Most disability providers only hear from the Fair Work Ombudsman after something has already gone wrong. That is not what is happening right now.
The Fair Work Ombudsman is running a multi-year inquiry into compliance with workplace laws in the disability support services sector, and its first stage is not enforcement, it is fact finding. It wants to hear from employers, employees, contractors and clients about what is actually going wrong before it decides what to do about it.
Here is what the inquiry is, why it exists now, how to contribute, and a self-audit checklist you can run on your own payroll while you're at it.
In July 2026, Melbourne disability provider Yooralla signed an Enforceable Undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman after rectifying $2.05 million in underpayments, including interest and superannuation, to 1,389 current and former staff, most of them casual disability support workers underpaid between March 2018 and March 2024. The missed entitlements were casual shift loadings, casual overtime rates, broken shift penalties, and a higher duties allowance for high intensity support work, the exact line items that trip up SCHADS payroll teams most often. Yooralla found out the way most providers do, one employee asked a question about their pay.
It is not an isolated case. Queensland provider Agape Reablement and Support Services is facing Federal Court action over an alleged failure to comply with a Fair Work Compliance Notice covering underpaid minimum wages and penalty rates for a casual disability support worker.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has named the disability support services sector one of its priority areas, citing award complexity, high use of casual staff, high turnover, and significant regulatory change as recurring compliance challenges. The inquiry is the structural response to that pattern, rather than case-by-case enforcement.
The inquiry runs in stages. Right now it is in fact finding: engaging with stakeholders, identifying patterns of non-compliance, and working out what is actually driving it. Later stages move into tailored education, then investigation of the most concerning behaviours. If non-compliance is found, the Fair Work Ombudsman will give employers the tools to fix it before using enforcement tools where needed.
There are two ways in, and neither requires registration or paperwork.
Email disability@fwo.gov.au with your experience of workplace relations in the sector, your role (employer, employee, contractor, client, or otherwise involved), and the state or territory involved. Do not attach any files, they cannot be received. This inbox is for sharing your experience of the sector, not for getting help with an active workplace issue, use the usual Fair Work channels for that.
Or attend an open forum or drop-in session. Group sessions are a collaborative discussion, drop-ins are one-on-one. No registration needed.
Good to know before you go: staff at these forums cannot discuss NDIS rules or workplace health and safety requirements, and cannot take individual requests for assistance, the inquiry is specifically about workplace relations experience.
Run this against your own payroll setup, regardless of whether you contribute to the inquiry:
None of these are simple yes/no checks. They depend on interpreting SCHADS clauses correctly and having a payroll system that applies them consistently, shift after shift, without someone manually catching every edge case. That is the actual problem the inquiry is trying to get to the bottom of, and it is the same problem Pay Cat's engine is built to handle.
The Fair Work Ombudsman moving from "here's your fine" to "tell us what's broken" is a genuinely different moment for this sector. Providers who contribute now have a chance to shape what compliance support looks like once the inquiry moves past fact finding. Providers who wait risk finding out the hard way, the same way Yooralla did.
SCHADS payroll is complex, from sleepovers to broken shifts, but it does not have to be. Pay Cat is the only provider of a 100% compliant SCHADS payroll template, built to automate award interpretation, reduce errors, and save hours every pay run.
We do not just hand over software. Our team delivers a fully implemented solution backed by compliance experts, so you can stay focused on care, not payroll.
We're here to help. If the self-audit above raised questions about your own setup, chat with us.