Can neurodiverse talent boost your workplace?

Garreth Hanley:
This is INTHEBLACK, a leadership, strategy and business podcast, brought to you by CPA Australia.

Jen Ng:
Welcome to INTHEBLACK. My name's Jen Ng. Every year in March, Neurodiversity Celebration Week is held to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about neurodiversity. With me today is Andrew Eddy, FCPA. He is the co-founder of Untapped Talent, a social enterprise that helps businesses welcome more autistic staff and create environments where they can thrive. Andrew is also the co-creator of Neurodiversity Hub, which provides neurodiversity resources and training to students, universities, and employers. Welcome to INTHEBLACK, Andrew.

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Thank you, Jen. Great to be here.

Jen Ng:
Andrew, can you help us better understand what the term neurodivergent means?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Sure. I'll start with the term neurodiversity, and this came from an Australian sociologist Judy Singer back in 1998. And she saw this as the concept that defined the naturally occurring diversity in the Earth's population. So the fact that every human has a unique nervous system, a unique combination of abilities and needs and unique way of experiencing the world. So it was a bit like biodiversity, so neurodiversity being the natural diversity of human brains. So then the term neurodivergence has grown to encompass or group together a range of consistent ways that some brains work differently from others.

So it's a way of thinking about variations such as autism, ADH, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and others as variations from the typical population rather than seeing them as disabilities. It's really just recognising a difference in how brains are wired. If we just look at autism for a moment, autistic individuals can experience the world very differently from others as they may be hypersensitive or hyposensitive, which is lacking in sensitivity to the various senses, the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. An autistic brain may need to utilise more neural pathways in order to produce an outcome to other individuals. Whilst this can be less effective in terms of time, it can be significantly richer and more innovative and thorough in the results that are achieved.

If we just look at neurodivergence and the incidence of that, I believe there's at least 20% of the population is neurodivergent with as many as 2% being autistic, 5% or so being ADH, and at least 10% being dyslexic. Another thing just to touch on is the unemployment rate for autistic individuals is over 30%, which is three times the rate of people with a disability and six times the rate of those without a disability. And as I'm sure you agree, this is not a great situation to have, particularly when we've got all the talent shortages that we're currently experiencing.

Jen Ng:
Thanks for sharing that broad and detailed overview of what neurodivergent means. And I'd like to pay particular attention to that statistic you just shared at the end, which is that the unemployment rate for autistic individuals is three times the rate of people with a disability and six times the rate of people without a disability. So it's something for us to think about there. Before establishing Untapped Talent, you worked as a senior finance professional. What inspired you to start Untapped? Was it your personal experience or was it perhaps gaps you noticed in the workplace or in the industry more generally?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Yeah, it wasn't coming out of any personal experience. It probably came out of my time on the board of Latrobe University. Out there, they have the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre, which is otherwise known as OTARC. I got to know them and help connect them to an autism employment programme that was being established in Australia. But as I went and talked to people about this idea, I was really stuck by the number of senior execs I'd get to meet with who had a personal connection. So they might have a daughter or a son who was autistic and they had real concerns about what was going to happen to their son or daughter in the future and they wanted to try and see if something could be done.

I looked at what OTARC was doing and it had done a lot of work with children but what I was also seeing was this huge attrition of autistic students as they went through high school, solely disappearing from the landscape in the schools and not many of them making a transition to university. And even if they got there, just bombing out after the first year. So we could have tried to focus on that area, but in the end, the better course seemed to be to talk to or work with employers and try and help them on the journey, try and help them become more autism-friendly, more neuroinclusive, so wherever they were on their journey to help them get to the next step and try and create more employment programmes, create more demand for these individuals.

Alongside that, we also started the Neurodiversity Hub Initiative and that was really this community of practise between employers and universities and service providers to collaborate on trying to create more pathways to university, put in place a scaffolding to help students get through university and create opportunities for work experience so they had a chance of starting a career after their course. We've also collaborated with the Autism Cooperative Research Centre, with DXC, with SAP on running autism work summits. Five of these have been run and the last two are virtual. So these have been great opportunities to bring people together to share their experiences, companies that are at different stages of the journey, to share with others.

