The question every NDIS and aged care leader should be asking

For leaders across aged care and disability, navigating change is now part of running the organisation.

New Lumary CEO Daniel Wyner brings experience across technology, payroll and workforce compliance, having spent his career scaling businesses and navigating complex operational challenges. He also has a personal connection to the disability sector, shaping his understanding of the role providers play in people’s lives.

Joining Lumary in June 2026, he steps into the role at a time when providers are facing increasing pressure around regulation, sustainability and service delivery.

For him, the organisations best placed to respond are not necessarily the biggest. They’re the ones who understand how their organisation works and have the right foundations in place to adapt.

“For me, the key is making sure organisations have operational confidence,” he says.

Better decisions start with understanding your operations

Operational confidence starts with knowing what is happening across the organisation day to day – having the right people, with the right skills, supporting the right participants at the right time.

“On face value, that’s easy,” he says. “You look at the participant, the service being delivered, and the income coming in.”

“But if you’re not actually looking at the implications of what else that specific care worker is doing, then it’s very easy for your whole week’s roster to balloon out and cost you significantly more. It eats into your margins, and in a lot of situations, means that your entire roster can end up being loss-making.”

Overtime, penalty rates, travel and insufficient breaks all change the picture. Wyner says many providers are still working across disconnected systems.

He says the providers with good operational foundations are the ones that can plan ahead: 

“They have good operational foundations, are costing their rosters in advance and really thinking about how they deliver the right level of support to participants – they’re going to have more time and resources to invest in the future and navigate what’s happening in the market.”

Compliance should create confidence, not constant pressure

Compliance expectations will continue to increase, and Wyner believes that is necessary. 

“Compliance is a must-have,” he says.

The challenge for leaders is making compliance part of everyday operations, rather than something teams are constantly chasing. 

He gives an everyday example: a support worker whose Working with Children Check has expired but is still rostered to work. While it may seem like an administrative issue, it can expose an organisation to significant risk.

“It shouldn’t need to be an administrative burden,” Wyner says. “If you set things up with the right systems and processes in place, those things should take care of themselves.”

“If you don’t put the right foundations in place, you’re constantly on the treadmill, and it’s really hard to get off.”

Leaders need to look beyond the next reform

Wyner says the focus needs to move beyond responding to the next regulatory change and towards preparing for where the sector is heading.

“What does our organisation look like in two to three years when more of this regulation comes in? And what, therefore, do we need to be doing to build a plan for that?”

For him, one example comes from his previous experience in payroll and compliance: the introduction of Single Touch Payroll.

Before Single Touch Payroll, regulators had limited visibility into whether businesses were meeting their superannuation obligations. Information was largely captured through annual reporting, meaning issues could go undetected until it was too late.

“The government saw a problem where a lot of Australian workers were without their superannuation, and that was going to cause a much greater problem 20 or 30 years down the track when people retired,” Wyner says.

The response wasn’t simply more enforcement. It was better information.

“Single Touch Payroll meant that every time somebody gets paid, that information is transmitted to the tax office. They could use that data and then reference: people are earning this amount of money, are there superannuation accounts reflecting the same?”

Wyner believes disability and aged care are moving in a similar direction, with regulators seeking greater visibility around funding, claims and service delivery.

“Are we even collecting the right data that we know is going to be of value to help us with our compliance efforts?”

For providers, the opportunity is to prepare before change becomes urgent.

“If there’s signalling that these things are coming, we can look at how other government departments have gone down these paths and start thinking about how we set up our organisations the right way.”

Technology should remove friction, not add more work

Technology, Wyner says, should take friction out of care work and solve real problems, rather than being introduced because it’s new.

“Technology needs to be used as an enabler.”

For frontline teams, that means less administration and an easier way for multiple workers to contribute to a participant’s care.

“If technology is not making the life of the caregiver or support worker better, then ultimately it’s not making the life of the participant better either.”

Sustainability is the foundation of better care

Wyner believes the future of the sector depends on financially viable and operationally confident providers.

“If we can make sure those organisations are financially viable and operationally confident, then we know they’re going to be delivering better outcomes for the people that need that care.”

His connection to the sector is also personal. His brother-in-law is an NDIS participant, giving him a firsthand understanding of the difference the right support can make for individuals and families.

“I’ve seen the impact, the real-life impact, the outcomes of the intention of this program,” he says.

For Wyner, that reinforces why sustainability across the sector matters.

“We need to make sure those organisations are financially viable, they’re operationally confident, and they’ve got the right frameworks in place because then we know they’re going to be delivering better outcomes for the people that need that care.”

What gives him confidence is the people working across disability and aged care – people he describes as “true believers in what they’re doing and the outcomes that come as a result.”

“We can’t afford for the disadvantaged to be left behind.”

For more information, visit https://lumary.com/