When NDIS service providers assess their operations and its effectiveness, one area that always ends up in the crosshairs is how compliance obligations are managed. If you are lucky enough to have a risk committee or a board, the triggers to systemise your approach to compliance will be automatic as you will have experienced leaders who don’t need convincing. For other organisations, however, putting up a business case is the norm, so here are a few angles to take:
- De-registration. This means that your organisation is no longer able to bill the NDIS for work delivered to participants. Potentially, this can involve sanctions being placed on your organisation about when you can be re-registered. For most provider organisations, this means the end. No-one wants to be the next “Integrity Care”, but this must be used as a reminder of why organisations should take compliance (more) seriously.
- Brand damage. Getting things wrong with participants will get around. The communities that you deliver services to is well connected. Even though the issues that created a non-compliant event can be managed and improved, the trust of your customers may be dented more than what can be seen on the surface. In some studies, this could translate into losses of up to 18% of your revenue.
- Cost to fix. If fixing the issue can be outsourced to someone full time, then the calculation is straight forward as it’s just the salary of the individual for the time spent. On the other hand, if you must use the services of existing employees, this can get a little more complicated, but the premise is the same. The total time effort multiplied by the individual’s salary (plus ‘on costs’ typically sits at 25%)
- Efficiency gains. There are potentially 2 parts to this. Doing things more quickly and doing things the right way (reduction in rework). When processes are systemised, the cost (time) required to complete the task is reduced. This reduction multiplied by the potential instances will give you real return on investment. Working out the cost of rework may be a little harder as you will need to uncover how often it occurs.
- Employee engagement. In this age of low unemployment and a constant shortage of workers in the care industries, keeping your employees has been seen as a major headache. Some people believe salaries is the main driver, but HR professionals would argue that giving people the right tools to carry out their work would be another reason for people leaving. Systemisation of compliance could be seen as a way to reduce frustrations associated with ‘doing work’. Replacing an employee can cost you 30% of their salary or more too. In effect this means every additional year you keep an employee, you have saved 30% of their salary because you don’t need to replace them.
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