With the number of over-65s expected to hit one million in 2020, businesses also need to understand the data on that population demographic, including its income levels, and realise how they are shifting, says Moss.
She says it can be enormously appealing to do things that are sexy and exciting for young people "but the young people aren't the ones that have all the money".
"This is where businesses do suffer potentially by not having an older workforce because it can be too easy as a leader of a business to think everybody is like the people around me," says Moss.
She experienced this first hand as a 31-year-old manager at Carter Holt Harvey in the early 2000s. Moss says hardly anyone in senior management was over 40, which didn't reflect the customer base, and she says may have skewed project outcomes.
"My workforce is never going to reflect my customer base because my customer base has an average age of 83-and-a-half, but I think it is just knowing that not all people are like you and you really need to check in with those customers and potential customers all the time.
"I've been at Bupa seven years and it can become very easy to think, 'Yeah, yeah, I know what people want in aged care,' but you've got to keep yourself fresh, you've got to keep questioning yourself and you've got to get out there and talk to those customers and figure out what's really important and make sure you're delivering on those."
Moss says Bupa's own 4000-person workforce, working across 58 aged care homes, 27 retirement villages, seven brain injury rehabilitation sites and a medical alarms business, is diverse in age, gender and ethnic background.
At the top the board is made up of an equal split of men and women, with the New Zealand executive team mainly female.
"I think it's a deep belief that actually your leadership team should reflect your business and if you are not bringing talent through your business and if your top team doesn't reflect the staff working in your business then what are the barriers that are stopping them climbing up?" She suggests starting with the belief that the people working in your business are great, then begin asking why they can't get to the top - is it a mindset, education or lack of opportunity?
"Eighty-eight per cent of our workforce is female; only 12 per cent is male. If our top table is full of people that don't reflect our workforce then we're not living our values, we're not committing to our people."
Moss says boosting diversity at Bupa wasn't about quotas, but about identifying talent and the right person for a job.
Her own path to becoming managing director of the company last year was a promotion from managing Bupa's resthome business, a significant part of the New Zealand operation, for more than five years.
She was offered the top job without being put through an interview process.
"For me, that speaks volumes about the company and the ability to really understand the talent that they've got and make sure that talent has an opportunity to shine."
In saying that, Moss ensured she put herself in the best position to step up as boss, getting feedback on what she needed to work on and develop. It's also possibly a throwback to her days as a competitive swimmer, which saw her conquer Cook Strait and become the first Irish woman to swim the English Channel.
It taught her perseverance, resilience and commitment, and she also says those achievements make her more open to taking risks.
During her time at Bupa Moss is most proud of creating career paths for those at the lowest level.
Caregivers, who would normally remain on the same pay, albeit with annual increments, can now progress through five levels, based on training.
The company worked with unions to look at sites which didn't have high enrolment rates in education, identifying the barriers and helping to get those people through further training. The focus on education not only helps staff earn more, but improves their capability.
"Our customer satisfaction rate since 2007 has risen from a pretty good 77 per cent to 89 per cent of people who say they're either extremely satisfied or very satisfied and I see that that investment in the staff has really led that."
In fact, the programme has been widely copied by the rest of the industry, which Moss says is great.
