As populations age and demand for care services intensifies, ensuring a stable, fairly compensated aged care workforce has become a pressing policy challenge. This paper draws on findings from Activating Employers, a two-year UKRI-funded comparative study examining how governments in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States use policy levers in the form of procurement and commissioning to shape employer behaviour and improve job quality in social care. Based on over 100 semi-structured interviews with policymakers, employers, unions, and training providers across six localities in three countries, the study finds that aged and home care workforces remain structurally undervalued across all three countries. Low pay, insecure contracts, fragmented commissioning, and weak enforcement continue to drive high turnover and recruitment shortfalls. In Australia, the Aged Care Work Value Case represents a significant step forward and commitment by Commonwealth government for direct care workers. However, compliance relies heavily on provider self-reporting, and enforcement remains inconsistent. The paper argues that commissioning reform, not recruitment drives alone, is essential to workforce stabilisation for this critical industry. When care is purchased by time-based tasks rather than by other measures of value or outcome, job insecurity becomes structurally embedded. Drawing on comparative lessons, the paper identifies practical levers available to Commonwealth and state governments, including enforceable fair work metrics within aged care contracts, ringfenced workforce funding, and integrating employment support with care commissioning pipelines, to move from rhetoric toward sustainable workforce reform.