NFP

Not-for-profit Allied Health industry analysis

EMPLOYING INTO THE NOT-FOR-PROFIT SECTOR IN AUSTRALIA

Industry Overview

The NFP industry is suffering from an acute shortage of Allied Health staff because we just don’t have the numbers of Allied Health professionals in Australia to meet the needs of our population. Not only that, employers in many other industries such as Occupational Rehab, Clinical, Counselling and the NDIS sector are competing for that same pool of professionals. 

 

We find that NFP organisations use tax breaks as a key USP to attract Allied Health staff. Having said that, their traditionally low salaries compared to the for-profit sector tend to balance out their offering to potential job-seekers.. 

 

We have also noticed that the salaries, benefits packages & work arrangements have changed substantially since the introduction of the NDIS, especially post-Covid. 

 

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the Pilot.” – Michael Altshuler

Salary

Salaries in the industry for Physical Candidates: OT, Physiotherapist and Exercise Physiologist 

  • Graduates: $60,000 – $70,000 base + super
  • 1-2 years’ experience: $70,000-$80,000 base + super
  • 3-5 years’ experience: $80,000 – $95,000 base + super
  • Management Level Salaries: $90,000 base + super and above

 

Salaries in the industry for Psychological Candidates: Psychologists, Social Workers, Behaviour Support Practitioners

  • Graduates: $60,000 – $70,000 base + super
  • 1-2 years’ experience: $70,000-$80,000 base + super
  • 3-5 years’ experience: $80,000 – $95,000 base + super
  • Management Level Salaries: $90,000 base + super and above

 

Allied Health Assistants: Salaries range from $55,000 – $70,000 base + super

Keep in mind that the above are general indicators. There are always exceptions to the rule and unique circumstances e.g. location, role depth, employer salary band-widths, work arrangement etc that also determine the wages offered to job-seekers. 

 

“Be courageous. Challenge orthodoxy. Stand up for what you believe in. When you are in your rocking chair talking to your grandchildren many years from now, be sure you have a good story to tell.” – Amal Clooney

Benefits

What’s the competition doing? Let’s find out! 

Financial: Regular Salary Reviews | Performance Bonus | Extra Superannuation Contributions | Corporate Discounts – one of our NFP clients gives their team discounted Medical and Health Insurance

Salary sacrifice or Salary Packaging arrangements: These are a key-stone for NFP’s 

Tools of Trade: Mobile | Laptop | Tablet  | Speech to Text Software

Admin and Reception Support: Free up time by dictating your reports and let the admin team do the rest.

Travel: Pool Car Access | Novated Lease | Per km reimbursement | GoGet Car Access | Set amount per timeframe | Petrol Card (one of our clients gives their team members a petrol card for work and personal use – booya!)

Knowledge & Assessment Suitcase: Subscriptions, both hard-copy and soft-copy | Professional Development $, Comprehensive induction | On-going mentoring and in-services by subject matter experts

Extra Leave: One of our clients is a school and they give their staff 7 weeks’ leave. Other clients give their staff reservist leave, doona days, volunteer, pet and birthday leave. 

Parental Leave: One of our clients gives their staff the difference between their wage and the government mandated parental leave subsidy for the full 16 weeks. The NDIS industry is heavily female dominated in terms of Allied Health professionals working in it. Now read that again.

Social and team building: Paid for by the company. One of our clients paid for their whole team to do axe-throwing and a cooking class – not on the same day….

“Do not allow people to dim your shine because they are blinded. Tell them to put some sunglasses on.” — Lady Gaga

Health, Wellness & EAP: Pool, yoga  or gym access or contribution | Confidential EAP to assist you when you need a hand. 

Career Mapping: Our clients spend a lot of time and money training and supporting you. They would like to see you mutually thrive. Your success and growth = their success and growth.

“You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.” – Oprah Winfrey

So if you’re wondering what other employers are doing to attract talent, it may be time to look at your benefits packages, job-structure or hiring, on-boarding and training protocol.  

“I am experienced enough to do this. I am knowledgeable enough to do this. I am prepared enough to do this. I am mature enough to do this. I am brave enough to do this.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

Job Structure

  • Full-time
  • Part-time
  • WFH
  • Work from the office
  • Community-based
  • Mobile
  • Telehealth
  • Face-to-face

Locations

NFP employers are located Australia-wide. Wherever there is a person in need, a NFP provider will be required.

