The aged care sector has spent years rebuilding trust through stronger governance, tighter regulation and more rigorous compliance. No one would argue the reforms weren’t necessary.
As compliance practices are embedded into business as usual, what’s becoming clear is that compliance alone does not create exceptional care.
This was the premise of leadership specialist Naomi Fox’s recent article on the sector’s capability gap. When Hello Leaders shared the article with leaders across residential aged care, retirement living and workforce development, a multi-faceted discussion resulted, befitting the nature of the sector. However, rather than countering the premise, every contributor reached a similar conclusion:
Compliance is the foundation. But it’s not the finish line; if anything, it’s the starting line.’
Compliance is the take off point for rights-based aged care
“We’re not suggesting organisations move beyond compliance,” Fox said.
“We need to ask: how do you include and transcend it? Compliance is so important… but it’s actually not enough because the lived experience [from it] just isn’t good enough. People are making judgments every day about the quality of care they give.”
Fox reiterates that compliance ensures safety, consistency and accountability. Leadership determines whether older people experience dignity, autonomy and genuinely person-centred care.
Person-centred care needs a foundation of systems
Michael Carman believes those two ideas are inseparable.
Drawing on analysis of more than 2,400 residential aged care services, he found that strong performance against clinical measures such as care minutes, unplanned weight loss and antipsychotic use is consistently associated with better resident experience.
In other words, person-centred care cannot exist without strong systems.
But his analysis also suggests those compliance measures explain only part of what residents actually experience. The remaining difference is likely found in factors that are much harder to quantify, and that many organisations struggle to measure: culture, relationships, leadership and empathy.
Integrating technology in aged care will help us be human
That same theme emerged from Holmesglen’s Home and Community Care Centre of Excellence.
Strategic Lead Fleur Goulding argues the future workforce will increasingly require practical, digital and deeply human capabilities as care becomes more personalised, home-based and technology enabled. Technical competence remains essential, but communication, critical thinking, adaptability and judgement will be equally important.
How does care become more meaningful?
Retirement living provides another meaningful perspective for those in the prologue of needing engaged or intensive care.
For Levande’s Head of Resident Wellbeing and Customer Experience, Gabbie Budai, the next capability gap isn’t delivering person-centred care; it’s person-centred wellbeing.
She describes leaders who look beyond processes to understand what helps people thrive through connection, purpose, belonging and independence. One resident who withdrew following the loss of her spouse didn’t need another activity on the calendar. She needed help rediscovering identity and purpose. No compliance framework can prescribe that. Judgement from the people around her, and leadership, did.
Fox believes this is the direction leadership in the sector now needs to take.
“It’s not that compliance and judgement are opposites,” she says. “They’re completely symbiotic.”
The hardest part, she says, is helping leaders make thoughtful decisions when there is no perfect answer. Every day they balance dignity with risk, choice with safety, resident wishes with family expectations and consistency with individual needs. Those decisions happen long after policies have been written and audits completed.
What should organisations do next?
Fox believes boards may need to begin asking different questions. Yes, compliance is still one of the big questions; but she says it’s not enough.
She suggests leaders become more curious about the conditions under which decisions are being made. Are workloads creating decision fatigue? Are leaders rewarded only for operational performance, or also for learning, reflection and resident experience? Is the lived experience of residents visible in governance conversations?
The capability conversation Fox started is heading into an unknown, uncharted, as-yet unmeasured future but the people involved are all offering real and tangible solutions.
The sector has invested enormous effort in building safer systems.
And the next investment may need to be helping leaders build the judgement, confidence and capacity to turn those systems into something more. A reality that every older Australian deserves; not simply safe care, but a life lived with dignity, purpose and genuine human connection.
