Health services start-up Five Good Friends offers a wide range of technology-enabled in-home services for elderly and less-well Australians, while providing a range of flexible and part-time employment for carers. Founded in 2016 and catering for an increasingly ageing and unwell Australian population, the start-up’s digital platforms provide instant information on in-home care visits and health developments to a close circle of friends and family-members. Healthcare workers are kept connected, ensuring collaboration and continuity of care.
Inspired to set up the company by the advancing scope of the digital world, Five Good Friends co-founders Simon Lockyer and Nathan Betteridge predicted that technology could be used to capture and share data to help the elderly and unwell remain in their homes for longer, and provide flexible, technology-assisted employment in a sector facing an acute workforce shortage.
Providing digital assistance for connected employment in an essentially hands-on sector, Five Good Friends is the gold winner of the Health Industries category in the Financial Review BOSS Best Places to Work Awards.
The company now has about 1400 vetted and verified independent contractors on the books, providing about 4500 elderly or unwell Australians with the help and care they need in their homes, Lockyer says.
The policy is to “match” carers with clients (also known as members), by ensuring a good personal fit, leading to continuity of the carer relationship for as long as possible, he adds. The company also employs about 290 staff in administration and to coordinate and oversee the care.
Years before the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was announced in 2018, it was widely understood that quality care for the elderly and disabled was a pressing problem in Australia and that boosting the scope of in-home care was increasingly important.
It was clear that nursing homes and aged-care facilities were not the best solution for everyone, and there was a demand for across-the-board, quality, in-home care and assistance to help people stay in their homes for as long as possible. This assistance might include lawnmowing and garden tidy-up services, cooking and house-cleaning, and skilled healthcare to help with showering and medications.
The co-founders drew on research into home care when the Five Good Friends start-up was in the works, Lockyer says, finding the No. 1 determinant of quality was consistency, with care provided by a small group of familiar faces and compatible personalities.
Relationships can then build, conversations can continue, and social interaction remains ongoing. As time goes by and the client (or member) requires more help, he says, Five Good Friends offers carers opportunities to upskill to provide the extra care needed.
“I’m proud of our approach to training and micro-credentialling and unlocking relevant trainings so people could remain matched to their members,” Lockyer says. “As their members’ needs changed and became more intense, we’re able to unlock other skills that they require to safely deliver the services and the care that they need.”
Sarah Crealy, head of people at Five Good Friends, says the company’s employee turnover is about 13 per cent annually (an “excellent” rate for the industry).
Mostly women, the carers include nursing students who want to work and acquire care experience while taking their degree, as well as retirees looking for part-time work as they ease out of the full-time workforce, and women in the “sandwich generation” who have to keep an eye on children and parents.
The company’s Flexible Futures program provides a range of options to women who want to leave the workforce to have children or look after family members, or to reduce effort as they get older, or move away from the city, Crealy says, adding the program enables carer employment for men and women in remote and regional areas where the cost of living is more manageable.
To stay up to date with changes in the sector, such as the new aged care quality standards introduced in 2025, Five Good Friends ran training programs and workshops to prepare care teams for the new requirements. Carers were supported with practical gestures such as Uber Eats vouchers, office catering and a leave day for recharging.
It also recently opened placements across the company, along with in-house employment opportunities, Crealy says, providing staff with an understanding of how Five Good Friends operates.
“At the end of the year,” she says, “14 per cent of our workforce had either been given a secondment, or been promoted to a new role or moved laterally into a different department.”
Enhance Physiotherapy and Hireup won the category’s silver and bronze awards.