We've had great keynotes from overseas from Australia. We've had panels, sessions of employers and employees, researchers, universities, TAFEs. We've recorded the last two sessions because they're all virtual and they're all accessible. All the recordings are accessible on the Autism CRC website and also on the Autismatwork.org website. We've also collaborated with a university in Dublin, University College Dublin. And these tutor neurodiversity and we've organised a number of further neurodiversity conferences, including ones that look at the intersectionality between neurodiversity and the legal system and neurodiversity and mental health. And we also run with them monthly masterclass, neurodiversity masterclass sessions.

Jen Ng:
Thanks, Andrew. It sounds like Untapped Talent has come a long way. Andrew, let's start at the beginning and talk about the job search. It's a stressful process as we've all experienced firsthand. Are there unique challenges faced by someone who's neurodivergent rather than someone who is neurotypical?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Yeah, so this is really where the rubber hits the road because this is such a difficult thing to get through. And it's a bewildering process for anyone and can create a lot of anxiety. And obviously autistic individuals who may not have gone through it before, it's difficult straight off, but it can also, with the anxiety, create a whole lot of other issues for them. The first thing is that they will look at the job ad, they'll look at the requirements of the job, and oftentimes they won't even apply because they don't think they can do the job. I'm sure people have heard the story about candidate behaviour that if you look at a position description and has 10 requirements for the job, if a man is applying and he thinks you can do three of them, then he'll apply. A woman is more likely to want to feel confident about doing 8 of the 10 before they'll apply.

In the case of an autistic person, if there's just one requirement they don't feel they can deliver on, then they may not apply. So as a result, organisations who are carrying forward old PDs with old requirements may well be excluding a whole bunch of talent without realising it. The other issue is, with traditional interview techniques, oftentimes, and I'm sure we've all been through this, you've had a tough interview where the interviewer has tried to put you under a pressure situation to see how you react with someone who's already suffered from anxiety and other things. That can really be difficult situation for them. Another issue can be around the office environment where the interview is happening, if there's various sensory issues where this is loud noise or the fluorescent lights, which some autistic people can actually see the flickering of. There can be various issues that they're trying to deal with and that can totally overwhelm them. Another thing is around resumes. Oftentimes resumes may not, for autistic individuals, neurodivergent individuals, they may not present in a way you would expect.

They're often very factual but they may contain gaps in employment history as those individuals may have had difficulty finding employment in a neuroinclusive environment so they haven't lasted very long and have had breakdowns and had to take time off before reapplying for a role. They may also not have a track record that you might be looking for because they haven't had the opportunity to land sorts of jobs because of the traditional recruitment process. So they can be a challenge for the recruitment manager. And when I'm working with candidates, I often encourage them to include in their resume an outline of areas of interest outside work because sometimes this can really bring out or unearth real areas of strength that might be the reason I would employ someone. So we really, in our work with companies, we advocate some alternative approaches and we actually suggest these apply to all talent acquisition processes.

And that includes reviewing all the job descriptions and making sure they represent the real role and what is really required, what are the absolutely necessary requirements, provide instructions to the interviewee on how to get there and what the details the interview is, who's going to be there, what position they're at, where it's going to be held, the style of interview, how long it's going to go for, making sure the interview questions are clear and absolutely not ambiguous. And giving a copy of the questions to the candidates ahead of time, allowing the candidates to bring a support person if they wish during the interview, really focusing on the strengths that the person's going to bring to the organisation. And of course at the end, outlining what the next step is at the end of the interview.

Jen Ng:
Thanks, Andrew. These are all very practical tips that could really be actioned today to help alleviate some stress from the interview process. I guess it's really about removing barriers so that talent can be discovered. Andrew, speaking of accounting and finance specifically, what are some of the benefits of employing a neurodiverse workforce?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Yeah, so this is this idea of the competitive advantage of having a diverse organisation, having diversity of thinking and having diversity of perspectives amongst your employees and the impact that can have. And some of the more progressive organisations have really gone into embrace diversity of backgrounds, gender, ethnicity, culture. But there's only some organisations that have taken the step of recognising neurodiversity as another rich source of different thinking and to recognise that there is no normal or right style of human mind any more than there is any one normal or right ethnicity, gender, or culture. So the opportunity is for organisations to recognise that the chance to bring this another rich source of different thinking in and create a workplace that's neuroinclusive for everyone and leverage those different thinkings to create those breakthroughs in what they're doing.

