report to a board.
Those skills transfer.
If extensive aged care experience becomes a hard requirement rather than one part of the assessment, candidates can be removed from consideration before those capabilities are properly assessed.
For a sector struggling to fill leadership roles, that is a narrow definition of experience. It could also be contributing to the aged care leadership skills gap by shrinking the pool before recruitment has properly begun.
The “too experienced” problem
Age can create another barrier.
A candidate in their late 50s can be labelled overqualified, too expensive or unlikely to adapt when applying for a leadership, governance or operations role. The language rarely mentions age. The assumptions can still be age-related.
The AHRC and Diversity Council Australia’s 2026 research, Age, Assumptions and Access at Work, found older workers were less likely than younger workers to have the opportunity to participate in career development activities or have access to mentors. Older women were particularly disadvantaged: just 41 per cent reported development opportunities, while 13 per cent had access to mentors.
Beverly Baker of the Older Women’s Network NSW, interviewed by Hello Leaders on ageism in the aged care workforce, describes some of the assumptions behind those findings.
“The most common assumption is that they are technically illiterate.”
“The next is that it is hard for them to take on new information or structures, that they are slower to adapt or adopt change and that they aren’t really a valuable part of a team,” Baker said.
These assumptions matter when organisations are looking at how to address ageism in recruitment and create more age-inclusive hiring practices.
A recruitment panel doesn’t have to say someone is “too old” for age to influence a shortlist.
A 58-year-old executive with decades of experience managing financial risk, organisational change and operational complexity still has those skills when they move into aged care.
Their industry experience is different. Their leadership capability isn’t.
What corporate talent in aged care could bring
The employer research points to another issue: when experienced workers leave, organisations can lose knowledge they struggle to replace.
Baker sees the same value in the experience older workers bring.
“They lose out on so much – not just the corporate history, the understanding of what has been tried and why it might have failed,” she said. She also points to the mentoring value older workers can bring to younger colleagues.
There’s a potential talent pool sitting outside the traditional aged care career path, too.
Some experienced corporate professionals may be considering a mid-career pivot into aged care, looking for work with greater purpose after years in commercial environments. They may bring leadership capability that has already been tested across other complex industries, while the sector-specific knowledge they lack can be developed through induction, professional education and experience.
That does not mean lowering the bar. It means being clearer about what the bar is.
Building age-inclusive hiring practices
For organisations reviewing their aged care executive recruitment processes, the job description is a useful place to start.
Separate the capabilities that genuinely need to be in place on day one from the knowledge that can be taught.
Then look closely at the language used to assess candidates. If someone is described as “overqualified”, “too expensive” or “not the right fit”, what evidence sits behind that judgement?
The 2025 AHRC and AHRI research found that one in five HR professionals believed their recruitment practices negatively affected older workers. That’s a recruitment issue worth taking seriously in any sector facing skills shortages.
For CEOs, HR directors and board chairs, the test is whether the recruitment process is identifying the leadership capability the organisation needs or filtering out experienced leaders before they get the chance to prove what they can do.
