Mindful Business Charter Community Area

Neurodiversity – a follow up to the session on 17 October 2022

On 17 October we ran a session with Dr Emma Mahoney from HelloSelf on neurodiversity (ND). The recording and slides are here. The session included time for reflections and this is a summary off the key points that emerged.

General themes and ideas discussed

• The need for more information about putting in place a specific ND policy – not all companies have one at present

• Intersectionality and ND (a framework for understanding how a person’s social and political identity combines to create discrimination and privilege with particular reference to the ND community)

• Barriers in recruitment

• Stereotypes

• Understanding that many people may benefit from adjustments to working environment and conditions but will not have a diagnosis  

• The need to consider processes and systems as well as supportive conversations to make ND issues open, discussed and the norm

• Vocabulary, terminology and language training is needed for all staff not just management

• As with so many things ND is a spectrum and ND may be a real benefit in certain roles and functions (and may be recruited for consciously or unconsciously)

Specific suggestions and issues raised

• Recruitment:

o Working on ensuring a good fit between the person/their skills and the specific needs of the role e.g. business vs technical.  Likely that adjustments will be more achievable if the fit is good  

o Multi-faceted recruitment process - not relying on one aspect e.g testing or interview

o Can be hard for an ND person to make the “right impression” at interview stage - e.g. eye contact and small talk for autistic people

o Incorporate ND into unconscious bias training for recruitment

• On boarding:

o Good support at onboarding stage but can be more difficult to ensure consistent support in day-to-day working life

o Needs to take account of the different ways in which people process information – vary format of presentation of info

• Training:

o Supporting access to training

o Making use of tech to provide alternative training methods

• Adjustments:

o Recognising that many adjustments will be useful for a wide range of people

o Sometimes adjustments are requested that are very difficult to accommodate e.g. needing all work to be checked. This reinforces the importance of reasonableness when considering adjustments

o Being able to work in spaces where there is less distraction to interrupt focus

o Being able to work from home (the return to the office did not suit everyone)

• Other:

o Consideration of ND in the design of new offices to ensure accessibility for a range of people.  E.g. communal/open plan doesn’t suit everyone. Can be noisy, overwhelming, and distracting.  

For law firms it is worth checking out Neurodiversity in Law (Home - Neurodiversity in Law) – they have good resources and also very good speakers with their own experiences and insights.

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