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The pressure placed on residential aged care workers during the Covid-19 pandemic is difficult to overstate.
Staff were caring for people at heightened risk while services managed outbreaks, workforce shortages, changing public health requirements and intense public scrutiny.
Outbreaks attracted sustained media attention and criticism that placed additional pressure on staff already working in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
New analysis of staff survey data shows just how sharply those conditions affected employees’ willingness to recommend their workplace, and how strongly sentiment has recovered since.
The analysis uses the employee Net Promoter Score, or eNPS. Staff are asked how likely they are to recommend their workplace to others on a scale from zero to 10. Responses of nine or 10 are classified as promoters, while scores from zero to six are classified as detractors. The eNPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.
Across 36,745 responses collected through MOA Benchmarking’s Staff Feedback Survey between 2020 and 2026, the sector-wide eNPS fell from 29 in early 2020 to -8 in early 2022. A negative score means detractors outnumbered promoters.
By early 2024, the sector-wide score had rebounded to 28. It rose to 34 in 2025 and remained high at 31 in 2026. Participation also increased over time, reaching 8,488 responses in 2026 from services representing about 17 per cent of Australian aged care homes.
The effect was broader than lockdowns
One possible explanation is the length and severity of lockdowns. Victoria experienced prolonged restrictions, while Western Australia spent considerably less time under strict lockdown conditions.
However, the eNPS pattern in the two states was remarkably similar. Both recorded steep declines in 2022, remained negative in 2023 and recovered strongly in 2024.
This comparison does not establish what caused the decline. The number and mix of participating services also differed between states, and many pandemic pressures were national rather than confined to jurisdictions with longer community lockdowns. Even so, the similarity suggests lockdown duration alone is unlikely to explain the fall in workplace sentiment.
The result is more consistent with a combination of pressures affecting residential aged care across the country: staffing disruption, infection risk, rapidly changing requirements, increased care complexity and the emotional strain of trying to prevent and manage outbreaks.
Recovery should not be mistaken for immunity
The return to positive sentiment is encouraging. It shows that the very low scores recorded in 2022 and 2023 were not a permanent feature of the residential aged care workforce.
It would be premature, however, to conclude that the underlying risks have disappeared. The data describe sentiment; they do not identify what drove the recovery, whether every part of the workforce experienced it equally, or how services would respond to another prolonged system shock.
Pandemic preparedness often focuses on infection control, equipment, staffing contingencies and operational continuity. These are essential, but workforce resilience also depends on whether staff feel informed, supported and able to sustain the demands placed on them.
The next question is whether some organisations were more resilient than others during this period. If meaningful differences existed, examining the role of leadership, communication, workforce stability, staff support and organisational culture may offer useful lessons for future system shocks.
This analysis is based on de-identified responses to the MOA Benchmarking Staff Feedback Survey
Filip Reierson is a data scientist at Evaran
Find more opinion articles here – and if you have an opinion to share on something topical in aged care, get in touch at editorial@australianageingagenda.com.au
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