What Participants Value
What Participants Value
Whenever there is a new participant that is in the intake stage, before you sign any paperwork and commit to caring for them, ask them "what do they value in a company?"
Many prioritise having carers arriving for work on time, people that are transparent, those that are non-judgemental, reliable etc.
I had a pad out for people to write on once when I went to a disability expo, asking "what do you value so that we can intergrate that in our practice". I had this open for anyone to write in, and compare their answers to others so it is more collaborative and informative.
Does this tell the managers something? This should indicate that managers should be proactive in instilling these values in their employees, and if they cannot do so, the client is not receiving the service they expect and deserve and that is why the client is saying this from past experience. They have experienced frustration in the past of not being able to relay on the services they were offered.
A values check is a good way we can try and meet their expectations. It gives companies the ability to really focus on improvement and understand what the participant wants.
Aligning values can be the best indicator of success and customer satisfaction. We are not a factory, we should be people-centred, caring, empathetic, and individual-focused. We are the advocates for change.
But too often we are pressured by costs that weigh heavy on our shoulders, restricting our ability to reach the cusomer's expectations and giving individual time to communicate with clients and focus on them wholly. We have become a more standardised and structural business model.
This is often due to competing markets, too many competitors, more standardised approaches that are less flexible, bigger companies pushing the smaller companies out of business, policy, auditing costs, financial advisor costs if you pick a private or specialist one etc, the list goes on.
We have become a market that is very saturated, over-crowded, and only allows a small percentage to have any profit, because more often then not, it is not what you know or how committed you are to serving people, it is who you know, how much funds you have to establish a business, how long others have been around, finding a stable network in a culture that excludes the smaller companies out of the know-who.
Smaller companies struggle while the mass-marketing strategies of larger ones drown the voices from the less established ones still trying to just get by.
Financial Health Breakdown:
"34%-50% of providers report operating at a net loss.
18% of providers barely break even.
52% total operating with zero or negative profit margins.
75% of providers consider exiting or shutting down." (Activ OT).
Core Causes of Financial Strain Price Caps: Fixed NDIS price limits fail to keep up with rising operational costs.
Compliance: Increased regulatory and administrative burdens cost time and money.
Pricing Model: The NDIA pricing structure aims at viability for only the top 25% most efficient operators, squeezing out standard or regional providers. (Team DSC, ABC Great Southern, The Guardian).
Now the question is, what are the motives of ndis? Did they design it for people who genuinely want to serve the participants and develop ongoing good communication with them? Or did we design a system that values the numbers they can get rather then putting the customer first?
And the biggest question of all, how do we fix this?
There needs to be change. The logical thing to do is to reduce audtiting costs to encourage smaller companies to register with ndis, for ndis to promote smaller niche companies that focus on smaller numbers of participants so it doesn't become a factory-style one-size fits all business, incorporating AI into manual tasks that don’t require customer interaction to reduce administrative tasks (the problem is investing on all the newest gadgets requires a busines to run at a bit of a profit to afford it), ndis price guidelines to reflect the expenses many put into a business ( the problem is, ndis is very tight financially and it takes a lot out of the government to support the ndis scheme long-term, it would require creativity to fix the system into one that is sustainable), more funding grants to start businesses and support them, start up loans, new and inventive ways to encourage smaller companies to thrive. There is always going to be a challenge in making these changes, and it takes a lot of highly-skilled people to make these changes. And then we could encourage and support people more with disabilities so they have a job that is flexible and understanding, although not everyone can work and then some need more support to be able to work and we should keep people with disabilities on ndis if they need it to be able to function. I think to help ndis make fair decisions more people with real-life experience with having disabilities should be employed in the ndis sector to make the decisions and fairly distribute funding, and also employing people with disabilities to be mentors and leaders in companies so that others with disabilities are included and supported more, and understood in the worplace (maybe more remote jobs becoming available, more support offered to those with disabilities, more people with disabilities already employed with leadership roles). But how easy is it to make drastic changes? One person or company can't do it alone, it requires numbers. And how do those numbers get a voice? They advocate and campaign for change, share, and spread the word around.
The statics show that a lot of us are struggling , we (the smaller companies who are running at a loss) have the numbers to change, the percentage of us are higher then the percentage of the larger companies running at a profit. We can work together if we don't see ourselves as competitors alone, we see ourselevs as sustainable busines partners in change, benefiting those around us and giving ourselves the chance to succeed.
Share this if you agree that we need more small ndis companies that have more time for communication with participants, more time listening to them, more time to advocate for them, and more time supporting their lifestyle and routines.
Written by the Director of Able 2 Care Australia.
References:
NDIS small businesses are breaking. And no one is talking about it https://share.google/p0vgwsaAOiBBtNJDV
Source: Team DSC https://share.google/fFtAiuFdbDkkqUeht
Not-for-profit disability services are closing due to untenably low price caps, NDIS architect warns | National disability insurance scheme | The Guardian https://share.google/Y6FwnM1aAtvwrnnZa
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