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Key points
- There are simple, easy things employers can do to make their workplaces more inclusive.
- Many new initiatives that would benefit neurodiverse employees would benefit all employees.
- As organizations consider their post-COVID options for structuring work, they should take the opportunity to make key changes.
As more people gain access to the COVID-19 vaccine and businesses across the country continue to open up, many companies may be facing key decisions about how to structure their work environments in the post-COVID era.
Many people have found that they can be just as productive, if not more so, working from home. Others may not have that option if their work can only be done in person. And still others might prefer the flexibility to choose, depending on the day and the type of work that needs to get done. It will behoove many companies to start thinking more creatively about their workspace arrangements, physical spaces, and work-from-home policies.
While organizations consider the costs and benefits of a new post-pandemic work environment, they should also be taking this opportunity to consider the vast number of people in their workforce who are neurodiverse.
Neurodiversity encompasses a wide range of differences in the way peoples’ brains process information, which can be any one or a combination of things such as autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and many more. If you really think about it, you could say that everyone is technically “neurodiverse” because no two brains will be exactly the same. Where the term becomes useful, though, is in cases where a person may experience enough differences in the way they think and interact that it gets in the way of everyday life.
As an autistic individual, I feel like I’m swimming upstream most of the time because my brain just doesn’t flow the way the mainstream does. This can make succeeding in a traditional work environment more challenging for me than it really should be.
And yet, many of the accommodations that would make my work life easier (as you will see below) would also benefit people who would not consider themselves part of the autism spectrum. This is one of the most beautiful things about neurodiversity—the changes we make to better serve those who are neurodiverse benefit all of us.
With this in mind, here are five things companies can do to become more neurodiverse friendly in a post-pandemic environment:
1. Consider flexible and individualized workspace arrangements.
Oh, you’re already doing this because of the forced-virtual environment many of us entered during the pandemic? Great!
As you make these considerations for your general workforce, remember that, especially for neurodiverse employees, the ability to minimize distraction and customize our work environment to meet unique sensory needs is key.
I have been very fortunate most of my career to have been afforded either my own private office or an office space shared with only a few others. I have therefore been able to create a space at work that suited my needs—lowered lights or table or floor lamps instead of bright overhead lighting, the opportunity for a quiet, people-free space when I needed to decompress from a large meeting or concentrate on an important project, etc.
A busy, loud, motion-heavy, open-atmosphere working environment, even if divided by cubicles, would have been very difficult for me to navigate as a neurodivergent person who thrives in the ability to focus and for whom “small” distractions (like a coworker popping in unexpectedly to chat) can lead to a lot of lost productivity.
Not every organization will have the option of providing private office spaces for every employee. Many therefore may want to consider other flexible options, such as work-from-home arrangements, where employees can better control their own work environment, or perhaps creating designated “quiet rooms” that can be used by any employee who needs a break from a more open-plan work environment. Allowing employees who may have to spend time in a more open-plan or communal environment to use personal sensory-regulation items such as headphones, tinted glasses, visors, and so forth can also be very helpful for those of us who experience the world more intensely than others.
2. Normalize the ability to prioritize rather than multitask.
In this fast-paced, ultra-connected world, we often lose sight of the fact that the human brain—any human brain, but especially one that is neurodivergent—is not built for extreme multitasking. Here we are trying to get everything done all at once because of time constraints, monetary goals, bottom lines, deadlines, and more—but is it all getting done well? How much quality are we sacrificing for quantity, and when do we cross that line into everything falling apart?
Yes, an ability to juggle multiple tasks at once or to keep several threads moving at the same time is helpful to have in any workplace or life situation.
But too often in our workplaces, we glorify the ability to multitask to such a degree that employees feel like they have no choice but to be working on their next report while also on a conference call while also prepping for their next meeting. Or put that example in whatever work context makes sense for your experience—whether it’s an office or a construction site, one person doing three things at once is not ideal. For the well-being of the person or for the quality of the work itself.
