Nurturing Neurodiversity: Understanding the Workplace as Ecosystem
Pretty much every attempt I have seen to make the world of work accessible to those of us disabled by mental ill health* has missed the point entirely. This is first and foremost a human subject, about the importance of human potential and human flourishing, about the value of a life and the limits of empathy and altruism within the communities of which we are a part.
But it is also a subject for all our businesses and institutions, and that is what I want to address here. Put simply, how we answer the question of how we make our workplaces accessible tells us how seriously we take our future — as institutions and as a society.
The Equality Act places obligations upon employers and public bodies to make accommodations so as to avoid discrimination. Let’s face it, we know that in many cases even this minimum requirement is neither met nor understood. But even where an effort is made to engage, so often it is an attempt to do what is necessary in order that someone may function in a role which is laughably short of a match for their abilities. The aim is to show a willingness to “get the disabled into work”, to remove, adjust and to tweak so as to minimise a disabled employee’s absence. In particularly enlightened cases, maybe this will extend to minimising presenteeism.
All of which does nothing to address the roles in which we find ourselves to begin with, roles which so often fall short of our capabilities, roles in which the first adjustment will all too often be to remove any challenging tasks to make it easier for us to cope. And so the scale of our underemployment is further exacerbated. And yet, because we sit dutifully at our desks (at slightly different hours, with a slightly different light and maybe on a slightly different chair, just to make sure we are grateful that you went out of your way for us), the scale of this failure to meet intellectual, innovative, and productive capacity goes not just unmeasured but unconsidered.
Well, it’s time to start considering
Because we can offer so many different angles and abilities a neurotypical workforce cannot; because diversity at all levels of an organization is good for the organization; and because the difficulties we have encountered that mean we struggle with some things and may not have the right pieces of paper in no way diminish genuine brilliance in other areas yet right now your tickboxing approach brings us down to the level at which our struggles have been fought out.
If you are serious about making your organization its diverse best, here are some suggestions
- Quit, at least in some instances, with the well-meaning evidence-based recruitment. Yes, demanding that specific skills can be demonstrated by specific means will cut out some of the old school tie behaviour historically rampant. But for anyone whose life has, for any reason including disability or neurodiversity, followed an atypical path those pieces of paper, those “time when we encountered” examples are just a pipe dream. And so we are forced back to the very basic level of entry to spend soul destroying decades in pursuit of pieces of paper that tell you we can do what we know, and you should have the gumption to realize, we can do — by which time we are so burned out we can no longer do teh job we can at least demonstrate we can do.
- Stop thinking about jobs that need doing and start think about problems that need solving. Thinking about a job puts you in the wrong headspace for being flexible. It conjures up all kinds of things as “necessary” like desks and schedules and dress codes and standard operating procedures that aren’t necessary at all when it comes to the problems you need solving.
- Tear up your assumptions about your current workforce. Right now. Those people who enter data in finance. Those people writing low level papers on prospects. Those people who serve you your coffee in the morning. Are they really doing what they could? Are they doing what they dream of doing? Why not take another look? Why not ask the questions they usually get asked at their reviews? Maybe they will amaze you. Maybe all they need is a course or a chance or the time to work on something while they still pull a wage. And let’s face it if the person making your BLT needs paying what you’re paying them now while they sit in a library and learn for 10 hours a week over 6 months in order to be your next breakthrough product designer that’s not paying them to do nothing, that’s the best investment you ever made. And if you don’t get that the problem’s yours.
- Quit with the “work culture” thing. You *all* go on bonding weekends or whizz down the slide to the cafeteria or play table football on a Friday afternoon or meet for tea at 10.30. Really? If there’s something you *all* do then either you’ve hired robots or there’s a chunk of your workforce that feel like they don’t fit in and you haven’t got a scooby that it’s happening.
- And alongside that, don’t promote based on whether someone is a joiner, whether they stay late at the office or are the first to get a round in or even whether they’re the one who always asks first question at your brainstorming meetings — unless you are hiring for the title “first question asker” or “pint getter inner”.
- Speak to people who are disabled by mental ill health. Speak to autistic people. Ask them what would stop them working for you. Listen to what they say.
There are many more things you could do. I will happily spend a day, or even an hour with you, getting to know your organization and helping you to do it. Email me at rogueinterrobang@gmail.com or take a look around at what I do. But first you have to want to do it. And if you think any of the above sound ridiculous, or too much trouble then you probably don’t care enough. Either about nurturing neurodiversity. Or, which is petty much the same thing, about being the best you can be.
*Terminology is always difficult. In this piece I am using neurodiversity as a broad umbrella and not specifically to refer to developmental conditions. Likewise, I call myself “disabled by mental ill health”. Others use different words. Whatever words people use for themselves are fine. Words that people use for us, if they differ from our own, are by and large not.
