Risk Management for NDIS Service Providers
When NDIS service providers get things wrong, it creates dissatisfaction for participants. So, like many businesses, we have this in common. However, when things go really wrong for service providers, the effect on participants is much greater. Abuse, neglect and the overall wellbeing of participants is impacted. There is even the risk of death.
This is the reason why risk management is such an important topic in our market, and it is called out within the NDIS Practice Standards.
“Risks to the organisation, including risks to participants, financial and work health and safety risks, and risks associated with provision of supports are identified, analysed, prioritised and treated.”
There are 694 people in Australia with a job title that includes ‘Chief Risk’. Only 1 (that we found) is from a disability service provider organisation. This responsibility is more commonly bestowed upon CEOs/GMs and the board. The challenge is to have others within the organisation contribute.
Here’s a quick refresher of how risk management works so you can get more people in the organisation involved.
List risks that may hinder how the business operates. This needs to cover the participants, how services are provided, your workers, the work environment, finance, IT and security.
Prioritise these risks by assessing how often they may occur (likelihood) and what the impact is when they happen (consequence). This gives you a ‘rating’ which is used to prioritise these risks.
For each risk, identify ‘controls’ you have in place that may help reduce the likelihood or consequence of the risk. There may be risks that cannot be considerably reduced in the short term. That’s OK.
Rate the risk again, this time with the controls in place. This gives you the residual risk. In effect you have now completed a risk assessment.
Risks and controls need to reflect the current business so keep it up to date as things change or review the complete list regularly.
The process of identifying controls should help you establish additional ‘treatment’ and form improvement activity that you can share within the organisation.
The value of risk management is that when others understand what the risks are, they are more engaged to help. Having all the risks evaluated the same way at the same time allows organisations to prioritise activity to support them.
We offer an integrated risk management feature which is available to Centro BUSINESS customers. If you would like to know more about Centro BUSINESS, get in touch today.