Why your business needs attestation
Running an NDIS business comes with a huge number of compliance requirements and obligations. Managing these and ensuring each staff member is following and complying with these conditions is a tremendous task.
The Requirement
As part of your NDIS registration, your business needs to have documented evidence that workers are aware of, trained in, and comply with the required policies and procedures your business uses. This is a fundamental element of the NDIS Practice Standards. It’s designed to ensure that NDIS businesses are compliant from the top down, from directors to front-line staff.
Businesses are required to have:
“A system to identify, plan, facilitate, record and evaluate the effectiveness of training and education for workers is in place to ensure that workers meet the needs of each participant. The system identifies training that is mandatory and includes training in relation to staff obligations under the NDIS Practice Standards and other National Disability Insurance Scheme rules.”
In short, you need to have a systemised way of verifying staff have confirmed they understand your documentation and are up-to-date with any changes you make as they happen. Failing to have this system in place is likely an expensive risk to the company. Enforceable undertakings, publication of your non-compliance, fines of up to $1m, and potential loss of NDIS registration, are examples of some repercussions.
The Problem
Setting up a functional system requires time and resources. It can become unmanageable tracking the policy attestation process on spreadsheets and gathering attestations by email or in person. It’s unproductive managing attestation this way as it is:
Labour-intensive compiling the role specific documentation each staff member needs to confirm they’ve read and understood.
Time and effort consuming sending reminder emails to all non-compliant staff.
Resource-intensive to sort through all the email responses that come back.
Easy to accidentally request duplicate information from staff who already sent their attestations.
Difficult to report on or respond to questions from auditors with no single source of truth.
The Solution
Implementing a trustworthy, repeatable, and automated way to track employee attestations helps create a centralised source of truth for policy management and staff attestation. The features of an integrated solution include:
Clearly organised and identifiable required documentation for individual or groups of staff to complete.
Automated initial notification emails with the click of a button, assigning required reading for staff.
Quickly and easily identify people or departments that might be behind on their attestations.
Automated reminders for staff that haven’t completed their attestation.
Reporting on staff attestation to effortlessly demonstrate to staff compliance to your auditor.
The integrated solution leads to reduced risk, saved time and resources, empowered staff who have confidence in your business, and improved client outcomes.
Your policies and procedures are only as good as your staff’s ability understand and comply, and your ability to verify that they do. Your ability to validate staff understanding and compliance leads to better outcomes for clients, lower costs, and reduced risk for your business.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about our attestation solution.
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