How to close the hiring gap

'I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.' ----Muriel Strode

This week I want to focus on an opportunity for us all.

Wake up... we have staff shortages across the UK.

Where there is a challenge there is also a real opportunity to stimulate a change in the way we do things and help both the employers and those who are neurodivergent and/or disabled people.

Time to think about how we recruit and make changes to this.

The headline on September 6th,2021, BBC

Let's discuss the other gap!

The “disability employment gap” is a term used to refer to the difference in employment rates between disabled and non-disabled people.

The UK Government report in July 2021 stated that:

“Disabled people are considerably less likely to be in employment than non-disabled people. The disability employment gap—that is, the difference between the proportion of disabled and non-disabled people in employment—stands at nearly 30 percentage points. Since 2013, the gap has closed by five percentage points and the number of disabled people in employment has risen by 1.3 million. But disabled people still face unacceptable barriers to finding, staying in and progressing in work.”

Why does this gap remain?

Is this to do with.... a reluctance by employers. Is it because people think it will be more complicated and cost a lot....?

What can we do to make employers change their behaviour and take on more people with neurodivergent traits and/or people who are disabled?

Does it take legislation to be enforced? Carrot or stick?

The stick is the Equality Act 2010

Could mandatory reporting nudge people into action?

“Mandatory reporting, which would require employers to report the proportion of their workforce who are disabled, has been proposed as a means of holding employers to account on hiring disabled people and creating inclusive workplaces.”

I think there is a real problem in asking someone "are you disabled?''

The challenges (and there are many!) with this is having to say you are disabled.

• You may not want to;
• You may not know;
• You may not think you are disabled;
• You may not be able to gain a diagnosis( lack of services/cost);
• You may have a relapsing condition so today is better and tomorrow won't be!

Employers can't always tell who is disabled and who is not. Anxiety may be hard to see, and someone who is dyslexic doesn't have a particular 'look'!

If we have to tick a disability box to get support, then this means you will need some proof. But we need to be honest about this as this means we are using a medical model in an employment setting.

This is challenging on a number of levels....

·?????You shouldn't need a diagnosis to get workplace support ( but you do!)

·?????You can’t get a diagnosis for some conditions in many places in the UK - waiting lists can be more than 3 years long e.g., for ADHD. In many places, there are no services for some conditions.

·?????Conditions like ADHD, ASD/C, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia(DCD), Dyscalculia, and DLD(Developmental Language Disorders) all overlap often. So most people don't have one pure 'condition'.

People with neurodivergent traits are also more likely to have higher rates of anxiety and depression (and epilepsy, and asthma and ....)… Are employers going to pay for all these diagnostic assessments as well.... or cherry-pick the ones they know about or can access?

·?????If you pay for an Autism diagnosis and not for asthma, epilepsy, ADHD, Dyspraxia could you be sued for unfair practices? ( Remember in the UK we have the Equality Act?)

We put disability into one big basket and perhaps we need to understand the differences that people have in engaging in employment.

Different solutions for different people. For some, this may be about gaining the ability to work flexibly or WFH most of the time.

Each person's life will be different. The barriers to working maybe because of different things in their lives that may change over time. Each person will have different jobs, different home, and social settings, and different skills and support needs.

We need to measure the absolute gaps in different areas of disability and the specific challenges faced.

In the picture below I really don’t know what severe or specific learning difficulties really mean. Someone with a specific learning difficulty may have literacy difficulties or coordination challenges; they may have challenges with attention or socializing. They may have one or all of these. Also what happens if you are deaf, diabetic, and depressed?

Good quality information is key. It has been suggested that we need to know how much disabled and non-disabled workers are paid and perhaps to use other indicators of job quality such as disability gaps in wellbeing at work. Understanding where people are working is important to such as the number of disabled people in precarious forms of work.

In the government's recent report it mentioned that advisors?Professor Jones and Professor Wass recommended that the Government should monitor the rate at which disabled people also leave and acquire work. This is key when considering hiring people with disabilities. It is not ‘just’ about the hiring but the keeping.

Stats on staff turnover may also be key to understanding what is working. Access to Work schemes while excellent remain challenging for some people to negotiate and adjustments often come too late. Lost confidence and poor experiences often make it harder to start again in a new workplace as the person is often concerned that there will be a rerun.

Interesting case law in recent years relating to neurodiversity has often been about providing too little support and too late.

Plugging the gap may mean changing perspectives- going against the grain...

It's a perfect time for a change when we have disability employment gaps on one hand and staff shortages on the other.

I use the metaphor of the warp and weft which refers to the orientation of the woven fabric. The warp direction refers to the threads that run the length of the fabric. The fill, or weft, refers to the yarns that are pulled and inserted perpendicularly to the warp yarns across the width of the fabric. By looking from a different direction we can come up with an opportunity to solve both challenges.

It's the time to be an original thinker and to do it differently. What does original mean? A thing of singular or unique character; a person who is different from other people in an appealing or interesting way; a person of fresh initiative or inventive capacity. As Adam Grant says in Originals: How Non-Conformists Change the World: “The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists.” However, the default hiring system is the one we fall back on each time.

Changing the way we do things is not easy. The pressure is on us all to accept the way things have always been done. The fear of potential failure means that most of us opt to fit in rather than stand out. We watch and observe others and then do what others are doing. The more expertise and experience people gain and the more they are within a system the more they become entrenched in a particular way of viewing the world and acting. Going against the grain means you may also be rejecting what you have agreed was right for most of your working life. It is easier to choose what is familiar to you and to take fewer risks.

Changing hiring processes will require risk as well as potential reward.

We often talk about entrepreneurial flair and the need for risk-takers. Interestingly, the meaning of entrepreneur, as it was coined by economist Richard Cantillon, literally means “bearer of risk.” BUT in the face of uncertainty, our first instinct is often to reject novelty, looking for reasons why unfamiliar concepts might fail.

As Daniel Kahneman says in Thinking, Fast and Slow, intuition operates rapidly, based on hot emotions, whereas reason is a slower, cooler process. We often make a quick decision. Taking on someone perhaps who thinks differently or who doesn’t 'sell' themselves very well takes effort to see past this and see the person and their real skills.

Interestingly in this month’s Harvard Business Review describes Professor Tsay’s research. He has been looking at who gets funded from different investor pitches. He asked 1,855 study participants to predict the winners of a total of 19 venture capital pitch competitions. What do you think were the results? Across 12 studies he found that people could predict VC funding decisions based not on the actual content of entrepreneurs’ pitches but on how they were presented, especially body language and facial expressions. Their physical presence had such a profound impact on other people’s decisions.

Many neurodivergent people are not getting hired. There are many reasons for this and one of these is the processes we use to select and interview. This needs changing.

Today as I have written before is THE time for neuroinclusive hiring as that talent is sitting there and being wasted.

We need to fundamentally change our recruitment processes but we need companies that be willing to go against the grain of current processes. I think by doing so this will benefit all.

Spoiler alert!

I want to make job descriptions match jobs and create new jobs that match the people.

I have a plan!

Come and join the evolution.

About the author

Professor Amanda Kirby remains forever positive in working towards increasing neuroinclusive practices in all sizes of organizations both big and small. Working collaboratively we can all make a difference and not lose talent.

She comes from a very neurodivergent family and wants her grandchildren to have a fair whack to show their skills. Amanda is the CEO of?Do-IT Solutions?- a tech-for-good company that provides web-based screening tools for neurodiversity, training, and consultancy.

She has recently published a widely acclaimed book with Theo Smith -Neurodiversity at Work.

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