Neurodiversity at work

‘GCHQ targeting dyslexic and neurodiverse people in recruitment drive, spy chief says,’ stated an October 2019 headline in the Independent. But while attracting national newspaper coverage on this was new, the UK intelligence and cybersecurity agency GCHQ has been quietly tapping into neurodivergent talent since its inception in 1919. Second world war code breaker Alan Turing is suspected to have been autistic and GCHQ has been running a dedicated neurodiversity support service for employees for over 20 years. GCHQ reports having around four times more apprentices with dyslexia than is typical for apprenticeship schemes. ‘[When] sifting through large amounts of data from a large number of sources to prevent a terrorist attack or a serious organised criminal, skills such as pattern recognition are key. A lot of dyslexic colleagues have those strengths,’ Jo Cavan, then director of strategy, policy and engagement at GCHQ was quoted as saying in an April 2021 article in The Guardian.

In the UK, an estimated one in seven people are neurodivergent, meaning that they experience and interact with the world differently to the majority of the population. Neurodivergence is an umbrella term that includes conditions such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia. Many neurodivergent individuals have more than one of these conditions as they co-occur at very high rates.

Each neurodivergent condition has defined challenges that individuals with those conditions typically encounter (see box Neurodivergent terminology below). But neurodivergent conditions can also come with strengths – things a neurodivergent individual is more likely to excel at than a neurotypical individual. In 2023, the charity Neurodiversity in Business published the results of a survey of nearly 1000 neurodivergent employees. The top self-reported strengths were being able to concentrate intently (hyperfocus), being creative and innovative, and having good attention to detail and pattern recognition (detail processing). These challenges and strengths are not experienced by all neurodivergent individuals, nor does everyone experience them to the same extent. Neurodivergent conditions impact everyone differently.

The most commonly experienced neurodivergent strengths are advantageous for many science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) roles. It’s therefore widely assumed that the prevalence of neurodivergent individuals in STEM careers is higher than in the general population. This has not yet been confirmed by large scale surveys, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence. ‘More than 50% of our employees have some aspect of neurodiversity,’ says Andrea Fuller, human resources director at drug discovery contract research organisation Domainex, based in Saffron Walden, UK.

Studies have confirmed that entrepreneurs and innovators are more likely to be neurodivergent. A 2003 surveyof 69,000 self-made British millionaires, for example, found that 40% had dyslexia. These include Virgin boss Richard Branson and Apple founder Steve Jobs. Other highly successful neurodivergent individuals include Greta Thunberg, whose climate activism hyperfocus has been attributed to her autism.

But these high-profile success stories can distract from the barriers that many neurodivergent employees face when trying to succeed in workplaces designed for neurotypical ones. Unemployment rates for the UK neurodivergent population are far higher than the national average. In 2024, TV chef Heston Blumenthal, who has ADHD, commissioned a UK study of 1000 neurodivergent individuals that found that 21% were not in paid employment. By contrast, the overall UK unemployment rate from October to December 2024 was 4.4%.

Although GCHQ remains unusual in publicly calling for neurodivergent job applicants, an increasing number of companies have taken steps towards creating more neuroinclusive workplaces in recent years. There is both a moral imperative and a business case for doing so, says Elizabeth Wynn, programme manager for inclusion and diversity at the Royal Society of Chemistry in Cambridge, UK. ‘There is evidence showcasing that teams [with] neurodivergent individuals bring more innovation, not just from a technological perspective, but also from a way of thinking, from creativity, and it leads to business benefits,’ she explains.

Destigmatising and raising awareness

It takes a multifaceted approach to create a neuroinclusive work environment. A common starting point is increasing awareness of neurodivergent conditions. ‘Our journey started about two years ago [when] I saw that there was a need to raise awareness of what neurodiversity was so that, as a company, we can start creating a more intentional neuroinclusive workplace,’ explains Mavis Anagboso, the European head of diversity, equity and inclusion at London-headquartered oil and gas company Harbour Energy.

Anagboso started out with a panel discussion between people with personal experiences of being neurodivergent. Panellists included Charlotte Valeur, the founder of the Institute of Neurodiversity, a global membership organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, who was diagnosed as autistic in her 50s. The event led to an uptick in Harbour Energy employees seeking diagnostic assessments for neurodivergent conditions. ‘For some individuals, this was the first time they had heard someone describe how they had felt all their lives, and it triggered an interest in having themselves assessed,’ Anagboso says. She went on to set up a neurodiversity peer support network, with a subgroup for parents of neurodivergent children. Harbour Energy now runs regular neurodiversity awareness sessions with recent speakers including Amanda Kirby, chair of the ADHD Foundation, a UK neurodiversity charity. It also provides informative books about neurodivergence in its offices and issues managers with neurodiversity toolkits.

