Introducing Worker Passport: One Verification, Works Everywhere

The problem every support worker knows

If you work in Australian aged care or disability support, you already know this story. Every new employer wants:

• A current police check
• An NDIS Worker Screening clearance
• Working with Children Check (in most states, even for adult services)
• First Aid and CPR certification
• Manual handling certification
• Infection control training (post-2020)
• Medication competency, if you administer
• Qualification certificates for every Cert III, Cert IV, or diploma you hold
• Two professional references
• A sometimes-bewildering induction process unique to that provider

And every time you join a new agency, casual roster, or provider, you start over. Most workers we surveyed for the Worker Passport beta were carrying between 9 and 14 active credentials, with renewal dates spread across the year, scattered across emails, lockers, and folders on three different phones. Many had let credentials lapse simply because they couldn't track them — and lapsed credentials are not just an inconvenience; under the post-Royal Commission compliance regime they're a fast track to being suspended from rosters.

The sector is facing a projected shortfall of 285,000 workers by 2050. We cannot afford to keep treating onboarding as if 1995 admin practices were acceptable.

What Worker Passport does

Worker Passport is a portable, verified digital credential that you build once and share everywhere. The core idea is simple: your credentials belong to you, not to any individual employer. Once verified, they should travel with you across every job, every agency, and every state.

In practice, that looks like this:

For workers

• Single verified onboarding — upload your police check, NDIS Worker Screening, Working With Children Check, qualifications, first aid, manual handling, and any other credentials. We verify each one with the issuing authority and timestamp the verification.
• Digital credential card — share a verified link or QR code with any employer. They see exactly what you've verified, the issuing authority, and the expiry date. No PDF email attachments, no rummaging through your filing cabinet.
• Expiry alerts — automatic notifications 60 days, 30 days, and 7 days before any credential lapses. Police checks every 5 years, NDIS Worker Screening every 5 years, first aid every 3 years — you stop having to track this manually.
• CPD tracking — log your continuing professional development hours across every employer. Especially valuable as the new Aged Care Worker Registration scheme rolls out in 2026, which will mandate CPD records for registered roles.
• Portable reputation — collect verified reviews and references from every provider you work for, attached to your verified identity. Your reputation moves with you instead of being trapped in one HR system.

For providers

• Instant verification — check a worker's credential status in seconds rather than the typical 2–3 day verification cycle. This is decisive in casual rostering, where a no-show on Saturday morning means the difference between getting cover and breaching service agreements.
• Workforce dashboard — one consolidated view of every worker's credentials and expiry dates. No more spreadsheet-based credential tracking, no more last-minute discoveries that someone's police check expired six weeks ago.
• Bulk onboarding — bring 20 casual workers compliant in hours, not weeks. Particularly valuable during the surge hiring that follows new Support at Home and NDIS plan starts.
• Audit-ready evidence — generate complete workforce documentation for the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission or NDIS Commission with a single export. The penalty regime under the NDIS Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025 makes evidence quality existential, not nice-to-have.

Why this matters now: the compliance environment has changed

Worker Passport isn't a nice-to-have product. It's a response to four converging policy shifts:

1. The new Aged Care Act 2024

The new Act introduces a Statement of Rights and a registration regime for aged care workers in clinical and personal care roles. This means tighter ongoing obligations to demonstrate that your workforce is and remains qualified — not just at hire, but throughout employment.

2. NDIS penalty escalation

The NDIS Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025 dramatically increased penalties:

• Maximum fines for Code of Conduct breaches leading to death or serious injury rose from $400,000 to $16.5 million
• Banning orders now carry criminal penalties of up to 5 years jail
• New registration tiers and ongoing compliance obligations are phasing in throughout 2026

For providers, the risk equation has flipped. Inadequate credential tracking is no longer an embarrassing audit finding — it's a genuine business-ending exposure.

3. Cross-sector workforce mobility

NDIS Review research found that 94% of NDIS providers operate in only one scheme, despite the workforce flowing freely between aged care, NDIS, and acute health. Workers shouldn't be the friction point in this mobility — but right now they are.

4. The persistent worker shortage

Every hour a qualified worker spends re-proving credentials they've already proven elsewhere is an hour not spent providing care. With a 285,000-worker shortfall projected, the sector cannot afford that drag.

How verification works

We treat verification as the product, not just a metadata check. For each credential type:

• Police checks: verified directly against the National Police Checking Service via an accredited body.
• NDIS Worker Screening: verified against the NDIS Worker Screening Database (state and territory issued, federally readable).
• Working with Children Check: verified against the relevant state/territory issuer.
• First Aid / CPR: verified against the issuing RTO's records, with course code, issue and expiry dates.
• Qualifications: verified against USI (Unique Student Identifier) records for AQF qualifications.
• Specialised competencies (medication, manual handling, infection control): verified against the issuing provider with a refresh cycle.

When an employer scans your QR code, they don't see a PDF you might have edited — they see a live verification record from us, signed and timestamped, with a direct link back to the issuing authority's record.

Privacy and consent

Workers control which credentials are visible to which employers. By default, an employer scanning your code sees only the credentials relevant to the role they're hiring you for. You can grant a temporary view-only link to a recruitment agency, revoke access from a former employer, and see a full audit trail of who has accessed your records.

We don't sell credential data. We don't share it with insurers, marketers, or analytics partners. The Privacy Act 2024 amendments and the Aged Care Act 2024 information-sharing rules guide our handling, and we publish a full data handling statement covering retention, disclosure, and overseas storage (none — all data is stored in Australia).

Pricing

Worker Passport is free for workers to create and maintain. The basic credential card, expiry alerts, and verification ledger are included at no cost. Premium worker features (priority verification, full CPD tracking with reporting export, portable reputation profile, multi-state credential bundling) are $69 per year.

Providers pay a per-worker subscription that scales with workforce size, integrated with our Provider Portal compliance command centre. Pricing for providers starts at $4 per active worker per month.

What's coming next

The current launch covers police checks, NDIS Worker Screening, Working With Children Checks, qualifications, and the most common competencies. Through 2026 we're adding:

• State-specific Disability Worker registration (Victoria's Disability Worker Registration Scheme integrates Q3 2026)
• Aged Care Worker Registration scheme integration as it rolls out under the new Act
• CPD course catalogue partnerships so workers can complete renewals directly from the Passport
• Pay history attestation for portable leave and training entitlements (one of the NDIS Review's recommendations on portability)

If your provider or workforce technology vendor wants to integrate, we publish an open API.

Get started

If you're a support worker — aged care, NDIS, mental health, or community — you can create your Worker Passport today. The basic credential card is free and takes about 15 minutes if you have your existing credentials handy.

If you're a provider drowning in spreadsheet-based credential tracking, book a Provider Portal demo. We'll show you how the Worker Passport workforce dashboard fits with your existing rostering and HR systems.

The sector deserves better than the credential merry-go-round. Worker Passport is our contribution.