NDIS Provider Growth Journey
NDIS providers and leaders - for directors, managers, BDMs etc - How to grow your NDIS business without losing your mind on the journey.
NDIS Provider Growth Journey
Your Staff Are Already Using AI. Is Your NDIS Business Ready? with Tania Gomez (Ep 59)
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AI is already being used inside NDIS businesses, often before owners have decided where it should be used, where it should not be used, and what safeguards need to be in place.
In this episode of the NDIS Provider Growth Journey, Michael speaks with Tania Gomez about what AI and automation really mean for NDIS and aged care providers. They discuss why ignoring AI is no longer a realistic option, especially when providers are facing tight margins, rising costs and back-office processes that take staff away from the people they are there to support.
Tania explains that AI should not be used to replace knowledge or expertise. It should help people become faster and more effective at work they already understand. When someone knows what a good policy, proposal or process looks like, AI can help them complete the manual parts more efficiently. When they do not understand the work, they may not recognise when the information AI produces is wrong.
The conversation also explores the growing problem of shadow AI. Staff are already finding their own ways to use these tools, whether business owners have approved them or not. Without clear systems, policies and training, providers can create compliance, privacy and business continuity risks without even realising it.
Tania shares how she uses AI within her own business, including turning meetings into actions, updating management tasks, completing internal audits and monitoring hundreds of pieces of legislation for changes. Rather than replacing her compliance expertise, AI has allowed her to apply that expertise more quickly and support more providers.
They also discuss Innovate Care, Tania’s AI and automation forum for NDIS and aged care providers, taking place in Sydney on 5 August 2026. The event will explore practical automation, robotics, AI governance, compliance and what care businesses need to start preparing for now.
Learn more about Tania and Innovate Care at:
https://taniagomez.com.au/innovate-care
That was a great podcast.
If you want some one-on-one support, get in touch with me, michael@athletickoala.com.au.
Welcome today. I'm here with Tanya Gomez, who is definitely one of the most helpful people in NDIS who you will find. And obviously I've been a fan of Tanya since day one because she helped me in the early days when nobody even knew my name. So thank you, Tanya. Tanya, you've got an event coming up in a couple of weeks that I'm so excited about. Do you want to tell us about why someone like me might be excited about this event that's so different from anything else?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we're doing our first AI and automation forum called Innovate Care, specifically for NGIS and HCare providers who are looking to level up their tech and start using AI in their businesses. And look, it's it hasn't been happening, it hasn't been done before in the NGIS space, a specific forum around the tech. We actually started this concept with our National SIL Summit last year, where you were at, where we had a tech showcase and a day in our program about tech. And it was really well received. We had lots of people really interested in what tech was out there, what was possible when it comes to automation and speed streamlining their operations. So we decided to make it its own standalone event. And we've got some really amazing speakers coming and some really exciting topics around the idea of what will care look like in 2030 and how do we prepare our business today for being a agentic care provider as that we will be in 2030.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And so why this matters, Tanya, and why I want every man and their dog and lady and their dog to go is because with the way the price caps work, we can't afford to have back office stuff that is ineffective or inefficient. And I see in probably two-thirds of the companies that I work with, Tanya, I see them having inefficient back office justifying it to calling it culture when really it's just wasted spend and then they have almost no profitability. Whereas what you're doing with this AI is you're showing people how to be profitable so they can keep serving people. What would you say to people who say, I'm scared of having AI in my business because I'm worried that people will get upset or I'm worried that people will lose their jobs?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's definitely not about taking jobs from anyone. It's really about doing those jobs that actually people in the care space don't want to do. Your support workers, your frontline staff, your SIL house managers, your rostering managers, they all want to spend more time on what matters, which is talking to people and less time doing spreadsheets, and less time copying data from one place to the other. Those roles aren't necessarily going away. It's about supporting people in their roles to do the human side better and reinvest their time in engaging and supporting humans, whether that is other serving other people in the business if they are back of house staff, or whether it is serving the participants if they are frontline workers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. And I guess that's going to be covered at this event. What's the name of the event again?
SPEAKER_01It's Innovate Care.
SPEAKER_00Innovate Care. And it's in Sydney, or is this all around Australia? Where's the show?
