With Neurodiversity Celebration Week falling between 18 and 24 March this year, and Autism Awareness Day on 2 April (part of World Autism Acceptance Week, 1–7 April), now is a good time to look at neurodiversity in the workplace.
The benefits of a neurodiverse workforce are gradually being understood. Yet because many workplaces still make inadequate provision for those on the spectrum, they risk losing out on attracting this cohort to their organisation.
‘Sometimes people get offended because I’m too direct’
Cue-blind
The barriers that employees with autism face in the workplace will vary significantly depending where on the very wide neurodivergency spectrum the individual is. Rebecca Westwood FCCA, a capital account manager with Welsh social landlord Tai Tarian, who has Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, explains the difficulty that interactions present for her.
‘Basically, my brain doesn’t process information in the same way as someone who doesn’t have the condition,’ she says. ‘You often don’t pick up social cues. If someone makes a joke, or says something with a double meaning, you’ll listen to what they’ve actually said rather than what the underlying or double meaning is.
‘You can interact with society, but you still find things difficult. Before being diagnosed with Asperger’s, I just didn’t understand why I didn’t get on.’
‘When people understand your strengths and weaknesses, we all work well together’
Playing to strengths
But after Westwood received her diagnosis, she could start focusing on the aspects of her role that played to her strengths. ‘My employer at the time reorientated my job towards non-customer-facing tasks, which were more analytical and more data-intensive. My colleagues were given instructions on how best to speak to me to get the right results.
‘In any workplace you’ve got to learn the processes, the culture and how things are done. These of course differ from organisation to organisation, but it would be lovely if they all worked in the same way. For me, it’s easier when someone is direct and says “Can you do this?” rather than “We’d like you to do this.”’
She says colleagues have to had to learn to understand her manner. ‘Sometimes people get offended because I’m too direct. I’ll say “I need this information – why haven’t you given it to me?” There won’t be any pleasantries such as “I hope you’re not too busy but…”.
‘However, when people understand your strengths and weaknesses, and understand you might not interact socially, as long as you get on with the work and the output is good, we all work well together.’
‘Amazing and appalling’
Annette Boulter FCCA, group finance director for the UK arm of pump manufacturer Hidrostal, is autistic and had a similar experience earlier in her career. ‘There were clear signs that everything wasn’t so-called “normal”. I’d characterise my behaviour at that time as alternately amazing and appalling,’ she says.
She felt she had to do a lot of pretending, didn’t always understand how to get along with the ease that other people seemed to, and spent a lot of time masking – at great cost to her energy and stress levels.
‘A few small changes from my employer means I can work to my full potential’
‘I walked away from one job,’ she says, ‘and at another I was just totally out of phase with the team.’ She had counselling several times in her early career, but it wasn’t until she received her diagnosis and therapy was targeted towards her neurodiversity that it started to work.
Today, her employer is aware of her diagnosis and happy to accommodate her. ‘They know that a few small changes from them means I can work to my full potential,’ she says.
‘I may not be great at looking you in the eye when I’m talking to you, and I may not be able to add numbers in my head, but I can still build a data model to run the second-largest oil refinery in Europe.’
Accommodating diversity
So what steps can employers take to integrate neurodiversity into the workplace?
Westwood says her current employer has taken steps to ‘allow me to function. For example, they know that in virtual meetings, whilst the culture is to not use cameras, I need the cameras on. Simple little things like that are extremely useful.’
Boulter believes that employers are beginning to get a better understanding of the condition, and recognising the potential of the neurodiverse contribution. ‘They are realising that the accommodations they have to make are pretty simple and the benefits they get out of neurodiverse people are huge. Making the odd effort here and there means that neurodiverse staff won’t leave your business, or worse, stay there but be miserable, exhausted and underutilised.’
Jane Cullen, training manager at The Brain Charity, explains: ‘By creating a neurodivergent-friendly workspace with even small accessibility changes, organisations can accommodate a huge range of people and create an inclusive and considerate work environment that demonstrates to all staff the value of employees.’
‘Find that niche and give them that opportunity, and they’ll fly’
Valued staff
At TT2, which runs the Tyne Tunnels, head of finance Lesley Smith FCCA says the company has worked with North East Autism Society (NEAS) to run a successful year-long employment pilot programme. ‘Some autistic people excel in roles where accuracy and concentration are needed,’ she says. ‘The colleagues provided to us through the trial with NEAS are now performing the tasks more quickly and with fewer errors, and are now valued members of our permanent staff.’
One of them, customer experience team member Harris Roxborough, says that at TT2 she’s excited to go into work. ‘We’re just like everybody else; it’s just that we have more narrow fields of things we can do. You give us that one thing that we can do, and we do it exceptionally well. And that’s what you need to do with an autistic person: you need to find that niche and give them that opportunity, and they’ll fly.’
Adrian Wallace, CEO of TT2, urges employers to create more opportunities and consider their business models and operational approaches to understand where those neurodiversity opportunities arise.
Wallace says: ‘This is a massively personal thing for me as well, not just the business, as I’m a father of two kids with neurodiversity – a 19-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter. We have a great relationship with NEAS. We’re actually able to work with neurodiversity as a core part of our business, and it just forms part of our day to day now. And that’s how things should be.’
What is neurodiversity?
According to Harvard Health Publishing, neurodiversity encompasses the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways. There is no one ‘right’ way of thinking, and neurodiversity covers the diversity of all people, although it is often used in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as other neurological or developmental conditions such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning disabilities.