Jacqueline Blondell:
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Andrew Eddy FCPA:
The key insight I guess I want to bring out is that you already employ a neurodiverse workforce. It's not a choice. As I indicated before, I believe that over 20% of the general population is neurodivergent and that's likely that that's represented in each of your organisations. And that might be, even though those individuals may not realise they are neurodivergent. Some of those people may well be suffering from the challenges of the workplace. They may have sensory sensitivities, they may be struggling with the expectations of social interaction in the workplace. They may struggle with the way in which methods of communication are expected to happen. There's a narrowly defined approach to that and how people interact and really not a well-developed set of change management processes. These may well be the people that leave the organisation because they just can't cope. They can't cope with the sensory environment. They can't cope well with change.

They don't feel like they fit in. And if they do have a diagnosis, they don't feel safe to disclose it as they believe they might be discriminated against. So we're all aware of this talent shortage that we talk about. The experience of this cohort is that they are loyal and they can bring a very different set of perspectives to the workplace. And if we create the environment where they can thrive, we can get some extraordinary outcomes. So if we focus on the accounting industry for a moment, some autistic or neurodivergent individuals have some great strengths. And it's not across the board, but you'll find these strengths from different people. Things such as attention to detail, ability to hyper focus on tasks for long periods, ability to identify patterns, being systematic and logical, being abstract thinkers and possessing this strong, honest level of honesty and loyalty. So there are a lot of roles out there that would benefit from these traits but there are roles that can often be hard to fill or roles that experience high turnover because they don't appeal to the average employee. So it could be these very roles that could appeal to this Untapped Talent pool.

Jen Ng:
Thanks so much, Andrew, for advocating for the benefits of developing a neurodiverse workplace. Now that we have a better understanding of the benefits, I'd like to ask you what are some practical ways that businesses can foster an inclusive environment that works both for neurotypical and neurodiverse staff?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Yeah, so the key thing is to really focus on a sustainable set of activities and not have something that might last for a few months and then everyone gets exhausted. You really got to look at what we can do sustainably to create this psychologically safe and neuroinclusive environment. So some of those things around awareness so creating greater awareness through training initiatives, through sharing articles and insights from various sources to just create that greater understanding and ultimately get greater acceptance of neurodiversity as being just a normal thing.

The second one is that, as I said before, neurodivergent individuals can experience this sensory overwhelm for the various senses. And the thing is that everyone experiences the world differently. So organisations really need to have flexible options in the workplace to cope with that. They need to think about their flexible working arrangements. And we're much more used to now having people working from home, working alternate hours. And then the other thing is if we do go through the process of doing a renovation in the office or a new fed out, that we include inclusive principles in that process. Another thing to think about is for organisations that have employee resource groups or affinity groups in those organisations, you might want to think about creating a group specifically focused on neurodiversity and use that as a way of driving activities and engendering this more inclusive approach over time. And of course, the key thing with all of this is that you can't just start this on your own. You really need to have the sponsorship from senior members of the management team and preferably someone who has a direct link to the CEO and preferably someone that actually has a lived experience of a son or daughter that's autistic or neurodivergent.

Jen Ng:
Do you have any specific examples that you can share with us, Andrew?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Last year, I got approached by a global architectural firm and then they asked me about what I saw as the main feature in workplaces that made them more inclusive. And I think they were thinking about the colouring or the carpet or the fittings and so on. What I said to them was that I actually saw it as more about the cognitive of environment. And what I meant by that was the environment created by all the people in the workplace and that that makes the difference and that even the most inclusively designed space will not achieve the desired outcome if the shared understanding acceptance of the coworkers in the workplace isn't there. So the physical workplace is only additive to the vibe of the workplace, it can't fix a poor vibe in the workplace. So as I said, the cornerstone is awareness, training, education.

