Flexible Work the New Norm? – Not New for NDISP – Zero Facetime Since Inception
For the NDISP Executive Team It’s Always Been Results Not Facetime
Facetime is an old phrase Darryl stole from the legal profession (and used in others I’m sure). Facetime is what young lawyers do, that is they make sure they are in the office before their seniors and still there when their seniors leave. Gives the appearance that someone is committed and working long hours.
NDISP has always had a Zero Facetime policy. That means unless someone needs to be in one of our offices for a reason (eg the front desk receptionist) our team have:
- no set hours
- no set holidays
- no set location (desk or office to work from if they wish).
For us it has always made sense (and was in place in our founder’s previous businesses for more than a decade).
One person could spend 12 hours in an office and not acheive what another could in 2 hours. Results matter, where and when you work often doesn’t.
Trust & Delegation – Or Treat Everyone Like a Grown Up
We have both worked in places where people, even very high achievers would get a serve for coming in late or leaving early. Yet they might have done 60 hours in the office, but just not the 9-5 minimum that was expected. It’s crazy.
We trust our team to do their work. We love what we do and try to find staff that also love it. People want to achieve success and what hours they do often has zero influence.
NDISP Key Work Values
- We are Nice People, We only Work with Nice People
- We are a People Business, Not a Property Business
- Employ people that are smarter than your and/or better at their role then you would be;
- Trust people to want to achieve, give them support they need and then get out of their way and let them get on with it
- Family First, Always. No one ever wishes they worked more on their deathbed. Make sure you get to the sports carnival, dance recital, award ceremony, reading group etc.
The New Norm Has Always Been Normal to Us
We were slightly bemused when there was all the conjecture about whether remote or flexible or whatever type of work could work due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s always worked for us. Not only do people get their work done when you trust them to, they tend to go above and beyond in thanking you for that trust.
New Team Members Needed
Our mission is to get as many people out of inappropriate accommodation and into places they are happy to call home as possible. We need a lot of people to help us achieve that.
NDISP employed over 20 FTE new team members in 2020. In 2021 we will employ even more.
This year we will need (not all today, but by Christmas):
- Relationship Managers – Our most rewarding role – their whole role is to make sure people are happy to call our places home;
- Project Manager – assisting our current Project Manager in scheduling or our maintenance and compliance;
- Junior Accountant – assisting our current 2 person team (CFO and Accountant) to deal with the volume of financial transactions in accounts payable and receivable;
- Architects – Join our existing 3 person team to design, check designs and advise to make sure we are maintaining our high standards (82 new buildings due to start between today and March 31 alone);
- Building Certifiers/ SDA Assessors – To inspect the builds that are happening and ensure quality control as well as compliance.
- Chief Operating Officer – We try and keep a really flat management structure and deploy as much of our resources in helping people to find places they are happy to call home. We are close to the point where our joint CEO’s (Darryl & Jon) are becoming the bottleneck that is slowing that process down. Before we do affect how many people we can help then we will employ a COO to allow as to help more people.
- Asset Managers – These are the people who look after our property owners and investors. Investors and owners are the ones who fund the properties that we create for people to call home.
- Chief Compliance & Legal Officer – The SDA and NDIS space has an enormous amount of compliance. While Darryl and his legal team currently handle this, we are not far from needing to hand it to someone to drive it.
- Chief Technology Office – NDISP puts over $60k of technology and automation in most properties we build. This makes people’s lives a little easier by using technology help their independence and freedom. Our existing tech team is growing and needs a visionary to drive this.
- Technology Team – Someone who drives a chair with their chin can roll up to one of our places, the gate opens, the foyer door opens, the lift gets called, takes them to their floor, their front door opens. That’s all without touching a button or doing anything – just by tagging their chair. Once inside they can control internal doors, blinds, fans, a/c, tv’s and more just with their voice, phone, tablet, switches or a whole range of AT. On top of that our participants have hundreds of support workers coming into their places each week. We have enterprise grade access control systems, so their are pin numbers, tags and smart apps to issue/delete/change. This gear all needs programming when someone moves in – we need more tech people to not only implement what we have but to develop and improve to help people even further.
- Design/Marketing/Information/Social Media Person – Unfortunately there is still much education needed in the SDA space. We need someone to make sure they can put our information together in formats that participants of all abilities can access.