How to Use Open Shifts to Solve Chronic Understaffing in Aged Care
Key Takeaways
Open shifts give aged care managers a proactive way to fill roster gaps before they become compliance risks, reducing reliance on expensive agency staff.
Setting up open shifts with qualification filters and approval workflows helps you maintain care minute ratios while giving staff more control over their hours.
Pairing open shifts with demand forecasting turns reactive rostering into a predictable, cost-controlled staffing model.
Deputy's Open Shifts with Approval feature lets you post unfilled shifts to qualified, available staff in seconds and approve the right person for each role.
In this article:
It's 6:30 a.m. and two staff members have just called in sick. Your morning roster has gaps, your care minute compliance is at risk, and you're about to spend the next hour calling through a list of phone numbers hoping someone picks up. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) projects that Australia's aged care sector faces a workforce shortfall of 110,000 workers by 2030.
The gap between the staff you need and the staff you have isn't closing any time soon. But open shifts offer a smarter, faster way to fill those roster gaps without defaulting to costly agency bookings. In this article, you'll learn what open shifts are, how to set them up in your aged care facility, and how to use them to cut agency costs while keeping your residents and your team better supported.
Why aged care rostering is harder than any other industry
You already know that rostering in aged care isn't the same as rostering in retail or hospitality. The stakes are higher, the rules are stricter, and the margin for error is razor thin.
Aged care facilities run 24/7 across multiple wings, floors, or sites, each with different resident acuity levels. Under the strengthened Aged Care Act, residential aged care rostering must account for 200 care minutes per resident per day, including 40 registered nurse (RN) minutes, under current requirements. That means you can't just fill a gap with any available body. You need the right qualification in the right place at the right time.
And that's where it gets complicated. Your workforce is a mix of RNs, enrolled nurses (ENs), and personal care assistants (PCAs), each with different scopes of practice. Not every team member can cover every role. When someone calls in sick, you're not just looking for a replacement. You're looking for someone with the right credentials, the right availability, and ideally some familiarity with the residents they'll be caring for.
On top of this, aged care has one of Australia's highest staff turnover rates according to aged care workforce data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and a large portion of the workforce is casual or part-time. According to Deputy's Big Shift Report 2026, the primary constraint facing the sector is workforce capacity rather than demand. Australia continues to face serious challenges in supporting growing care needs with a large enough, skilled enough workforce.
When you can't fill shifts internally, you turn to agency staff. But agency carers can cost two to three times your regular hourly rate. They don't know your residents, your routines, or your team. And every agency booking chips away at your budget while reducing continuity of care. The cost of getting rostering wrong in aged care isn't just financial. It affects the quality of life for the people you're responsible for.
What open shifts are and how they work in aged care
If you've been managing roster gaps with phone calls, group texts, and a lot of crossed fingers, open shifts offer a fundamentally different approach. Here's how they work and why they matter in aged care specifically.
How open shifts differ from traditional rostering
In traditional rostering, you assign every shift to a specific person. When someone can't make it, you start the scramble: calling through your contact list, sending texts, hoping someone picks up and says yes.
With Open Shifts with Approval, you take a different approach. You post an unassigned shift, and qualified, available staff are notified automatically. They can express interest or claim the shift from their phone. You then review who's put their hand up and approve the best fit.
The difference is significant. Instead of chasing people down one by one, you're putting the opportunity in front of everyone who's eligible and letting them come to you. In aged care, this process needs to account for qualification filters (RN vs EN vs PCA), site or wing assignment, and the specific care needs of the shift.
Two types of open shifts for aged care
Not all open shifts serve the same purpose. In aged care, you'll typically use two types:
Reactive open shifts fill same-day or next-day gaps. These are the ones you post when a staff member calls in sick, has a family emergency, or simply can't make their shift. Speed matters here, so you need a short acceptance window and instant mobile notifications.