There are some good resources out there that people can utilise to educate themselves. The major source we work with is the Neurodiversityhub.org, which we've been working on for many years. This community of practise of employers and universities were really designed to change the narrative around autism and neurodiversity. We've created and curated a huge amount of resources on just a whole range of employment related and topics and other topics like mental health, remote working, the built environment. We've also got a related Facebook page and we curate six to eight articles a month from around the world on topics of neurodiversity and employment. And so accessing those resources, going through those resources might help you in engaging with your organisation and really starting that journey to change the narrative. You can also look at annual events to highlight the initiative. So this week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week and that can be a way of bringing attention to this topic. And there's also the 2nd of April, which is World Autism Awareness Day. So many organisations mark April as autism month and run events during that period.

Jen Ng:
Thanks so much, Andrew, for all those really great insights into how we can foster and inclusive environment for both neurotypical and neurodiverse staff. A key word that really stood out from what you said was the word sustainability. I guess it's not about having once off events where we recognise neurodiversity and support the community, it's about building something that is sustainable and ongoing and even scalable in the organisation. Andrew, what advice do you have for businesses who want to employ more neurodivergent staff and to better support the employees they already have?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Yeah, so it really comes back to what you were just saying about sustainability. You've really got to focus on how do you make sustainable and also how can you scale it. You want to build this over time. You don't want to have this finite size programme. You really want to try and change the whole culture in the organisation. So it does come back firstly to what I spoke of before, which is having that executive sponsor and if there is the employee resource group as a thing in your organisation to foster the idea of having a focused group to drive the initiative because that way you can share the load between a number of like-minded people and have a better chance of sustaining a programme. I've seen many cases where it comes down to a couple of people and in the end it just goes off the rails.

It's something where you really need to try and share the load with others, and that can help make it happen. I have advocated a number of times about having neurodiversity awareness education to be part of mandatory employee training. I haven't seen people do that as yet but I think that's an important thing to look at, how we can make it so that people will just want to do it. It doesn't need to be mandatory but most people would've have undertaken that training. The other thing to look at over time is how you do your whole process of attracting talent, how you screen, assess them, selection, the onboarding, how you develop and promote staff. And really looking at that and examining it to see whether it can be made more neuroinclusive with greater detail, with different ways in which the content can be consumed by people, whether it's a combination of videos, text, other ways of getting the information across, more visual ways of getting the information across. So that's something, it's a longer term project to review the way in which you do all those things. And this doesn't just happen once.

It's something you probably need to ongoingly review as you continue down this pathway of greater neuroinclusion. You want to look back at things and think, "Oh my goodness, that's what we did last year. If only we'd known then what we know now, we'll do it differently." And that's the thing. You will develop your experience and you'll want to review things again and again. Another thing to think about is mental health. Autistic individuals are nine times more likely to have mental health issues to the general population. So that needs to be thought of in the organisation. And we have mental health training that's available for organisations to run. And that's really about trying to uplift the capability of the whole organisation in understanding mental health and dealing with it. And mental health has really come to the fore a bit since the pandemic. It's something we didn't use to talk about and now we talk about it all the time. So I think that's something that's a lot of organisations are looking at. And the last thing just to highlight is around employee assistance programmes that organisations have to really quiz the provider of those programmes and making sure that they have experience with neurodivergent individuals and that they have people on staff that can work with them.

Jen Ng:
Andrew, you are the co-creator of Neurodiversity Hub. Can you tell us a bit more about what the Hub does?

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Yeah, so the Hub is really trying to create this community of practise amongst employers and universities and service providers. And we've got over 30 universities globally that are in the Hub and over 50 other organisations that are part of it, really trying to bring people together to take this whole initiative forward. And we've had the opportunity of having some internships over the years and that's allowed us to curate and create a whole bunch of resources and create a whole of different sections in the Hub. So we've got a section for tertiary education for students and job seekers, we've got a section for employers, we've got a page for universities.

There's a page on remote working, on mental health, built environment for high school kids. And it's something that's we've put a lot of effort in that's seen as a really great repository of a whole lot of useful information. We're getting something like 2,000 hits a week on that website globally and we get a lot of accolades for how useful the materials are. So I really encourage people to check it out and see how that might assist them in providing them with some thought-provoking resources that can help them on their journey.

Jen Ng:
We'll leave a link to the Neurodiversity Hub and other useful resources in the show notes. Thanks so much for your time, Andrew. A lot of practical tips for creating a sustainable neuroinclusive environment. It's been really great talking to you.

Andrew Eddy FCPA:
Thank you, Jen.

Garreth Hanley:
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