Worker onboarding forms and AI data leakage: what an NDIS worker file gives away in ChatGPT or Claude.

Onboarding a new support worker means collecting identity documents, an NDIS Worker Screening Check clearance, tax and bank details, a health declaration, referees and notes about their availability and family. Services paste the form into ChatGPT or Claude to extract the fields into the payroll system or to draft the induction plan. The file also records how far the induction has got, which matters if something goes wrong. This page marks every item in a routine worker file that the Practice Standards, the TFN Rule and the Privacy Act bear on, and shows how the same extraction runs on Ermos inside the service.

The worker onboarding form

Completed when a worker is engaged and updated as the induction progresses. People in risk-assessed roles, including key personnel, need an NDIS worker screening clearance, and registered providers are responsible for identifying and keeping records of their risk-assessed roles.

Worker file
Brushbox Community Supports · Support Worker (casual) · Last updated 21 October 2026

Worker	Callum James Reeves, born 22 May 1996, 31 Seaview Avenue, Swansea NSW 2281, 04xx xxx 000¹
Emergency contact	Rachel Reeves (former partner and mother of his son), 04xx xxx 000⁵
NDIS Worker Check	Clearance no. WC0000000 (placeholder), valid to 11 August 2031, checked on the NDIS Worker Screening Database on 9 September 2026²
Identity and work rights	Driver licence NSW 1234 5678 (placeholder). Australian citizen. National Police Check dated 20 August 2026, no disclosable outcomes.³
Pay	TFN 123 456 782 · BSB 000-000, account 1234 5678 (placeholders) · Industry super fund, member 12345678⁴
Qualifications and referees	Certificate III in Individual Support (2022). First Aid and CPR current to May 2027. Referees: Dana Whitfield, team leader at his last employer; Alan Poole, volunteer coordinator.⁸
Health declaration	Lower back strain in 2023, workers compensation claim closed. Influenza vaccination 2026 done. No condition declared that affects duties.⁶
Availability	Shares care of his son (8) with Rachel. Not available before 9.30am on Wednesdays and Thursdays unless the school takes the boy. Asked not to be rostered on Friday nights.⁷
Induction	Orientation, Code of Conduct, incident and privacy modules complete 14 September. Shadow shifts: 3 of 4 complete (last 15 October). Sign-off for Graham Pettit shower transfers: pending. Manual handling refresher booked 3 November. Status from 20 October: stood down on pay pending review of the incident that day.⁹

An invented worker file. The TFN is the ATO’s published example value; the clearance, licence, bank and member numbers are placeholders. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the service

Identity, address and contact

A full name, date of birth, home address and phone number. Personal information about a worker. The Privacy Act has an employee records exemption for private sector employers, covering acts directly related to a current or former employment relationship, so this page does not rely on the Act for the worker’s details alone. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A worker’s identity and address transmitted, generally offshore on personal plans
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

The NDIS Worker Check clearance

The clearance number, its expiry and when it was verified. People in risk-assessed roles need a clearance, and the registered provider keeps records of those roles. A clearance number beside a name is an identifier.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A number checked with the screening unit; limited use alone but it identifies him beside his name
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Identity documents and police check

A licence number, citizenship and the result of a police check. The documents identity theft is built from. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Identity documents transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

TFN, bank account and super

A tax file number, a bank account and a fund. The TFN Rule limits what a recipient may do with TFN information to authorised purposes; an AI company is not an employer, a fund or the ATO. Tax file numbers guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Tax file number and bank details transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

An emergency contact

A third person named and described by her relationship to the worker, with a phone number. Her personal information, in someone else’s file. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	A third person’s name and number transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Health declaration

A past injury and a workers compensation claim, and vaccination status. Health information, which is sensitive information under the Privacy Act when the Act applies. Patient data guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Health information transmitted; on consumer tiers it can train future models
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Family circumstances

A shared parenting arrangement and the hours the worker cannot work. Personal detail that explains the shifts he is rostered, and that a competitor or a hostile ex-partner would find useful. Privacy Act guide.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Family circumstances transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Qualifications and referees

A qualification, first aid currency and two referees named with their roles. The referees’ personal information, and a record the service relies on.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Referees’ names are their personal information; a resume often carries the same
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia; leaves only inside a permitted excerpt, per question, to the named provider
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit in your office

Induction progress and status

How far the worker has got, what is still pending and that he is stood down. Part of the evidence about what the service did, and the sentence a reviewer or the Commission would read first after an incident.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	The state of the induction, and a stand-down, transmitted
Ermos Edge	Stays on your instance in Australia, but whether to sign a worker off is the team leader’s decision
Ermos Dominion	Stays on the unit, but whether to sign a worker off is the team leader’s decision

What happens in Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)

The whole document is transmitted to the provider’s servers. On personal plans the user cannot choose where it is stored or processed, and for the major providers that has generally meant outside Australia, under that country’s legal process. Some business plans offer storage in Australia, but the provider still receives the content.
On consumer tiers, prompts can be retained and used to train future models.
The provider’s staff and systems can reach the content under the provider’s own policies.
Once sent, the service no longer controls it. Retention and deletion happen on the provider’s terms.