SPEAKER_01It's just in Sydney. It's our kind of our test pilot of it. And it's in Sydney in the 5th of August at the establishment ballroom. Uh, really fancy venue, uh, really beautiful venue. And yeah, we've got some amazing speakers. We have Andrew Bell from Bellbots, who are a robotics company that are designing robots for domestic assistance that can help you shop, help you carry groceries back to your car, and really thinking about what are the new types of things out there that are going to support people to live independently longer? And how do we utilize tech to do some of those things to help people live independently?
SPEAKER_00Wow. Okay, so basically Elon Musk wanted to come. It's like, no, but anyone else who's the IS specific can, which is great. Okay, and what would you say to the people who they're nervous and hesitant about using AI in their business because they know they don't have profit margin without it, but then with it, they're worried about this security concern. Oh no, I'm gonna be out of compliance or I'm gonna be insecure. It's like we're talking here with Tanya, the compliance lady. Okay. Tanya, what would you say to people who are like, oh, I can't do it, I won't be compliant?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we actually have an amazing speaker called Dishant from BSI. BSI stands for British Standards International. They write international standards for government, and they're actually on the forefront of AI governance and global standards, and he's going to be presenting around the ethical frontier of how you can use AI in an ethical and legal way, and also talk about what are the standards that are coming in the space of AI across Australia and the world. He's actually in charge of worldwide AI standards for BSI. So he's a really big keynote speaker and really on the forefront of regulation and what is and isn't okay in AI. And yeah, really happy to have him talking about that specific area. It's really grey in the NJS space, but the good thing about Dishan is that he actually spent 10 years in the NJS space before he moved into the AI space. So he actually knows it really well. He's actually my boss at an auditing body. He knows NJS regulation back to front, and now he knows how AI fits into that puzzle. So it's an amazing skill set to bring.
SPEAKER_00Wow, because that's one of the big fears. If it's not I'm worried that Jennifer will lose her job, it's I'm worried that the NDIA is going to tell me that I'm no longer compliant and I have to pay out all this money. It's like, okay, if Tanya Gomez is saying can be done, he can be done. Tanya, what what about another thing that people worry about with using AI and NDIS, which is say, for example, I quieted up for someone what they need for say their Facebook ads, and I put that together literally after I'd talked to them for an hour. It took me literally two minutes with AI to take our conversation and turn it into something that looked really good. And then I thought, if I send this right now, it's gonna look like I didn't care. Because it's so quick to do the nitty-gritty boring stuff that I've done the hard work already. Now, so then I delayed sending it for 15 minutes because I just didn't want to look like I don't care. Now, I'm guessing as an NDR provider, people are always like, hold on, if I look like I just used the machine to do stuff or an automated system, we're gonna look like we're not people focused. So, what would you say to people in that spot?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, obviously you do need to tailor things, and AI is there to enhance what you're already really good at. You shouldn't be using AI to do things you're not good at because then you don't know actually that it's producing bad things. But if you're an expert in a space, so if I put in standards into AI and it writes me a policy, because I've read that many policies, I can look at it and actually tell if it's a good policy. But as an auditor, I see people who have never written a policy using AI, and the policy they give me is not good because the information they've given it, their information, their context, they've given it isn't good. And therefore it's rubbish in, rubbish out. And so I think you need to be careful of what are the use cases you're using AI for. In your case, you already know what a good marketing proposal should look like. So by putting in all of your IP and all of your formula and your recipe into AI and it doing the hard bit of the manual bit of pulling that all together and writing it for you. It's not that you're cheating or that you're that you don't care. It's that you found a smarter way to enhance the skills you already have. And I think that's actually the best use case for AI.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so what you're saying is true, and that's true for providers. You are not there as a spreadsheet generator, you're there as someone who cares about people. And the weird thing is, Tanya, yes, it took me two minutes, what should have taken me half an hour. But then I got on the phone and helped one of my other clients with the HR thing they had going on, and I'll talk to him for half an hour. So I took that time that I got back and put into helping someone, and that's exactly what you'd be saying providers would should be doing. Is that, am I hearing you right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, correct. They should choose things that they're already great at and amplify what they're really great at. And if there's things they want to use AI for that they're not great at, they should find someone in the business that's really good at that thing and amplify those skills so that you're using AI to take you from a nine and a half to a 10 or to take you from a nine and a half to a nine and a half, but in half the time, as opposed to trying to get you to something that you're a one in up to an eight, because it it's all about the content you put in it and it's all about how you've proofread it and how you've guided it, and how you've then taken that and built it out into it into something to provide somebody else. So yeah, I think it's about starting with what you're the best at and then learning those skills around AI, and then over time applying formulas you know you work into other contexts.