Hiring

“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.” — Earl Nightingale

Some employers have a 3 step recruitment process:

  1. A screening by internal HR.
  2. 1st interview
  3. 2nd interview and reference checks.

This is not to mention possible psych, probity or technical skills testing. For this to happen, the job-seekers and employers have to match diaries etc. 

 

Some employers still insist on a face-to-face meeting as a first port of call. Just keep in mind that in an exceptionally candidate short market space and where job-seekers are looking at multiple employers at the same time, it might help to reexamine your hiring process. Especially if you keep missing out on candidates as they’ve accepted other offers while you’re still going through the motions of your recruitment process.

 

The other thing candidates have told us is employers who get shirty if the job-seeker doesn’t accept their offer and then say things along the lines of, OK, you’ve got 24 hours to accept our offer or we will withdraw it. We don’t recommend this generally because it puts pressure on a candidate to make a decision. And once you’ve made that call, you can’t go back, ie say, OK fine, you’ve actually got 3 days to make a decision.

 

It’s a fine balance we admit, but please reach out to your Medijobs Australia consultant if you’re wondering what candidates are saying about your recruitment process. We’ve been known to not mince words and give honest feedback. We’re also happy to work with you to let you know what’s working and what’s not in terms of best process hiring protocols. 

 

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Candidates Love

Salaries that reflect their skills and experience for the job that they are doing.

 

Benefits packages customised to their needs – for instance, they may prefer a novated lease option if they don’t own or have access to a car. 

 

Salary sacrifice: $15,900 of the job-seeker’s base salary is tax free and can be used to pay a variety of their personal costs.

 

“Nobody built like you, you design yourself.” — Jay-Z

 

Induction: A comprehensive on-boarding and induction process when they start as well as on-going mentoring, in-services, CPD contributions and shadowing of senior consultants. 

 

KPIs: Graded introduction to KPIs so that the pressure to bill, bill, bill isn’t hanging over their heads from day dot.

 

Career-mapping: A strategic approach to the next steps in their career as opposed to an ad hoc approach. It’s always good to know what you have to do to achieve your career goals.

 

Health & Wellness: Employer contributions towards health and wellness, including access to a confidential EAP service.

 

Admin support: Who doesn’t love the admin team where you have access to voice to text services and the admin team takes care of the rest. Report writing becomes less of a chore then.

 

Extra leave: Any extra leave that employers can offer is welcome. Be that “no reason needed days off”, Reservist’s Leave, pet leave, volunteer leave. You can call it anything you like but what the job-seeker sees is that this employer is amazing as they recognise the need for a day off sometimes.

 

“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.” — Henry David Thoreau

 

Parental Leave and flexibility: Most job-seekers tend to eventually start a family at some stage of their working life. It helps if the employer can give additional benefits, e.g. One of our key employer partners offers their staff the difference between their company wage and the government mandated parental leave payment – for the whole 16 weeks. And guess who gets the candidates when it comes down to that being the final difference if all the other benefits and salary between competing offers are the same. Bingo! And they also offer their staff the option of a combination of WFH and part-time hours when they return to work after their parental leave. Bingo squared! Or is that Bingo x 2?  

 

“I tell myself, ‘You’ve been through so much, you’ve endured so much, time will allow me to heal, and soon this will be just another memory that made me the strong woman, athlete, and mother I am today.”‘ — Serena Williams

 

Pool car access: We’ve found over 20 years of recruitment that job-seekers don’t want wear and tear on their personal vehicles for work purposes. So they LOOOOVE pool-car access as this means they can take public transport to work and still do their job.

 

AHAs: A lot of our consultants greatly appreciate their AHAS. Their AHAs are able to implement parts of the role that do not require the NDIS consultants’ input in an ongoing manner. This frees up time for the consultant to work with even more clients. Win win for all, the clients, the employers, the consultant and the AHA! 

Candidates Hate

Over promise and under deliver: There is absolutely no percentage in over selling the role only for the job-seekers to start and find out that the reality on the ground floor is very different. If you have a high rate of candidates leaving your employ in a short space of time, then it is a good idea to conduct exit interviews to see where you are letting them and yourself as an employer down.