Over the past two years, Domainex has also destigmatised and raised awareness about neurodivergence among its employees. Efforts have included hosting talks from experts in neurodivergence and bringing in the ADHD Foundation to run training for line managers. ‘We slowly but surely started to raise awareness across the business as a whole about what it meant to work with neurodiversity,’ says Fuller. The next talk will be given by Cat Wood, a website designer and inclusion enthusiast. ‘Cat has autism and her brother is one of our group leaders,’ Fuller says. ‘She’s coming in to talk to the workforce around practical things that we can do’ to become a more neuroinclusive place of work.

Adjustments that benefit everyone

Accommodations are another vital component of a neuroinclusive workplace. It is important to always ask individuals what accommodations they would personally benefit from. ‘The idea that one size fits all does not apply for neurodiversity,’ says Ilaria Meazzini, senior programme manager for inclusion and diversity at the RSC.

Adjustments can come in many forms. Numerous assistive technologies are available, including those for task management, time management and mind-mapping tools. There are also tools designed with dyslexia in mind, such as text-to-speech programs, grammar checkers and advanced spell checkers. Noise cancelling headsets are another small adjustment that can have a big impact, especially in open-plan offices, says Anagboso. Dedicated quiet rooms should be routinely provided: these rooms offer a low sensory stimulation environment, with blinds and adjustable lighting. Many neurodivergent individuals need to take time to decompress – often called sensory breaks – to prevent sensory overload and burnout. ‘Some people need a bolt hole to go when things get too much,’ explains Fuller. ‘In our quiet room, they can go and work in peace and quiet.’

Other adaptations that benefit many neurodivergent individuals include providing and normalising fidget toys, avoiding the use of air fresheners and strong-smelling soaps in bathrooms, providing adequate ventilation, and installing adjustable lights and heating systems.

These accommodations don’t just benefit neurodivergent employees. ‘The beauty about neuroinclusion is that when you make those adjustments available it benefits everyone. It’s like when you build a ramp to a building, for instance. By having a ramp, you’re not discriminating against people who can walk. It makes it easier for the wheelchair, but also everyone else can use it,’ says Anagboso. ‘Organisations should be [offering adjustments] to improve retention and satisfaction across the board,’ adds Wynn.

Fuller says it is important to offer adjustments to all employees, regardless of whether or not they have disclosed a neurodivergent condition to their employer. Not everyone who is neurodivergent realises they are neurodivergent, not everyone has a diagnosis (assessments can be hard to access and expensive) and not everyone is comfortable sharing their diagnosis. ‘The stats say it takes around three years for someone with a neurodivergent condition to actually declare to an employer,’ says Fuller. At Domainex, all new employees are invited to complete a ‘How I can be my best at work’ form to determine the working conditions under which they thrive.

In terms of providing reasonable accommodations for employees with neurodivergent conditions, Domainex and Harbour Energy are ahead of most organisations. In 2022, a survey of UK Research and Innovation’s approximately 8000 staff members showed scope to improve inclusion within the organisation. As a response, employees formed staff networks to help the organisation make changes. As part of this work, the Disability Matters staff network has spent the past year collecting evidence of positive and negative lived experiences of disabled staff, including those with neurodivergent conditions, around reasonable adjustments, explains Adam Berlie, an instrument scientist at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. Berlie has dyslexia and ADHD and is the chair of the staff network, which received funding from the RSC Inclusion and Diversity Fund. ‘Positive case studies have huge merit because they help show and demonstrate why reasonable adjustments are so important,’ he says.

Changing working practices to be neuroinclusive

Creating a neuroinclusive workplace also means changing information-sharing practices. Reading long emails and documents and attending extended meetings can be challenging for some neurodivergent individuals. ‘People really do reach a processing capacity saturation,’ says Jane Essex, an inclusive science education specialist at the University of Strathclyde, UK, who herself is neurodivergent.

Scottish Water is currently working to change the way it provides information to new analytical team members – with help from Genius Within, a UK organisation that supports neurodivergent talent, and funding from the RSC Inclusion and Diversity Fund. ‘When people come in [to our team], there’s a week of reading,’ explains Rachael Roberts, team manager of Scottish Water’s analytical inorganic chemistry section. ‘We work within a quality system accredited to ISO 17025 and we’re highly proceduralised. Everything is documented and a lot of those procedures are very wordy and very long.’ Last year, Genius Within ran group sessions to help the analytical chemistry team see what changes could be made. ‘Going forward we will be looking at how we can simplify these documents and make them easier for everybody to read and [exploring] more visual ways of looking at passing on this information.’ This may include making documents more visually appealing and replacing text with videos where possible.

