Written By: Kimia Afzal

Much of the time, when a neurodivergent individual enters an organisation, the work environment is not inclusive and ready to embrace them.

For the employer, being aware of the sensitivities that affect those who are neurodiverse and creating an inclusive working environment that enables all employees to be the best version of themselves is a quick win.

Here are some tips to make the transition into the workplace for neurodivergent people a seamless one:

• In your onboardings, creating a “soft skills” module can help candidates who have never worked in a professional environment become familiar with the expected behaviours and norms of such a setting.
• Neurodiversity awareness education programs to educate all members of staff of expectations and ways in which to support.
• Communicate clearly or break down tasks into small steps, avoiding sarcasm, nuance and implied messages.
• A buddy program to ensure that neurodivergent employees have a support system in their team as well as management, helping them to settle in.
• Being aware of sound sensitivity – this can look like having a designated quiet area, allowing recruits to wear noise-cancelling headphones in an open-plan office available to everyone, and communicating unexpected noise changes.
• Allowing modifications to work clothing and uniform to make people feel more comfortable.
• Avoid spontaneous physical touch.
• Encouraging movement breaks.
• Make workplace and social etiquette known while also encouraging employees to not assume a neurodivergent employee’s behaviour or communication style is ‘rude’.
• Try to give notice in advance if plans change and why.
• Be kind and patient.

Ordinary HR practices are excluding and while you may think these reasonable adjustments are just ‘nice to have’, the numbers show us that embracing neurodiversity is empirical to achieving success in business and representing the society that we live in.

Written By: Kimia Afzal

Awareness of neurodiversity has improved in the last decade and we are seeing a shift in society’s attitudes towards inclusion, as well as mental health and wellbeing. According to Spill Chat, 81% of workplaces have increased their focus on employee mental health after the Covid-19 pandemic where livelihood instabilities caused an increase in mental health problems.

Important conversations and educational resources are being pushed for with regards to neurodiversity and how to support one another.

However, in the workplace, neurodivergent employees continue to face an array of difficulties as the attitudes and services of organisations, surrounding mental health, aren’t quite meeting the demands.

A 2023 study at Birkbeck, University of London, found that 65% of neurodivergent employees fear discrimination from management despite UK businesses promoting neurodiverse workplaces. They often fear they will face hiring biases, be ‘othered’, and fail to move up the the career ladder due to traditional interviewing techniques.

What this tells us is that organisations need to do more to accommodate neurodiversity.

Neurodivergent employees have vital creative skills when it comes to their performance at work and many of these skills will be top skills valued by employers in 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. They are likely to demonstrate some of the following: innovative thinking, problem solving, good memory, attention to detail, creativity, the ability to hyper-focus and be authentic at work.

Not to mention, Neurodivergent employees are also proven to help businesses to thrive, particularly in IT and Tech, to overcome difficulties and increase output success.

According to the Harvard Business Review, German software company SAP and HP Enterprise reported examples of neurodivergent employees’ participating on teams that generated significant innovations (one, at SAP, helped develop a technical fix worth an estimated $40 million in savings).

So how can we offer inclusive hiring practices to encourage more neurodivergent individuals into organisations?

• The traditional interview methods can be excluding as they place importance on body language, confidence and traditional salesperson-type personalities. But a hiring process where you send interview questions to the candidate in advance to reduce interview anxiety or allow individuals to do a task independently, for example, will allow neurodivergent individuals to showcase the best of their abilities and skills.
• Educate staff on what they need to be aware of when it comes to neurodiversity and how to treat neurodiverse employees. There are hyper negative and positive stereotypes about neurodiversity and unpicking this can create a more open-minded workforce, encouraging collaboration and patience. Changing the bias starts internally!
• Adopting flexitime and working from home policies is also important is it means that neurodivergent employees can work at hours that suit them, and control their working environment and how often they socialise.
• Sometimes just asking a neurodivergent candidate if they need any reasonable adjustments can make a world of difference. Include them in the conversation so you can give them what they need, rather than what you think they need. It’s important to remember that neurodivergence is a spectrum and support needed can vary from person to person.

The hiring process plays an integral role in making candidates feel that they can bring their best authentic selves into the workforce. So disrupt how we recruit, listen to neurodiverse candidates and give them the chance they deserve to showcase their talent!

Written By: Kimia Afzal

When employees hear that they will be assessed through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), a cloud of stress and anxiety can form above their heads.

