The short version: industry-wide aged care turnover sits between 31% and 38%, with some facilities running above 45%. If you don’t know your own number and how it compares, you can’t tell whether your retention problem is normal or a genuine warning sign.
Turnover in aged care is high enough, industry-wide, that a Tasmanian operator sitting at 30% might reasonably assume they are doing fine. In one sense they are: that figure sits below the reported national average of 31% to 38%. But average is not the same as acceptable, and a facility above 45% is dealing with a genuinely different problem than one sitting in the low thirties.
Why the benchmark matters more than the raw number
A single turnover figure tells you almost nothing on its own. What matters is where it sits relative to the sector, whether it is trending up or down, and which roles are driving it. A facility losing personal care workers at a high rate but retaining its RNs has a different problem, and a different fix, to one where RN turnover is the leak.
What tends to actually move the number
| Lever | Why it works | What it costs to get wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Roster predictability | Staff plan their lives around rosters; last-minute changes are consistently cited as a top reason for leaving | High agency reliance to cover gaps left by burned-out permanent staff |
| Genuine scope-of-practice use | Nurses who feel underused disengage faster, even at competitive pay | Loses your most experienced RNs first, since they have the most options |
| Manager accessibility | Staff who can raise an issue and see it acted on stay longer | Complaints escalate externally instead of being resolved internally |
| Clear progression pathways | EN to RN, and RN to leadership, pathways signal a long-term home | Ambitious staff leave for providers who offer a visible next step |
A turnover number without a benchmark is just a feeling dressed up as a statistic. Compare it, trend it, then act on it.
A Tasmanian complication worth naming
Tasmania’s smaller labour market cuts both ways on turnover. It is harder to replace a nurse who leaves, because the local candidate pool is thinner than in Sydney or Melbourne, which raises the real cost of every departure. But it also means reputation moves fast. A facility known among Tasmanian nurses as a good place to work will often out-recruit a larger, better-funded competitor simply because word has travelled. Retention and recruitment are, in a small state, closer to the same problem than operators sometimes treat them.
If retention has become a live issue at your facility, the roster is usually the first place to look, not the last. We covered this in more depth in our piece on the roster as a retention tool.
If you want to benchmark your facility’s turnover honestly and work out what’s driving it, Community Health Connect works with Tasmanian aged care operators on retention strategy as well as recruitment.
Get in touch