Welcome to the show -- Winter, I wanna start with two numbers that should make any NDIS provider sit up: turnover at 17 to 25 per cent, and each new hire costing somewhere between $2,130 and $3,320 before they've properly settled in. That $3,320 is the bit that sticks for me. Because if someone walks out in, say, a few months, you haven't just lost a person -- you've paid thousands for the privilege of starting again. Exactly. And that's why I think a lot of providers are solving the wrong problem. They say, "We need more applicants." Maybe. But in 2026 you're not hiring in a vacuum. You're competing with aged care, health, and community services for the SAME limited pool of workers. So just throwing up another ad and hoping for volume... that's not a strategy, that's a treadmill. Let me push on that. Because I can hear someone thinking, well, if we're short-staffed, surely more ads is better than fewer ads. Are you saying advertise less? No, not less -- smarter. The tension is this: hiring more people is not the same as building a stable workforce. If your system burns people out, fresh hires just become future vacancies. And burnout is not some side issue here. Forty-three per cent of workers say they feel burnt out at least half the time in their jobs. Forty-three. That's nearly one in two. One in two is brutal. And in disability support, that isn't just an HR metric. Every time somebody leaves, a participant loses continuity. They lose the person who knew the routine, the communication style, the tiny things that make support actually feel safe. Yep. We talk about turnover like it's a staffing headache, but it's also a relationship break. And the drivers are pretty well understood now: lack of permanent positions, better conditions in other sectors, high workload, low pay, casualisation, unclear career pathways. So when a provider says, "Why can't we find reliable staff?" sometimes the uncomfortable answer is... reliable staff can find better deals elsewhere. The "lack of permanent positions" part matters. Because if I'm choosing between casual shifts with uncertain hours and something steadier in health or aged care, that's not really a mystery, is it? That's a rent-and-groceries decision. Right. And it changes how you recruit. Recruitment can't just be persuasion. It has to be believable. What can you honestly offer? Stable hours? Regular supervision? A manager who actually replies? Training that leads somewhere? If you don't know that before you start hiring, candidates will feel the wobble. I think that's the bit providers sometimes skip. They treat recruitment like marketing only. Nice wording, pretty logo, maybe a sign-on push. But if the roster is chaos and the support workers are cooked, candidates find that out very quickly -- often from other workers. They do. Your current workforce is broadcasting your employer brand every day whether you've designed one or not. So before you even draft an ad, understand the workforce reality you're operating in. Ask why people leave. Ask what your best staff stay for. Ask where the friction is -- onboarding, supervision, workload, lack of progression, whatever it is. Because the best recruitment strategy in a leaky system just makes the leak more expensive. That's a grim image, but it's a useful one. A leaky bucket with a recruitment budget. And I think for smaller providers especially, the temptation is to chase the immediate gap -- fill the shift, fill the roster, get through the week. Which, fair enough. But if each hire costs $2,130 to $3,320, the short-term scramble is actually quite an expensive habit. And that cost compounds fast. Two hires gone early, you're looking at more than $4,000 at the low end, more than $6,000 at the high end, before you count manager time, participant disruption, retraining, compliance admin... all of it. So the reframe I keep coming back to is this: in disability services, recruitment is not separate from retention. Recruitment is retention with an earlier timestamp. Okay, let me try to explain that back. You're saying the hire doesn't really begin at the contract stage. It begins when a candidate looks at your organisation and asks, "Do I believe this place is sustainable for me?" Almost -- and the missing bit is "sustainable for me and credible to me." Candidates are screening employers just as hard now. Especially good candidates. If your process, your ad, your reputation, and your actual conditions don't line up, they self-select out... or worse, they join and then leave. So let's stay with that word: believable. Because employer brand can sound a bit fluffy, a bit corporate deck, but really it's much simpler. It's what your current and former staff say when someone asks, "What's it actually like there?" That's your brand. Not the slogan. Not the careers page. Yes. And that's why referrals are such a strong channel in this sector. A referred candidate already has a realistic preview. They know the team vibe, the participant cohort, the expectations. They're not joining off a fantasy. And a modest referral incentive is often one of the highest-return investments providers can make. The word "realistic" is doing a lot of work there. Because generic job ads do the opposite. They create generic candidate pools. You get people applying to a nice-sounding support role, then discovering it's complex behaviour support, split shifts, weekend work, or a participant cohort they are absolutely not suited to. Exactly. So write ads in plain English. No jargon soup. Be specific about the cohort, the support types, the hours, the flexibility, and the actual benefits you offer. Not vague promises -- real ones. Regular supervision. Clear career pathways. Team culture. Training investment. If you encourage applicants with lived experience of disability, say that explicitly. If you're open to workplace modifications and solutions, say that too. And keep the criteria tight, yeah? Five to ten key points -- not a terrifying wall of twenty-seven must-haves that reads like you're hiring one person to do five jobs. Yes, that classic ad: "entry level" but somehow wants years of experience, perfect availability, multiple specialties, and the patience of a saint. The sharper move is to describe the role by what needs to be achieved and what your values look like in practice. Not just "we care." Show me what that means on a Tuesday afternoon. I also think slow, impersonal recruitment processes quietly kill good hiring. If a candidate sends an application and hears nothing, then waits through a compliance-heavy process with no updates, they're making inferences. Not abstract ones -- very practical ones. "If this is how they communicate before I start, what'll it be like when I'm chasing a roster issue?" That is such an important point. Your process is your first lived demonstration of your values. A clear screening step, then a phone screen for communication and values fit, then a structured interview, then reference checks, then compliant onboarding -- each stage should have a purpose. And candidates should know where they stand. A receipt message. A timeline update. Prompt outcomes. Small touches, huge signal. Especially because the mandatory checks take time. An NDIS Worker Screening Check can be, what, seven to 21 business days for straightforward applications. That's not nothing. If you leave that till late, or you don't explain it properly, the whole thing drifts. Correct. And for roles involving participants under 18, you also need a Working With Children Check. Then right-to-work verification before the first shift, documents retained on file. None of that is optional, and none of it gets easier if you spring it on people at the last minute. This is where channel strategy matters too. Seek and Indeed are still the dominant platforms for disability sector recruitment, but they're not the whole game. Local Facebook groups can be surprisingly effective for support worker roles, especially in regional areas where community connection actually means something. And LinkedIn is increasingly useful for coordinator, allied health, and management roles. Different channels for different jobs. Plus the pipeline play I think too many providers underuse: partnerships with TAFE and universities. Certificate III in Individual Support, community services diplomas, allied health degrees -- those students are actively entering the sector and they're open to their first employer relationship. The "first employer relationship" phrase is big. Because a well-run student placement program isn't just free exposure. It's basically a long interview in both directions. They get to see your culture. You get to see how they work. That's far more reliable than hoping a polished CV tells the truth. Absolutely. And in regional and remote areas, local workforce campaigns matter even more. Growing talent from within the community can beat trying to endlessly import staff into jobs that are hard to sustain. Again -- believable. The providers that win aren't always the loudest advertisers. They're the ones candidates trust. Which lands us in a pretty clean place, actually. If your staff wouldn't recommend you, your ad probably won't save you. And if your best recruitment channel is the people already working for you, then the real question isn't, "How do we get more applicants?" It's, "What are people saying about us when we're not in the room?" Yeah. In 2026, the strongest recruitment message isn't "we're hiring." It's "people stay here." Thanks for listening.
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