 

“We are not our best intentions. We are what we do.” — Amy Dickinson

 

Lack of clarity or support around salary sacrifice: A lot of our NFP consultants say that their employer doesn’t explain the benefits of salary sacrifice to them or doesn’t assist them to implement these. So here’s a gentle hint. There are lots of companies out there that can add value to demystifying salary sacrifice and implementing it for your staff. Use them! Here’s a salary sacrifice resource that we’ve put together that you can use as a starting point for your staff. 

 

Lack of or no on-boarding and induction: Do this at your own peril. Enough said.

 

Travel: A lot of candidates don’t like to travel long distances if possible. Sometimes it can’t be helped. But then the employer needs to recognise that their billable targets might need adjusting to account for the time spent travelling. It’s important to put yourself in your employees shoes. Would you feel extra pressure if that was what you had to do? Then rest assured, they are too. Unrelenting pressure = a good reason to start looking for a new job. You do the maths. 

 

Lack of business structure: We could tell you many anecdotes of newly set up NFP employers. For instance, we had a recent call where the employer told us, we’ve just set up as an NDIS Not for Profit provider and we need an OT, a Physio and a General or Clinical Psychologist or BSP yesterday. OK, say we. Could you please send us a job description? Don’t have one. Right, what kinds of clients are you working with? Don’t know yet – whatever walks in the door but there’s a lot of demand for our services. Ahem. Do tell us about your induction and training process. We’re working on that. At this point in time, we don’t even bother asking about their strategic growth plans or career-mapping for their staff. 

See where we’re going with this? If you’re reading this and it even remotely sounds like you, then please address this situation. It’s tricky enough for job-seekers when they start a new job but if the workplace is a shemozzle from day dot, the chances of them staying for the long haul are low, really, really low … just saying. 

 

Unrelenting admin: A lot of our consultants have indicated that the amount of administrative and report-writing associated with their roles is something that they don’t enjoy. One of our employers has recognised this and so gives their team the option to conduct the Assessment and make the relevant case notes and dicta their findings, then gets an in-house consultant who works from home to write the report within the next 24 hours. They don’t care if the report is written at midnight when you have just finished doing a night feed for your child or at 5:00am in the morning because you’re an early bird. 

 

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.” – Steve Jobs

 

Show me the money: If you are not keeping up with the industry in terms of salaries and benefits to match what your competition is doing or what jobseeker expectations are, then please be prepared to lose staff or not be able to attract them to begin with. 

 

Job structure: Candidates have told us time and time again that as they progress through their career, the demands on their time change. They may have a family or want to work in a more flexible capacity for their own self actualisation. An employer who doesn’t work with their staff on this (only if the employer has the capacity to accommodate the employees demands of course) risks losing them to one who can offer them the flexibility that they seek.

 

“I like criticism. It makes you strong.” — LeBron James

Training

On-boarding: Have you conducted all your checks and balances that you need to do before the candidate starts?  Do they have all the paperwork that they need to fill out for you prior to starting on day dot? Please make sure they do. 

 

Induction: Do you have your poo in one pile with a structured induction process? A scatter gun approach at the start ensures that a new employee is not going to know if they’re Artha or Martha. The more you can support, train, mentor and assist them with settling into their role, the better. 

 

We have noticed that a lot of established NFP employers have exceptionally comprehensive induction and training processes to support their new starters. If you tend to have an ad hoc approach in this area, we highly recommend addressing that situation, pronto. 

 

Shadowing a Senior: This has proven to be a very popular strategy with our new starters in the industry. It means that they see excellent modelling and there’s nothing better than learning from the best of the best of what your company has to offer. Not to mention the social aspect of being mentored by an in-house Senior team member. “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” —Audrey Hepburn

 

In-services: Subject Matter Experts, both internal and external can be utilised to share their knowledge with your team members. These can be delivered remotely as well as face to face. Who doesn’t like the idea of learning as part of their work team or sharing their knowledge with their colleagues? 

.“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein

 

CPD: All we can say is that the more generous you are here, the more likely you are to be able to support your staff through various stages of their career-map with you. 

 

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

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