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that's the first time I've had that explained to me. It's not something you want to use to move you from one to an eight because you don't know whether it's an eight or a four. It's one something you want to use to help you be more efficient, what you're already really good at. Okay, in that case, why would the unashamed plug? I want everyone to go to this event. I really do. I will and if you go to this event and hate it or even don't like it, I will send you a box of chocolates. Okay, that's good. And then you can fund those chocolates. But anyway, it's like I'm that certain that you will love it. The reason I'm going is because I need to learn and I need to upskill. And I'm no different to anyone else in this industry. Anyone here who thinks that they can just ignore AI for it and its impact on their business for another six months, another 12 months. Like, guys, we're deceiving ourselves. The time to think like that was three years ago, the time to think like that is not now. So, Tanya, this might sound a bit weird. I actually spend about two hours every week just dedicated to learning stuff. That's it. I have no financial goal from it. I just I know one day it'll come back to me. And so next week, that's gonna be what what I like at that event, that's gonna be that what I spend that time on. Why would you say it's so important that NDIS directors in particular get really good at working out how to get AI into their business?
SPEAKER_01I would say that it isn't AI that's replacing people's jobs, it's people who know how to use AI. And so as a business owner and a business leader, we are working in an incredibly competitive landscape. And all of your competitors are figuring out how they can do things smarter, faster, cheaper, better using AI. And if you're not, then the gap is just getting bigger between the people who do and don't use AI and the speed in which their businesses move and the ability to be lean and agile and most importantly, take advantage of opportunity when it comes up. A good example is recently we had a tender open for the first time in a couple of years. It was their the DVA tender. It was only open for a month. And people who had tender packs ready, people who had done tenders before, people who were comfortable with writing tenders were able to put in that tender very quickly and receive additional funding, where people who had not prepared to do a tender were not. And so that's one of the examples. I'm not saying they they necessarily used AI for that process, but it's about having the skills to do things as needed as the opportunities arise. And in the current landscape, there's so much changing all the time. There's it's such a fast-paced environment when it comes to standards. If you don't keep up to date with everything that's happening, it makes it impossible for you to get ahead or even to just to stay exactly where you are now. You automatically start getting pushed behind if you're not keeping on top of all of the things as they get introduced.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's true. And it let's extrapolate on, let's take what you're saying at face value, because it's true, but let's assume what you said is exactly true. What that means is if your staff are not already using AI to an extent on a regular basis, embedded in your systems, okay. And if they're not already doing that, then you're already behind. And what that means is that as the price guide doesn't increase or it doesn't increase proportionally to what it should for you to maintain your current cost base, you're just gonna get further and further behind. So the people who are gonna win in NDIS world are gonna be the people who they may not have the best service provision for people. In fact, they might have a terrible service provision for people, but they can afford to stay in the game profitably. So they're gonna be there while you're not. Am I missing something, Tanya? That sounds like a terrible outcome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And the thing is that everyone is already using AI. It's just how good and for what uses are they using AI? And if you don't currently have a process and a policy in your business on what your staff can and can't use AI for, then they've got you've got shadow use of AI going on. If you don't have a process that says you can't use it for this and you should use it for this and you must use it for this, then you've got all of your staff making up their own processes and systems on how they're doing things. And when they leave and you're trying to get someone up to speed on their role, that'll be impossible if you don't know what they're using AI for, how that works in their role specifically, and it makes it a really hard transition to a new staff member. It's much better for you to embrace AI, work with each key role in your business to determine how they're using AI and set systems and processes around to make sure it's safe, make sure it's effective, and make sure it's the best use for AI. Otherwise, there are many risks and many breaches and business continuity risks that that come from the use, the shadow use of AI.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Okay, and I'm gonna ask you for some examples of how you're using AI to streamline your business. But this this mini podcast or this short video is an example of my team. So I used to pay uh a guy to edit my podcast, he might spend, say, three or four hours editing a podcast. What you and I are now using a particular piece of software, Riverside, to record this conversation, and it will edit everything out so that the guy on my team now spends less than 40 minutes editing this. And so I've we've taken those hours that we used to spend and we can use them more productively. That would be an example of how I'm using AI to keep my cost low in my business so I can serve more people and do more podcasts. Otherwise, I couldn't do weekly podcasts. What's the way that you're using the skills that people are going to be learning at this conference in your business that helps people that you're just so glad that you have?
