The elderly care sector enters the second half of 2026 facing a level of change and complexity not seen for many years. Welltower’s ongoing restructuring continues to drive significant movement across the market, arguably creating more candidate activity than the traditional post-bonus cycle that would normally define this period.
At the same time, increased levels of internal promotion are reshaping recruitment patterns, influencing both how vacancies emerge and how succession planning is approached. The home manager role remains under intense pressure, with growing demands placed on those leading services. Interestingly, we are also seeing talent from the hospitality sector increasingly view care as an attractive and rewarding next career step.
Running through all of these trends is a more demanding commercial environment. Employment law changes due to take effect in January 2027 are already prompting providers to rethink how quickly they assess and make decisions on new hires. Salary benchmarking activity is at an all-time high as organisations compete for a limited pool of experienced leaders. Meanwhile, expectations of home managers continue to expand, requiring greater capability across financial management, resident experience, workforce leadership, and regulatory compliance.
Taken together, these developments point to a sector that is becoming more professionalised, more competitive, and more strategically focused in its approach to talent. For providers, success will increasingly depend on planning ahead rather than reacting to vacancies as they arise.
Tom Berrisford, Divisional Director of Elderly Care at Compass Associates, draws on Q2 market intelligence to examine how Welltower’s investment, changing leadership demands, and incoming employment law are reshaping talent strategy across the sector.
How is Welltower’s investment affecting the candidate market?
“What we’re seeing in Q2 is a level of candidate movement that goes beyond the usual post-bonus activity. Welltower’s restructuring is the primary driver. Some candidates are actively seeking opportunities with Welltower-backed operators, drawn by the scale and investment behind the business. Others are moving in the opposite direction – either choosing to leave the sector entirely or prioritising stability with providers they know are not caught up in the consolidation.”
Redundancies have occurred, primarily at senior management level, and this is creating broader nervousness throughout the market. The Welltower effect is not just about the people directly affected by restructuring but about the secondary movement it generates. Businesses that are not part of the Welltower portfolio are responding defensively, thinking hard about how to hold onto and retain their best people.
Internal promotions are on the increase in elderly care
One of the clearest trends I am seeing this quarter is the shift in how home manager vacancies are being created. Increasingly, the vacancy is not the result of a manager leaving but of the result of a manager being promoted. Businesses are maturing and they are building structured development pathways. Deputy managers are being moved into home manager roles, and experienced home managers are being offered regional support, regional management, or quality roles to retain them.
This is broadly a positive development. The promoted deputy already knows the home, the residents, the families, and the local authority relationships. They understand the regulator. The induction required is narrower and more focused than bringing someone in from the outside, so there is real value in that continuity for the recipients of care.
However, the risk is significant when providers promote without developing a successor. When a home manager moves up and the deputy who was ready to step in has not been nurtured, the organisation is left with a gap that forces a hasty external hire. And hasty external hires where the vetting is rushed and the cultural fit is not properly assessed tend to result in early turnover, which creates exactly the instability the promotion was meant to avoid.
“The question I put to providers is not whether to promote internally, that is often the right call. The question is whether the layer below is being developed in parallel. Promoting from within only works sustainably if you are simultaneously investing in the people who will fill the vacancy you are creating.”
Salary benchmarking plays a direct role here too. When a deputy is promoted to home manager, they will often have a view of what the market pays for that role, and providers need to be ready to validate that figure. We are increasingly being asked by clients to confirm whether the salary an internal candidate is requesting sits within market range. Benchmarking is not just a tool for external hires; it is a core part of the internal promotion conversation too.
The home manager role is perhaps under more pressure than ever
The home manager role is, frankly, one of the most demanding in the care sector. CQC compliance, legal obligations, occupancy targets, budget management, staffing, safeguarding are all huge, and so the combination of regulatory and commercial pressure in a single role is formidable.
The homes that managers are being asked to lead are growing. Smaller homes of 20 to 30 beds are increasingly difficult to operate viably under the current regulatory and cost environment, and I expect to see continued consolidation toward larger facilities. That means managers are overseeing more complex, higher-value operations but often without the commercial training to match.
Many managers came into the sector through nursing or care pathways. They are exceptional clinicians and carers. But the expectation that they can also run what is, in effect, a multi-million pound business – managing P&L, understanding cost structures, driving occupancy commercially – is one that the sector has not always equipped them for. Providers who invest in commercial coaching and financial literacy development for their managers will see the return in both performance and retention. Those who do not will find the gap between expectation and capability becomes a persistent problem.
Employment law changes mean the ‘probation decision’ window is to be much shorter
The new probation period legislation, coming into force in January 2027, will have a material impact on elderly care recruitment and providers need to be thinking about the implications now – not in six months’ time.
Under the new framework, new hires gain significantly enhanced rights at the six-month mark and not 2 years, which means probation decisions need to happen 75% faster than previously. The practical consequence is that if a provider wants to end an employment relationship, the decision and action must happen before that threshold. Acting after it will carry a cost of approximately three months’ salary.
What concerns me is that many smaller care home operators do not have dedicated HR or legal functions, and they may not fully understand what this means for their hiring approach. Larger providers will adapt but smaller ones risk being caught out.
The compounding challenge is that the home manager role is one where meaningful impact often takes longer than six months to demonstrate. Turnaround work such as improving a CQC rating, rebuilding a team or stabilising occupancy typically requires 12 to 18 months of sustained effort. A framework that effectively creates pressure to make a termination decision at five months is not well aligned with the realities of what it takes to improve a care home. Providers need to be more rigorous in their hiring process upfront, more structured in their onboarding, and more proactive in their performance conversations during those first months so they are not forced into a difficult decision based on incomplete evidence or rash decisions.