The same document on Ermos

Ermos Dominion

The document is drafted on a unit in your office, from your own templates and the participant file. Every marked item stays on the unit, which keeps working with the internet switched off. Nothing in it is transmitted to an AI provider, so there is no disclosure to analyse: the confidentiality work is the same as for your file server.

Ermos Edge

Your documents, the index and your access boundaries stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre. When a staff member asks for this draft, only their question and the excerpts they are permitted to see go to a named Australian provider, who is contractually barred from keeping the content or training any model on it. Nothing is processed outside Australia.

	Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)	Ermos Edge	Ermos Dominion
Where the document is processed	Provider servers, generally offshore on personal plans	Your instance in an Australian data centre; answers generated in Australia	The unit in your office
Who can read it	Provider staff and systems, under policy	Your staff, within the boundaries you set. The named Australian provider processes only permitted excerpts, under contract, and keeps nothing	Your staff only
Is it kept	On the provider’s terms	Kept on your instance; the provider is barred from retaining it	Stays on the unit
Can it train a model	On consumer tiers, yes	No, by contract	Only your own unit learns from it, on your hardware

Part of AI data leakage in NDIS services.

Common questions

Does ChatGPT train on a worker onboarding form?

Everything pasted or uploaded to ChatGPT or Claude is sent to the AI company's servers and processed there to produce a reply. As at October 2026, whether a conversation on a personal plan (ChatGPT Free, Plus or Pro; Claude Free, Pro or Max) can be used to train the models depends on a setting each user controls. Business plans (ChatGPT Business and Enterprise, Claude Team and Enterprise) and the developer APIs sit under commercial terms, and OpenAI and Anthropic each say they do not train on that content by default (OpenAI, Anthropic). On either product, the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons can send a whole conversation back for training. The form carries Callum's tax file number, bank details, driver licence number, a health declaration and the days he cannot work because he shares care of his son.

Can we use ChatGPT or Claude for a worker onboarding form if we remove the names?

Not safely, because the form holds identifiers other than names. Removing names rarely makes a document anonymous. Information stays personal information while the person is reasonably identifiable, and the OAIC warns that information can be at risk of re-identification even when it has been de-identified or anonymised. A licence number, a clearance number, a tax file number and a shared parenting arrangement each point to one worker. The employee records exemption for private sector employers may limit the Privacy Act's reach over staff details, and the TFN Rule still limits TFN information to authorised purposes. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recommends in its guidance on commercially available AI products that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools, because of the significant and complex privacy risks.

Can I upload a worker onboarding form to ChatGPT or Claude instead of pasting it?

An uploaded form leaves the service as a whole file. It can carry other sheets, hidden columns, comments, tracked changes and file properties as well as the part you meant to share. The OAIC's guidance also tells organisations to review carefully the terms and settings that will apply to their use of any AI product. Here the file would also carry the licence and bank details, the health declaration and an induction status showing that Callum is stood down pending an incident review.

How can an NDIS provider use AI for a worker onboarding form without sending it to ChatGPT or Claude?

Ermos is built so the document stays under your control. On the Dominion AI unit it is drafted inside your office and none of it is sent to an AI provider. On Ermos Edge your documents and index stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre, and only the question and the excerpts the user is permitted to see go to a named Australian provider that is contractually barred from keeping them or training any model on them. The completed form is drafted from the worker's documents and the service's own onboarding form. The team leader checks it against the originals and decides whether to sign the worker off.

Which NDIS workers need worker screening?

People in risk-assessed roles, including key personnel, need an NDIS Worker Screening Check clearance. A risk-assessed role involves the direct delivery of specified supports where more than incidental contact with people with disability is likely, or is a key personnel role. Registered providers must identify their risk-assessed roles and keep records of them. In New South Wales a worker applies through Service NSW.

Does the Privacy Act apply to a worker's onboarding file?

The Privacy Act has an employee records exemption for private sector employers. The OAIC says handling of employee records is exempt where it is directly related to a current or former employment relationship, and the Act applies if the information is used for an unrelated purpose. The exemption may therefore limit the Act's reach over this form, but it does not change what a worker would expect of an employer.

What is the TFN Rule?

The Privacy (Tax File Number) Rule limits how a recipient of a tax file number may collect, use and disclose it. TFN information may be used or disclosed only for authorised purposes. An employer collects a worker's TFN for tax and superannuation. Putting it into a tool run by an AI company is a use the worker never agreed to and the Rule does not contemplate.

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