Planned open shifts build flexibility into your base roster from the start. These are shifts you create but don't assign in advance because demand isn't confirmed yet. For example, you might roster a planned open shift for an afternoon slot where resident acuity varies day to day. If the shift is needed, your team can claim it in advance. If it's not, you haven't locked anyone in.
Using both types together gives you a rostering model that's proactive rather than reactive. You're not just responding to problems. You're planning for them.
Five steps to set up open shifts in your aged care facility
Open shifts work best when you build them into your rostering process, not as an afterthought. Here's a practical, step-by-step approach to get them running in your facility.
Step 1: Build your base roster around minimum coverage
Start with the non-negotiable staffing levels you need to meet care minute requirements. Map out the minimum number of staff required per shift, broken down by role.
For example, your evening shift might require:
At least one RN on site at all times
Three PCAs across two wings
One EN for medication rounds
Once you've locked in your minimum coverage, identify the shifts where demand is predictable but not guaranteed. These are your candidates for planned open shifts. By building your base roster lean and layering open shifts on top, you create flexibility without overstaffing.
Step 2: Set qualification and availability filters
This step is where aged care open shifts differ from open shifts in other industries. You can't just broadcast a shift to your entire team. You need to make sure only the right people see it.
Tag every staff member's qualifications in your rostering system: RN, EN, PCA, first aid certification, medication endorsement, and any other relevant credentials
Set up qualification-based filters so that when you post an open shift, only staff with the right credentials are notified
Respect availability preferences so staff who aren't available or have already worked their maximum hours don't get pinged
With Deputy, you can filter open shifts by skill, qualification, and role requirement. This means an RN-only shift won't appear on a PCA's phone, and staff who've flagged themselves as unavailable won't receive unnecessary notifications.
Step 3: Post open shifts with enough lead time
Timing makes a real difference in how quickly your open shifts get filled.
For planned open shifts, post 7 to 14 days in advance. This gives your team time to review their personal commitments and plan around the extra hours. You'll get higher uptake when staff can fit the shift into their week rather than being asked at the last minute.
For reactive open shifts, post immediately with a short acceptance window. When someone calls in sick at 6:00 a.m., you need the shift filled by the time it starts. Set a tight response window (for example, two hours) and enable push notifications so eligible staff see it straight away.
Set a fair notification window. You don't want the shift to go to whoever happens to check their phone first. Give staff a reasonable window to respond, then review all expressions of interest before approving.
Step 4: Use approval workflows to pick the right person
Auto-assigning the first person who responds might seem efficient, but in aged care, it can create problems. Not every available person is the best fit for every shift.
When reviewing who's expressed interest in an open shift, consider:
Qualifications and scope of practice. Do they have the right credentials for this specific role?
Hours already worked. Are they approaching overtime? Will picking up this shift push them past safe working limits?
Continuity of care. Have they worked this wing or with these residents before? Familiarity matters for resident wellbeing
Fairness. Are you distributing extra shifts across your team, or are the same people always picking them up?
Deputy's Open Shifts with Approval feature lets you review all interested staff before confirming. You can check their qualifications, hours worked, and recent shift history, then approve the best fit, not just the fastest responder.
Step 5: Track, measure, and optimise
Setting up open shifts is the starting point. The real value comes when you use the data to improve your rostering over time.
Track these metrics regularly:
Open shift fill rate: what percentage of posted open shifts get filled by internal staff?
Average time to fill: how quickly are your open shifts being claimed?
Agency usage trends: is your agency spend decreasing as open shift adoption increases?
Shift patterns: which shifts are hardest to fill, and why?
Use this data to adjust your base roster and shift design. If Tuesday evening shifts consistently go unfilled, you might have an availability problem you can solve with better roster planning or adjusted start times. If RN shifts take longer to fill than PCA shifts, that might signal a broader recruitment need.
Deputy's built-in analytics and demand forecasting can surface these patterns so you're making data-informed decisions rather than guessing.
