If you hire someone directly, set their hours, tell them what to do and pay them regularly, Australian law can treat that as an employment relationship. Them having an ABN doesn’t automatically change that, and neither does not having a contract. Choice and control is great, and it comes with a few things attached:
- Workers compensation - If your support worker gets hurt on the job, someone has to cover their medical costs and lost income. In WA, if you self-manage your plan and employ your own worker, you’re legally required to hold workers comp insurance. The good news is your plan can pay for it. The bad news is that if you don’t have it and something happens, the bill can land with you.
- Super and tax - If your worker does more than 30 hours in a week, you’ll likely owe them super for that week. You may also need to withhold tax from their pay. The ATO doesn’t mind whether you knew.
- Insurance - If your worker doesn’t carry their own public liability and professional indemnity insurance and something goes wrong, you might be left exposed.
- Training and checks - Nobody’s checking whether they’ve got an NDIS Worker Screening Check, whether they’ve done any training, or whether they know what to do when something goes sideways. That’s up to you to ask about.
- The admin - Timesheets, invoices, reporting and keeping track of what’s left in your plan. It adds up, and it’s easy to get towards the end of your plan and find you haven’t got enough funding left.
Plenty of people go direct and make it work. It just means you're running a small business you may not have realised you'd started.
There’s another way. Keep your worker and hand the employer part to someone else. That’s what Humdrum does. We employ our support workers, so workers comp, super, tax, insurance and training sit with us, not with you. Your worker still works with you, on your terms, and you still get to choose who comes through the door. You just don’t have to be the one doing the paperwork at 10pm.
This is general information, not legal or financial advice. If you’re not sure how it applies to you, check with WorkCover WA, the ATO or an accountant.
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