The group coaching sessions also looked at actions individual team members could make to contribute to a more neuroinclusive workplace. Some of the attending team leaders have since reported changing the way they communicate with their team members, says Roberts. ‘It’s really helped them to understand that people need different ways of communicating and that an email out or a big team meeting isn’t the right way to communicate with everybody,’ she adds. Following these up with one-to-one conversations is one of the changes that are having positive results, she adds.

Essex recommends that individuals should also give advance notice of workplace changes and provide multiple ways to access the same information. ‘For a presentation, please share the PowerPoint slides afterwards. Everybody will benefit, but we may benefit more, because it lets us get our information in more manageable chunks,’ she says.

Recognising social communication differences in another thing that individuals can do to contribute to a neuroinclusive environment. Individuals with autism, in particular, can find understanding non-verbal cues and following social communication norms challenging. Their communication style can therefore be misinterpreted as rude or aggressive. ‘Colleagues should try to be understanding. If someone has difficulty doing things the standard way, they’re probably not doing it to aggravate you,’ says Wynn.

Revolutionising recruitment

Employers must also examine their hiring processes to better attract neurodivergent talent. ‘For neurodivergent individuals, the touch point of recruitment is one of the most disadvantaging in building a career in chemistry,’ says Meazzini.

Traditional job descriptions are particularly problematic, says Silvan Ruthenberg, global lead at the Institute of Neurodiversity, who is autistic and has ADHD. ‘They are usually very extensive, using fairly convoluted language, that’s not easy to understand even for the neuromajority,’ he explains. ‘Oftentimes, especially when it comes to neurominorities, if we don’t tick all the boxes in our head, we won’t even consider applying,’ Ruthenberg adds.

Domainex has made significant changing to its hiring processes. In job descriptions, ‘we’ve considerably condensed the list of technical requirements and instead focus on [attributes] that really help in our organisation’, says Fuller. Attributes Domainex now lists for scientists include liking to solve problems, ask difficult questions, drill down into details and be challenged. When technical skills need to be listed, Ruthenberg recommends separating them into necessary and desirable skills.

Ruthenberg says the diversity statements in job adverts should explicitly mention neurodivergence, rather than assuming everyone will realise it’s covered under the umbrella of disability. Job adverts should also make it clear that accommodations are available in the interview process and include an email address to request those accommodations. Ruthenberg suggests include sending the questions to candidates in advance.

Interviews are stressful for everyone, but especially neurodivergent individuals. ‘One of the things we learned is that for many people who are neurodiverse, they like the certainty of knowing what’s to come,’ says Anagboso. Sharing comprehensive details of the interview process upfront is therefore good practice. ‘Companies should be very open and clear about the interview process,’ says Ruthenberg. Fuller sends job candidates a very detailed layout of the interview morning ahead of time. It states ‘exactly how long each section is, the names the people they’ll be meeting, and what’s going to happen in each section’. This takes away a lot of the apprehension, she adds. Harbour Energy also includes details of the site facilities.

Interviewers should also receive neurodiversity training, says Ruthenberg. They should be aware that some neurodivergent candidates need more time to formulate verbal answers and have different social communication preferences. Eye contact is an important point, says Ruthenberg. ‘Not everyone is comfortable making eye contact. That doesn’t mean that person is lying,’ he explains.

A permanent shift

Much of the move towards more neuroinclusive workplace is being driven by young people who start work expecting similar accommodations to those they received at school. ‘Changing practices in school have driven changing practices in the workplace and higher education,’ says Essex. ‘Young people who’ve come through a school system which is more cognizant of neurodiversity – though still not always making the right adjustments in a timely way – have now grown up and are coming into universities and the workplaces more able to articulate their needs.’

There is also an increasing number of people seeking diagnosis and support for neurodivergent conditions as adults. According to the ADHD Foundation, there was a 400% increase in UK adults seeking an ADHD diagnosis between 2020 and 2023. Increasing diagnoses for neurodivergent conditions does not mean that the conditions themselves are more prevalent now than they were previously. Rather it’s because an increased visibility of neurodivergence has encouraged more people to seek support. It is also common that a parent seeks support after their school-age child is diagnosed and they recognise similar behaviours in themselves.

Essex says that disappointingly few senior scientists have spoken out about their own neurodivergence so far. Notable exceptions include Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a space scientist with dyslexia, and Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, who wrote an editorial stating that he is autistic in April 2024. ‘It would be really nice to have more senior people being open about it,’ says Essex, adding that the reluctance for senior scientists to be open likely stems from discrimination concerns. ‘That should be the benchmark for workplaces: do the adjustments and the attitudes mean that anybody, at any level, in your organisation feels comfortable to share that they have recognised that they are neurodiverse,’ she says ‘Because if we are only treating it as something that it’s okay for 17 year olds to have, but it’s not okay for 47 year olds to have, we’re still treating it as a problem.’

Nina Notman is a science writer based in Salisbury, UK