Guided tools that build your NDIS policies and procedures from your answers. Created by an NDIS auditor.
Explore the tools →The NDIS Core Module, which you'll be audited against if you're on the Certification pathway, requires an orientation and induction process that workers complete, including the mandatory NDIS worker orientation program.
The Verification module asks only for the orientation module certificate, so induction is not something you will be assessed on if that's your audit pathway.
Inducting your workers properly helps you meet your NDIS audit requirements, but more importantly, helps safeguard and protect both your workers and the participants they are supporting. Regardless of whether it's included in your next audit, it's something to prioritise.
The Worker Orientation Module is not induction
Quality, Safety and You is the Commission's own training and is a requirement for all registered NDIS workers. It's free, and covers the NDIS Code of Conduct, participant rights, and what workers should do about abuse and neglect.
It's a great resource, however it doesn't cover your organisation specifically, your company processes, or your participants.
Induction has two layers
Organisational induction covers how your service works. This may include:
- important policies and procedures
- incident and complaints procedures
- reporting lines
- record keeping expectations
- work health and safety and lone worker arrangements
- emergency and disaster procedures
- regulated restrictive practices, if required.
Participant-specific induction covers the person the worker is about to support:
- their support plan and goals
- how they communicate
- routines and preferences
- individual risks
- behaviour support plan if they have one
- mealtime or medication requirements
- who else is involved in their support
- what the worker does if something goes wrong.
It's important to ensure both organisation and participant-specific inductions take place. A worker who understands your policies but has never been told that a participant chokes on unmodified food, or that a particular approach escalates their distress, is not ready to work with them alone.
Before the first unsupervised shift
Induction should ideally be finished before a worker is alone with a participant. Buddy shifts are a good way to deliver a participant-specific induction, and double check that these are recorded: who the worker shadowed, which participant, on what date, and who decided they were ready to work alone (and how they decided this).
It can be difficult to prioritise induction when short-staffed and under other pressures, but this isn't an area to look for shortcuts.
Contractors and agency staff
Anyone delivering supports on your behalf needs inducting. Contractors, casual relief workers, and agency staff all count, and inductions should occur and be documented as with permanent staff.
A contractor or agency staffer may arive already competent to deliver supports, but they haven't been inducted to your specific organisational procedures and the needs of the participants they'll be working with. Participants supported by these workers are entitled to the same standard of care and these safeguards should be prioritised.
The record protects the worker too
A signed and dated induction record naming what was covered and who delivered it, signed by both the worker and the person inducting them.
When something goes wrong, that record demonstrates that the worker was prepared and the provider did its part. Without it, a worker who did everything they were told has no way to demonstrate what they were told, and a provider has no way to demonstrate what they told them. A policy that states you'll induct your workers isn't sufficient evidence that inductions actually occur.
If the induction covers anything a worker needs to be able to do rather than know, a competency assessment should also take place and be documented.
Induction is not only for new starters
Make sure you complete refreshers when a policy or procedure changes, when a worker starts with a new participant, when a worker returns after an extended absence, or when an incident review shows a gap in what someone understood.
Common oversights
The Worker Orientation Module certificate is treated as induction. A folder of orientation module certificates with no further induction.
No participant-specific layer. Organisational induction only, with no records or evidence showing how a worker learned to support specific participants.
Contractors and agency staff overlooked. Or inducted informally, with nothing written down.
No induction records. An easy thing to miss particularly for smaller providers where induction might be done by the manager personally over several shifts. You don't need pages of records, but you need to document this somehow.
Induction content that doesn't match your organisation. Your induction checklist covers procedures your policy manual doesn't have, or your policies describe an induction process you don't follow.
What good induction looks like
- An induction procedure which includes what is covered, by whom, and by when
- Checklist/s covering organisation and participant-specific inductions
- A completed, signed and dated record for every worker, including contractors and agency staff
- Worker Orientation module certificates
- Buddy shift records
- Competency assessments for supports that need them
- Refresher records as needed
Paperbark's Certification Toolkit helps you build your human resource management policy and procedure, including your induction process and the supporting records, from your answers about how you actually onboard workers.
About the author
Penny Halpin
Penny is an NDIS Lead Auditor who has worked in certification since the first audits in 2018, and was previously a Senior Manager at an Approved Quality Auditor with technical review across thousands of audit reports. She built the Paperbark tools to help providers create documentation that reflects how they actually work.
More about Penny →