Have you endured massive upward inflation in Allied Health labour rates over the last year or two? Even graduates, with a complete lack of experience & low skill levels, are commanding super high salaries. Despite these spoils, Allied Health is plagued by really high burn-out rates which stand to really rock the tenure of your team & disrupt your NDIS business. 3 to 5 years is routinely described as the industry life span of Allied Health workers – many spend longer studying to enter the profession, it’s crazy!
What can be done to arrest this issue on both sides?
You need to ensure your NDIS business is profitable, not falling victim to spiralling remuneration rates, BUT you also need to ensure your Allied Health team members are fulfilled, love their job and tenure isn’t being prematurely interrupted by burn-out.
Perhaps you feel these aspirations could run at odds with each other?
Burn-out results from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, so the answer is simple right, just successfully manage to reduce the workplace stress! 😊 Sure you think, easier said than done because you can’t reduce their billable hour expectations / KPIs.
But what if you could alleviate their stress whilst raising their Billable Hours? No, it’s not an oxymoron – it involves shining a spotlight on their task distribution, specifically non-billable tasks, that they likely don’t enjoy, they stress about & it compounds over days, weeks, months, ‘til it erupts. Of course shining a light is the start, the ultimate goal is to delegate ALL these tasks away from your Allied Health Staff so they don’t have to do them & instead focus on tasks they love, which are also billable.
So who will do all these tasks?
Profitability dictates these tasks must be done for the lowest labour cost possible, which invariably means considering outsourcing & offshoring. At PeoplePartners we help NDIS businesses engage amazing, talented staff in the Philippines who work exclusively in your business for 70% lower wage rates. Let’s call the new role for all the above tasks an ‘Allied Health Assistant’ and let’s assume each Allied Health Assistant can support 2 to 3 Allied Health Staff.
Perhaps you’d prefer to engage someone in this role who’s qualified in a Health discipline eg. Physiotherapist, Occupational Therapist, Nurse, etc, so they have a good clinical knowledge & can understand medical language, the importance of case notes, etc. Having Assistants with such clinical knowledge can also aid in the drafting of reports from dictation from your Allied Health staff, further optimising the efficiency & effectiveness of your Allied Health staff. However we work with every client to craft the vacancy & feature the qualifications, skillsets, experience, etc, you’d prefer to hire in your ideal offshore staff member.
So in this future state, with you retaining happier, less overwhelmed Allied Health Staff because they’re paired with an offshore Allied Health Assistant, how many extra billable hours do you think they could generate on account of all the tasks you’ve removed? Is 2 extra billable hours per day possible?
Perhaps it’s now time for a calculator or spreadsheet for you to work out the commercial benefit of an extra 2 billable hours per Allied Health Staff member, per day -> what does this represent over a week, a month, a quarter or a full financial year? You could take these calculations in 2 ways: (i) How much extra revenue & profitability will I yield when my entire Allied Health team is billing 2 extra hours per day; or (ii) How much will my profitability improve if I reduce my Allied Health staff headcount to generate the same billable hours when each of my retained staff are generating 2 extra billable hours per day? My guess is that either which way you take your calculation, it will be significant, dare I say game changing for your NDIS business!
If such a game changing future state excites you & you’d like to workshop the idea further, please contact us to learn more about how we can help you execute such a strategy!