“The message to providers is straightforward: the five-month mark is now the decision point, not the end of the probationary period. If you do not have enough evidence by then to be confident in the hire, the cost of waiting has just gone up significantly.”
Hospitality could give an emerging talent pool worth considering
One development I am watching with interest is an uptick in hospitality professionals looking to move into elderly care. The hospitality sector is under real pressure, with fewer new venues opening and younger generations are changing their consumption habits in ways that reduce demand for traditional hospitality experiences. Essentially, talented people who built careers in that sector are looking for somewhere to take their skills.
At the same time, the care homes that are performing best commercially are increasingly operating as premium environments: multiple restaurant-quality dining options, cinema rooms, wellness therapy centres, hair salons, entertainment programming. The overlap between what an excellent care home looks like today and what a well-run hotel looked like a decade ago is more significant than most providers realise.
Therefore, there is – or could be – a genuine case for bringing hospitality professionals into resident experience, customer service, and operational leadership roles in care. The skill set (attention to detail, service culture, occupancy and revenue management) translates more directly than many care operators assume. The homes that invest in these experiences and the people to deliver them will be better placed to attract residents and justify premium fees. Those that do not will find it increasingly difficult to compete.
So what advice are we giving to clients hiring in elderly care?
Be honest in job description, it will save you time and money
One issue I find myself discussing repeatedly with providers is the temptation to present a home in a more favourable light than reality when recruiting a new manager. I understand the instinct – Few operators want to begin a hiring process by focusing on the challenges. However, in my experience, misrepresenting the operational picture is one of the fastest routes to early turnover.
Whether it is downplaying CQC concerns, glossing over workforce instability, understating occupancy pressures, or failing to acknowledge underdeveloped systems and processes, candidates are almost always able to assess the true situation once they join. When there is a significant gap between what was presented during the recruitment process and the reality they encounter on day one, trust is eroded before the relationship has had a chance to develop.
The strongest managers are rarely deterred by a turnaround opportunity. In fact, many are attracted by the chance to make a measurable impact. What they do expect is honesty. Being transparent about the challenges a home faces allows candidates to make an informed decision and ensures that those who accept the role do so with realistic expectations. That alignment is often the difference between a manager who leaves within months and one who stays long enough to deliver meaningful change.
The manager who joins under false pretences and discovers the reality within their first few weeks feels deceived. They disengage, their performance suffers, and they leave. The provider is back to square one, having lost three to four months of notice period time and incurred the cost of a failed hire.
The more effective approach – and I have seen this work consistently – is to be direct about the challenges from the outset. Many of the strongest managers in this sector are motivated by turnaround work. They want a home with problems to solve, a team to develop, a CQC rating to improve. An honest brief that frames the role as a genuine challenge, backed by clear resources and support, will attract exactly those candidates. It also builds the kind of trust that tends to produce longer tenures.
Invest in commercial development, not just salary
Salary benchmarking matters, but it is not the only lever. The providers I see retaining their best managers over the long term are those that invest in their development: commercial coaching, financial literacy, leadership programmes. Managers who feel they are growing in capability and being invested in by their organisation are significantly less likely to leave than those whose only reason to stay is a higher-than-market salary.
Given the new demands being placed on home managers – commercial acumen, technology awareness, complex resident needs – providers that treat development as a retention strategy rather than a cost are making a sound long-term investment. Those that prioritise pay rises without addressing the underlying capability gap will find they are solving the symptom, not the problem.
Benchmark salaries and use the data for both external hires and internal promotions
Salary benchmarking is more active in the current market than at any point in the last year. Candidates know what the geographical market pays. Internal candidates being promoted into new roles know what the market pays. If a provider offers a figure that sits materially below the benchmark, they risk losing a strong candidate at the point of offer, whether that candidate is external or internal.
My recommendation is to treat benchmarking as a live resource rather than just as a periodic exercise. The market is moving, and data that was accurate six months ago may already be stale in specific geographies or role types. Providers who engage a recruitment partner with current market visibility are better placed to make competitive offers that close rather than lose the right hire.
Start the recruitment process earlier than feels necessary
Finally, I return to a point I make regularly because it remains one of the most common misconceptions in the sector: the recruitment timeline for senior care appointments is significantly longer than many providers anticipate.
For experienced home managers, regional leaders, and specialist operational roles, sourcing alone typically takes a minimum of two weeks. A robust interview process will often add a further three weeks, meaning five weeks can pass before an offer is even made. Once notice periods are factored in (often three to four months for established leaders) the full journey from initial brief to start date can easily extend to six months.
This reality has important implications for workforce planning. Whether an organisation is preparing for growth, managing succession, or responding to an unexpected departure, recruitment should be viewed as a strategic activity rather than a reactive one. As a rule, I advise providers to begin a search at least three months before a role needs to be filled, and considerably earlier for particularly complex or business-critical appointments.
The pressure to fill a vacancy quickly can be understandable, but compromising on the brief to meet an arbitrary deadline rarely delivers a positive long-term outcome. In a sector where leadership quality has a direct impact on occupancy, team stability, regulatory performance, and ultimately CQC outcomes, the cost of making the wrong appointment is often far greater than the cost of waiting for the right one.
Looking for recruitment support?
My team works closely with organisations across the elderly care sector to provide tailored advice on workforce planning, market intelligence, and talent acquisition. Whether you are navigating the current market uncertainty, planning leadership succession, or looking to understand your competitive position on compensation, I would welcome a conversation.
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