Embracing Neurodivergence in the Workplace

Embracing neurodiverse perspectives in the workplace creates an inclusive culture, ensuring everyone feels valued and is able to add value. Fostering an inclusive workplace helps you tap into the valuable talent available to you. It makes for a supportive and thriving work culture; enabling your organisation to attract and retain the very best people. In this article we explore the challenges for neurodiverse workers and offer practical tips for employers to nurture neurodiverse talent.

What is neurodiversity? The Brain Charity explains this superbly: “Each person has a brain that is unique to them; no two brains are quite the same. Neurodiversity is the concept that brain differences are natural variations. Some people’s brains simply work in a different way.”

These differences mean they may be diagnosed with neurological conditions such as autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and may consider themselves to be neurodivergent. This is thought to affect at least 20% of the UK population.

What are the advantages of neurodiversity in the workplace?

As we’ve covered before in our article How to build an inclusive workplace, diversity and inclusion is a key topic for successful businesses, enabling companies to tap into a wider talent pool.

Neurodivergent workers offer incredible strengths in the workplace – in fact these strengths are sometimes referred to as untapped superpowers! A 2023 report by Burbeck university found that both employees and employers reported that remarkable abilities and work strengths included:

• Ability to hyper focus on tasks
• Creativity
• Innovative thinking
• Detail processing

Lucy Smith is the founder of Inclusive Change. Her company aims to support workplaces to develop understanding of neurodiversity and achieve success, through workshops, training and resources. She says: “There are many other strengths and challenges but these are the top ones and it is important to say that this does not represent every neurodivergent person but a range of strengths. For instance, you will find a dyslexic person may have a slower processing speed in both written and verbal communication, but may have creative and innovative strengths.”

 Sarah Shardlow is Trading and Merchandising specialist at the Southern Co-op and was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 34. She explains how having ADHD makes her excellent at solving efficiency challenges within a business: “My inability to tolerate boredom means I naturally come up with creative, efficient solutions to make the tasks quicker, or solutions to make them not necessary anymore. I’m a great problem solver and good at foreseeing potential problems and coming up with solutions.”

What are the challenges for neurodiverse employees?

What’s it like to be neurodivergent in the workplace? Challenges will vary from person to person, depending not only on the diagnosis, but also on the individual. These are five very common challenges faced by many neurodiverse individuals in the workplace:

• Looking after your mental and physical health
• Concentration
• Asking for help when you need it
• Working memory
• Understanding others’ intentions.

Every neurodiverse individual will have their own challenges and strengths. With Sarah, a huge challenge for her is time blindness. She explains: “Time blindness is a big one that a lot of people don’t realise this is quite prevalent in ADHD people. Basically, I can’t perceive the passing of time, so I don’t know if it’s been five minutes or an hour. And that goes for anything, especially if I’m very focused on something.”

Working memory is a difficulty for many neurodivergents, whether they have dyspraxia, ADHD or dyslexia. For Sarah, short term memory problems have been really hard to deal with in the workplace: “If I was given instructions in a verbal way, or in a meeting, I wouldn’t be able to remember them, especially if it was a multi-step instruction. I might be able to remember the first two steps but I wouldn’t be able to remember three, four and five.”

This caused Sarah problems, not only with actually actioning the tasks, but with feelings of humiliation: “It would be very embarrassing to have to repeatedly go back to whoever asked me to do something and say, ‘Oh, I can’t remember what you asked me to do’.”

How to embrace neurodiversity in the workplace

Thankfully for Sarah, now she doesn’t have to feel this way at work – as her employers have embraced making the workplace inclusive and worked with her in supporting her needs.

We asked Lucy how workplaces can embrace neurodiversity to create truly inclusive cultures. Her top three recommendations are below, along with a recommendation from Sarah.

1.     Start the conversation

Employers should encourage conversation in the workplace to raise awareness and begin the process. Lucy advises: “Look for some awareness training or something that can kick start the conversation about neurodiversity. What is it? Why it’s important for your organisation? Then take it deeper and create the change you want to see.”

2.     Focus on an inclusive approach

Neurodiversity shouldn’t be about “them and us” as Lucy explains: “Neurodiversity at its core is recognising that all brains are valued. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to consider how different people process information and their environment, but as a principle if we reduce barriers for neurodivergent people we make the workplace better for everyone.”

Which leads us on to…

3. Reduce barriers

“Consider how your organisation can reduce barriers for neurodivergent employees, leaders and applicants” advises Lucy.

She recommends that a great way of doing this is looking through the lens of the social model of disability. Lucy says: “This helps to assess environment, attitudes and organisational barriers. This could be at any point in the employee lifecycle.”

4. Work collaboratively to accommodate needs

As with disability in the workplace, assessments for accommodations for neurodivergent employees should be take on the same case-by-case bases, as a blanket approach will not suffice. Sarah says: “Neurodivergent people are all individuals; every single one of them is going to have a different set of struggles, a different set of strengths and different set of needs.

“The best way that you can find out how to support your individual employee is to talk to them and work with them in a collaborative manner, to find out how you can best support them and allow them to work in a way that works best for them, because that is how you’re going to get your best work out of them.”

For Sarah, the practical accommodations that her employers have implemented have made a huge difference to her working life: “I’m passionate about neurodiversity inclusion, not least because of the massive differences made to my work life and my work-life balance by the support and accommodations Southern Co-op has given me. I’m not as stressed anymore, I’m not feeling overwhelmed anymore. It’s much healthier for me and I’m doing much better work for it. The benefits for me have been huge, and the company has benefitted too.”

Accommodations will be unique to the individual and diagnosis, but could be:

• Dictation tools and visual timers
• Dual screens and ergonomic equipment
• Additional time for projects
• Fidget toys or additional comfort breaks in meetings
• The use of headphones
• Flexible working hours
• Short breaks throughout the work day
• Designated buddy or mentor.

Practical tips for employers

Lucy offers these practical tips for employers and hiring managers when it comes to creating an inclusive workplace culture for neurodiversity.

• Promote that you are neurodiversity friendly or aware – or at least ask the question “what can we do to support you to be your best?”(This isn’t asking for medical disclosure or diagnosis at all).
• Review your adverts and job descriptions ­– do you read things like “great communication skills”, “Good all-rounder”? Ask yourself how might a dyslexic applicant or an autistic introvert react? The chances are they will screen themselves out and not apply.
• Offer neurodiversity training for recruiting teams and panels. I have been one of those panel members and, when I didn’t know so much, I would have made different decisions. Now I notice and make adjustments for candidates who could be neurodivergent – even if they don’t tell me.
• The Equality Act 2010 protects neurodivergent candidates and employees with or without a formal diagnosis. This can be scary for employers. Make sure you are aware of these legalities.

We’d love to hear from you. What steps has your organisation made to foster an inclusive workplace and draw on the individual strengths of your employees? Are you a neurodiverse individual who has received excellent employer support? Get involved and share your stories with us on our social media channels.

Further reading

You can find more information about supporting neurodiversity in the workplace below.

• CIPD – Neurodiversity at work
• Birbeck University – Centre for Neurodiversity at work
• National Autistic Society – Advice on Employment
• Beyond Autism – Employer tool kit
• Dyspraxia Foundation – Employer’s guide to dyspraxia
• ADHD Foundation – Support for businesses
• Solent Mind – ADHD Self Care
• Supporting Dyslexia in the workplace