Warren Senn recently sat down with Helen Christo, the Executive GM of People and Culture with Fronditha Care and asked her a few questions about the challenges that Aged Care faced in one of the most challenging sectors.
Can you share a little about your role at Fronditha Care and what drew you to working in People & Culture within the aged care sector?
I’ve worked in a variety of sectors, and the opportunity presented itself to work in Aged Care, and I was at the stage of my career when I felt a need to connect to ‘purpose’ in terms of my community. I believe that no matter what sector you work in, there needs to be a strong connection to purpose to ultimately perform at your best. Additionally, for me, there was also the connection to my Greek heritage, and the opportunity to work within an organisation which allows me to connect with Greek elders and staff.
The other factor for me was that Fronditha Care has a great reputation in the sector, and also among the Greek community. Whenever anyone in the Greek Community thinks about Aged Care, Fronditha Care is frequently mentioned, especially in Melbourne. So this was a good opportunity for me to apply my experience and skills within a new sector, leverage obviously the skills, and the experience I have from other sectors and apply them, within an Aged Care context.
Finally, my mother reached the stage when she needed to access more support at home, so I had reasonable understanding of the home care package program (now called Support at Home) which provided me some insights in aged care services and government systems.
What does a typical day look like for you in this role?
A ‘typical day’ can be different from one day to the next so flexibility is important as well as being able to pivot as required, whilst also focusing on key deliverables. My role covers talent acquisition, business partnering, which includes IR, ER, return to work, health and safety, learning and development, and org development.
At a practical level, we generally start most days with a 30-minute executive team WIP. It’s a good opportunity to know what my colleagues’ focus is for the day and any key events or movements. Additionally, we have many projects in progress, so there could be a weekly project meeting that I need to attend, or 1:1’s with my management team once a week. I also have a weekly 1:1 with my CEO.
At the same time, we will be ensuring progress on agreed plans which are part of the people strategy or a change project linked to one of our strategic goals, and also ensure we meet our SLA’s and aligning our team with the overall strategy and company direction.
From your perspective, what are the biggest workforce challenges currently facing aged care?
In aged care it is all about our people providing care and services, that is our main purpose for being. So, a dedicated workforce providing high quality care and services is key. Attracting candidates who are who are skilled, qualified, and experienced, is an ongoing challenge for Fronditha Care and all providers in our sector.
At the same time, the sector is attracting more workers because of recent wage increases for direct care workers and this has helped change the perception of a job in aged care to a career in aged care, with ongoing training and training opportunities for progression.
However, attraction and retention remain challenging especially in regional locations such as Newcastle for example, where it can be difficult because Newcastle is not that large a regional centre, in fact, I think it has about 100,000 fewer people than Geelong.
In addition, we are always looking for Greek speaking workers in all areas of our business, but particularly, in resident and client facing roles, because many of our residents and clients are Greek. However, even though that is a focus, many of our staff, have Greek English language skills and they communicate quite well, as they learned key Greek words and phrases. Our point of difference is that we provide care to elders within the Greek community, so the expectation is that we provide a culturally and linguistically diverse workforce to meet these needs.
Additionally, with higher incidence of resident cognitive decline in the elderly, especially if this extends to dementia, then they often feel more comfortable communicating in their native language. This makes it more critical to maintain a linguistically diverse workforce.
Moreover, some of the other challenges I see for the sector relate to the government reforms and the breadth of change these present. On one level, this is just part of the constant change bubble that we all now live in, however the timing of all these changes has been challenging. The reforms include the new Aged Care Act and the strengthened aged care standards which is the driver of a lot of the change, but it was also the introduction of ‘Support at Home’, which is a change from the previous Home Care Package program. That was significant because they both came into effect at the same time and being prepared and ensuring we were ready to comply with these requirements was challenging for everyone in the organisation.
At a broader level, compliance applies to everything we do across the workforce. We need to demonstrate that we have processes, systems and frameworks in place even as we continue to embed them. So, the focus is on ongoing staff training and development, regarding these changes and what it means for them and the organisation.
How do you approach leadership development in a sector where managers are often promoted from clinical or frontline roles?
Yes, we have had many wonderful examples of staff promoted to management roles over recent years. During and after COVID, much of the training moved to online, and an emphasis on compliance training. Unfortunately, to some degree, structured leadership development was managed on an individual basis, however part of our P&C strategy is building our leadership capability through structured leadership training, linked to our competency framework. This will support Leaders at each level to complete a development programme which aligns to the competency levels of their role. Our competency framework is mapped to every role in the organisation, which will guide the content for our programs. This will be delivered through our new program Moments of Care, which ensures that all positions, including leadership, are also aligned to our service philosophy and service standards. This enables not only specific individual development, but also succession planning, effective performance conversations and continuous improvement.