A KPI is a way for organisations to measure how much revenue an employee is bringing in for the company.

Although revenue is important for growth, a business is dependent on much more than that to keep afloat. In industries like retail and manufacturing, employees can consistently be run through a loop and overworked due to unrealistically high targets.

Ironically, something designed to measure an employees’ value, often leaves employees feeling more undervalued than ever before. And reducing people to numbers can cause performance trends to stagnate further and a negative workplace culture can form as a result.

So when it comes to maintaining equity and keeping employees in high spirits at work, you want to make sure that employees are being judged fairly for their abilities, able to reach manageable targets and maintain their health and wellbeing.

One of the easiest ways to fix this broken system is to employ well-designed KPIs to measure rates of success in your company and team in a healthy, balanced way, rather than solely relying on revenue per employee.

What is a well-designed KPI?

A well-designed key performance indicator will vary company to company and will take a number of different factors into account. Rather than solely focusing on statistics, employers can look to customer and employee satisfaction, as well as external factors, to assess how someone is doing within the organisation and understand why this might be.

How can well-designed KPI be achieved?

1. Firstly, you must make note of a clear realistic objective as a team. Your employees know how their job role functions and in order to keep the KPI reviews collaborative, there needs to be open communication about what works and what doesn’t. This makes sure that everyone is comfortable with the goals and is on the same page. This way you are offering support, leading to an increase in engagement, confidence, and accountability.
2. Be open-minded – KPI’s are not always going to be a reflector of an employee’s performance because there may be other affecting external factors. For example, if someone is not making as many sales as they normally would in retail, we might consider that this may be down to the UK being in a cost of living crisis.
3. Customizing your KPIs to the role/person – you can measure output, input, outcome and process of the KPIs, also looking at quantity, quality, time, cost, or satisfaction, reflective of the work. It all depends on the scope of the employees role and how much they collaborate with others too.
4. Take a deeper look to see how your employee feels about work – Are they happy in this job role, for example? Might their skills be better suited to another role in the business? Employee wellbeing and performance are inextricably linked and if there is something happening in an employee’s personal life, their performance at work can be affected. According to a Gallup study in 2019, if employees had higher wellbeing in year one, they would tend to have higher engagement at work in year two as well as increased positive change in wellbeing in year two. So it’s wise to consider that your employee might just need some support!
5. Use the review of KPIs not to diminish your employee, but to see what can be learned for next time. What are the issues and gaps that need improvement? How can you all make these changes? Is there a more efficient way to work internally and externally?

Ultimately, your employees need to feel valued and improving traditional KPI systems will only serve to improve your employee’s morale and performance at work.

As we reach springtime, many companies are making headway in their new year’s resolutions when it comes to prioritizing, retaining and developing their underrepresented talent.

But it seems that not all companies understand the value of DEI, as many of them are jumping on the bandwagon and quietly quitting their duty of creating a more inclusive workplace; Learning and development programs are being downsized, DEI budgets are being cut, DEI job postings have disappeared and big names are retreating on the commitments they made during the pandemic.

Some companies are even re-branding DEI to the term “culture” on their company survey, creating a real nuance around what diversity, equity and inclusion means today and leaving us worried about the state of the global workforce.

Nuance might be what they’re after but hoping that we can forget about DEI and focus on the “quick wins” and work “culture” is unrealistic, not to mention unprofitable.

According to 2019 data from Mckinsey, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity in their executive teams are 25% more likely to have above average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile, and companies with the most ethnically/culturally diverse executive teams are 36% more likely to outperform on profitability.

In other words, the penalty for neglecting DEI is only growing.

So, what can we do to be the change-makers while also getting a return on our DEI investments?

• Mitigate bias in the hiring process to give critical leadership roles to underrepresented talent
• Reassess the company’s missions and values to strengthen the commitment to DEI practices and make sure that leaders take accountability
• Offer equal opportunities for employees to develop and ensure fairness in the workplace
• Monitor employees on well-designed KPIs
• Be transparent and promote a culture of openness and belonging

Although it might be uncomfortable to turn what we’ve always done on its head, these changes can afford us tangible, long-lasting wins.

Having a more diverse, equal and inclusive workforce has been proven seven times over to inspire innovative ideas, successful decision-making, supportive and trustworthy working environments, and a higher employee engagement.

So think twice before changing your focus from DEI to “culture”, because the end goal is still and will always be diversity, equity, and inclusion.