Neurodiversity in business: There’s a ‘generational shift’ underway

When Dan Harris set up the charity Neurodiversity in Business (NIB) just two years ago, he wanted to create change in an area that hasn’t moved as quickly as other human rights movements.

“I set up NIB because I wanted to change the world that my little boy… will be growing up in,” he explained. 

Harris set up NIB to “transform” the life chances of neurodivergent employees – and potential employees – from the belly of the beast: the boardroom. “We’ve obviously decades behind other areas, but we’re having a big push.”

The charity supports businesses and staff with neurodiversity policies, campaigns for wholesale reform and improvement to businesses’ recruitment processes, interview methods, onboarding, training, learning and development.

“I felt that it was an area where businesses could lead society. [They] can say: look that there’s an absolute imperative here and society will catch up with you… we can also appeal to that economic self-interest,” he added. 

The neurodivergent employment barrier

Unemployment across the neurodivergent community as a whole varies from 20 to 40 per cent, depending on who you ask, but it invariably far above the employment rate of the general population.

The latest Office for National Statistics figures put the official UK unemployment rate at 4.1 per cent.

For autistic people, the gap is much more severe. Only around a fifth of autistic adults are employed full-time in the UK, according to the ONS.

Neurodivergent people are also more likely than neurotypical people to be employed in low-skilled roles, and nearly half have left roles due to feeling misunderstood by their workplace, according to the National Autistic Society. 

According to The Entrepreneurs Network, 96 per cent of neurodiverse founders have faced discrimination due to their condition, with almost half reporting experiencing it either ‘regularly’ or ‘always’. More than three quarters said they have felt compelled to actively hide their neurodivergence in business settings. 

The social benefits of inclusionary policies are one thing, but the economic benefits alone are manifold, too: there’s the benefit of improved retention rates of staff, plus the less tangible cost associated with diversity of thought in corporate settings. 

“Cognitive diversity stops group think. It enables innovative solutions, it enables processes to improve,” Harris said. 

Mind the gap

Harris is a proponent of using both direct policies and softer inclusionary policies to solve the employment gap. 

While each person has different needs, Harris said, there is “commonality” between neurodivergent people, which makes an umbrella policy useful. 

Neurodiversity in Business has a suite of recommendations for businesses, from working with stakeholders to map neurodiversity policies onto their existing charters, better monitoring of turnover data for neurodivergent employees and giving employees the opportunity to work with policy makers when implementing neuro inclusion.

Harris also supports communication as a tool for reducing stigma, particularly those who work in business in the City who can be “role models” for younger generations. 

“We’re making it acceptable to talk about, just as it’s acceptable to talk about other areas of inclusion,” Harris said. 

“I think there’s a generational shift whereby the younger generations coming into employment are more sharing, more compassionate, probably more emotionally intelligent. They’ve grown up in a society where actually, it’s OK to cry.”

He’s not a fan of quotas, though: “My advice is always a holistic perspective [is better] – to improve your recruitment processes and interview processes [first].”

“Often what happens is when people rush out to hire [a certain quote of ND people], 20 per cent of the workforce who are already enrolled put their hand up [and say] I’m here, I’ve been here for 10 years. Things aren’t good for me. Why are we doing this rather than fixing it internally?”

The ‘anti-woke’ backlash

Activists like Robbie Starbuck have famously made very concerted efforts to force companies to roll back their diversity and equality quotas – ostensibly, for the economic good of the business itself, as they argue diversity policies constitute an overpoliticisation of the buyer experience at odds with consumers’ wallets. 

Is Harris worried about the backlash to policies this year? Not in the long term. 

“If you think about the civil rights movement and gender balance and ethnicity, the development of those social movements is being punctuated by big bursts of activity and improved societal understanding. But then there’s a counter backlash,” he said.

“There are some who say that this is all ‘woke nonsense’… The reality is we’ve always been there in society,” Harris said. “Medical and education professions are getting better at understanding that, too. The future is neurodivergent.”