Instead, workplaces can build a culture of rewarding and encouraging the prioritization of tasks, as opposed to multitasking. Offer an HR-based workshop or training on prioritizing, and encourage managers to help their team prioritize their deliverables for the day or for the week. One person can still get multiple things done under a tight time constraint and give each one the attention it deserves by focusing on one at a time in the right order. This might mean an employee having to come back to a task after taking care of another urgent need that comes up unexpectedly—but your employees will be more empowered to put down one thing and take care of another rather than falling apart under the weight of too many tasks all at once.
3. When hiring, offer a skills-based assessment.
So much of the traditional interview and hiring process is based on interpersonal interaction. How a person “looks” or “carries themselves,” how they respond to social cues, how they build a relationship with the interviewer in the short time that they have to interact. This single-minded emphasis on highly subjective and subtle parameters can put neurodiverse people who interact differently than what might be considered the “norm” at an automatic disadvantage.
Is it important for a new employee to “fit in” with the culture of the workplace? Sure, to a certain degree—but you also don’t want a whole organization full of the same type of person.
Is it important for an employee to be able to navigate various social situations? Maybe, but not necessarily. If the role is going to be customer- or client-facing, then yes, but you can test for that capacity with specific questions or role-play situations that don’t depend on a person’s ability to spontaneously make small talk or laugh at a joke.
Employers can be much more inclusive in their hiring practices—adding more diversity of thought and problem-solving to their workforce—by balancing their interview process with more skills-based assessments. Find out whether a candidate can, in fact, do the work that you want to hire them for, not just whether they can put an interviewer at ease in the first 20 minutes of meeting them.
4. Create structured social opportunities or affinity groups.
Where possible, it can be very helpful for employee morale across the organization to invest some time and resources in supporting more structured opportunities for social engagement within the (physical or virtual) workplace.
These can take the form of optional “Lunch and Learn” events, where one or more employees make a short presentation to peers about a relevant topic, followed by discussion and more casual interaction. Another great way to create intentional space for workplace social engagement is through supporting employees in establishing and running specific “affinity” groups—for example, a women’s group, or a father’s group, or a black and brown people’s caucus.
In addition to benefiting the entire organization, designated social “spaces” like these can be very helpful for an employee who is neurodivergent and may not otherwise take the initiative to engage with coworkers socially. Interacting regularly with colleagues in a slightly less formal environment is often how people begin to move up in their career or take on additional responsibilities, and neurodiverse people are often excluded from this opportunity when expected to wield social capital the same way “neurotypical” people would.
Adding a little more structure to an otherwise intimidating social opportunity creates a safer space for neurodivergence.
5. Cultivate workplace mentors.
So many times, what ends up making the difference between retaining or losing a neurodivergent employee is not the quality or quantity of their work or results, but rather all of the “little” things that start to pile up and that many employers just feel like they can’t appropriately address. The fact that an employee never remembers to turn off his cellphone in meetings and always disrupts the discussion when his phone goes off. The way another employee never comes to have a quick chat about a misunderstanding instead of typing out an annoying four-paragraph email about all the things she needs clarification on.
So many of these “little things” that we tend to think people should already just know or pick up on as they go along (because we measure based on neurotypical experience) are actually very easy to fix—and yet, employers often let them pile up until something breaks.
Instead, many organizations have found great success in nurturing employee-mentoring programs. A mentor can be someone who is a peer or “higher up” in the organization and can meet with a mentee on a regular basis just to chat or to work on specific career goals. If the employee who tends to write long emails, for example, had access to a mentor who could let her know that actually a lot of people would rather have a 5-minute live conversation instead of spending 10 minutes reading a bunch of one-way written words, she might have much more success getting what she needs from colleagues (and not annoying people at the same time!). Having access to a mentor is a great thing for everyone, not just for someone whose brain works a little differently.
If an organization doesn’t have the internal capacity to develop its own mentoring program, there are many resources available for companies to invest in third-party mentoring opportunities for their employees.