SPEAKER_01Yes, there's many ways that I use AI. I use Gemini as my AI assistant, and we actually have it embedded in most of the things we do in our business across the Google workspace. We have custom gems set up for lots of different functions. An example is every client meeting that I have is recorded on Google Meets. Automatically, those recordings turn into transcripts and turn into action items. They then get populated and sent out to the clients. If we have an internal team meeting, we're able to grab the transcript from that meeting and put it in a custom gem and it automatically updates our management tasks for the week and that automatically pushes to a spreadsheet, which gives us a list of who's working on what for us all to see in one central location. We also use, we've built out a number of tools inside our business using AI, things like internal audit tools that we use to check client files. We also have built out Auditly, our system that is a policy generator. And in Auditly, what Auditly does is it checks 400 pieces of legislation every day. It has a web hook that it manually goes and checks and scrolls all the legislation in our register and checks for any changes. If there's any changes, it manually alerts me. So I can go and it gives me a summary of what's changed. I then go in and compare our policies and can go in there and identify what needs to be changed. I manually do that work. And then inside Auditly, we can push those changes out to all of our clients and then they can accept those changes in their own policy set that they have customized, like a like a track change inside Microsoft. So there's lots of things we can use AI for. We also have AI built into our policy editor. And so if you are a small business and you want your policies to sound more like you, you can use AI in your policies for it to change the tone, but it also has AI guardrails built in. So you can't remove something from a policy that's actually required under the standards. So you can actually edit those policies freely, knowing that there's guardrails to stop you removing something that you might fail at audit, and also to customize it to your business as easily as possible.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So if we have a look at that, Tanya, are you okay if we dig into that for a moment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_00And people hearing this for the first time, it's the truth whether it we've thought it through or not. A couple of years ago, if someone could have seen what AI was going to do, they would have looked at your business model, Tanya, of consulting around compliance and gone, oh, AI will eliminate the need for a Tanya. But then here you are, Tanya, going, Oh, let's use AI to basically make sure that everyone is compliant within a day of legislation being changed. So AI didn't kill your business, it made your business 10,000 times more effective. And you're even more right up the top of the tree with compliance because who else can get hundreds of clients sorted within a day of new legislation? That's insane. And that's what you were saying before of AI is not going to kill jobs, or at least in the first five or ten years, AI won't kill jobs of everyone. AI will kill the jobs of people who aren't using it. And yeah, and what you're doing is just a living example. So I guess I want everyone to go to this conference. I really do. When you go, I'd love to meet you, and not just that, I just know you're gonna get something from it. Because being in the same room as other people who are willing to learn about this stuff means that you're to you're choosing peers who are leaders, not followers. Okay, so I want everyone to go. What are the details again and how does someone book into that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it is Innovate Care. It's the 5th of August in Sydney at the Establishment Ballroom in George Street in the middle of the city. And you can come to tanyugomez.com.au forward slash innovate hyphen care, or just have a look on any of my socials and there's lots of promos running, or just you can DM me, email me, touch base with me, and I'm happy to provide you with a link to book in if if finding the website's a challenge.
SPEAKER_00That's right. And if you're watching this in a year, we're talking about 2026, August 2026. And if you're watching this in a year, you can text Tanya and tell us she either got it right or she got it wrong. It didn't take your job or it did. Okay. Tanya, thank you so much for spending time with us today. I appreciate the work you do. I appreciate that you allow NDIS and Allied Health Directors to just do their job instead of spending their whole life going on an audit holiday where they abandon their business for a month and just go around circles and forget their family. So the contribution you have in this industry is so good. I appreciate you so much, and thank you for spending this time with us today.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. Thanks so much for having me, Michael. It's always lovely to see you, and I'm looking forward to seeing you at Innovate Care in August.
SPEAKER_00Love it.