We’ve also been focusing on coaching, mentoring and development, through executive one on one coaching and master classes for managers and people leaders across residential and community services. Some of the content includes understanding enterprise agreements, managing staffing issues such as absenteeism, and effective communication and resolution skills. This is important so that issues or concerns do not escalate and end up requiring a more formal resolution process. At the end of the day, we take a holistic approach to development, so that anything we do in this space maps to our ‘OneFronditha’ ethos, our service philosophy through Moments of Care and our four strategic pillars.
Staff in aged care often deal with emotional and physically demanding work—what initiatives have you found most effective in supporting wellbeing and resilience?
Yes, so our work can be quite demanding and can pose health and safety risks for staff when caring for residents and clients with cognitive decline, which can sometimes spill over into incidents of aggression. This is not intentional, so we support and educate our staff in a variety of ways to assist them in their work. For example, through the Fronditha Care Foundation, we’ve developed several initiatives to support our staff and our residents and clients. One of the staff initiatives is the “Ask Annie” app developed by Dementia Australia that we have translated into Greek, which is self-paced, micro learning, to support our Greek speaking carers. It provides real life experiences to strengthen their skills. We’ve also been working with Dementia Australia to deliver other face to face training with our staff across residential and community services, on how to understand changing behaviours and techniques to manage these better.
Identifying and managing the psychosocial risks is pivotal to ensure we identify and reduce hazards that may impact staff. We obviously provide EAP and arrange onsite support for any occasions when staff need immediate specialised support and regular debriefing sessions with managers, people & culture teams. Our part timers are our largest cohort of workers, which recognises the need for our workers require for flexibility – they choose the shifts or hours that are available to meet our resident and client needs and their personal needs, which also drives engagement and retention.
In addition to this, we also have monthly ‘lunch and learn seminars’, through our EAP provider TELUS Health, which staff can register, log onto during lunch or watch later if busy. They have annual calendar of topics tailed each month for key topics and also have a many resources and tools available on their app to support staff health and wellbeing. We also organise our own health and wellbeing events, such as one we ran in late November 2025, menopause and women’s health. The session was live streamed to all staff and recorded for those who could not attend. We remind our staff every year on R U OK Day, that “every day is an R U OK day” so we remind everyone about looking out for each other and looking out for themselves and making sure that if they see anything that’s different around their work, their colleagues, to say something to them and reach out to them and make sure that they’re okay. Additionally, our EAP programme is extended to family as well, so family members can use it if they need to. We also have Fitness Passport program which allows staff and their families to access discounted gyms or health centres across Australia.
Looking ahead, what skills and capabilities will People & Culture leaders in aged care need to develop most?
Yes, there are, the key ones would be workplace relations, business acumen, workforce planning and talent acquisition, leadership and capability development, employee wellbeing and retention. Workforce planning and talent acquisition is key to ensure that we recruit the right number of employees with the right skills and experience, are trained and able to work and meet resident and client needs at all times. Working closely with your communications team to assist in developing a strong EVP is important for employee attraction.
In addition to that, ensuring that we link our purpose, values and strategic alignment in everything we do in P&C. Staff don’t just want to do a job – they want to know that their work matters and contributes to the organisation’s success. Moments of Care is the thread that connects our ethos, service philosophy, individual competencies and KPIs we can ourselves and each other accountable and ensure that we’re providing those service standards to everyone, whether it’s our customers, clients or our colleagues or our external stakeholders. So I would also say that as well as creating a sense of purpose with our work, we also need to ensure that the systems, processes and measures support our staff’s capacity to make the purpose real and meaningful in the work they do.
What advice would you give to someone considering a career in People & Culture in this sector?
Well, a connection to the purpose and values of the organisation and sector – aged care and a passion for people and culture work. Additionally, you’ve also got to understand the workforce mix. So, having previous frontline workforce experience with a geographically dispersed workforce, is then it may be challenging.
At a bigger picture level, it’s about achieving objectives, through your people. Going back to the talent attraction, engagement and retention matters because the sector is reliant on a workforce that are current visa holders or casuals, so effectively managing a casual pool that may be working with other providers or agencies is key. Identifying the levers that we can pull that help decide to give us their time goes back to our EVP. Understanding those challenges within the sector and being creative in the ways to address them is going to be key to being successful in the People and Culture space in Aged Care. Just finally, some of the other challenges that I see are technology driven, like AI, and the huge range of technologies that leverage from AI (e.g. Apps). Understanding AI, will assist us in being more efficient and provide better care. So, looking at those emerging technologies and being comfortable with exploring them, I think is the key to helping our people ‘work smarter not harder’ be more efficient, have more time to provide quality care, and ultimately, maximise their job satisfaction and engagement for the longer term are exciting prospects.
