Neurodiversity: its importance to building a sustainable business strategy

Daniel Br?mhagen, EY EMEIA People Advisory Services Sustainability Lead

Anurag Malik, EY India Workforce Advisory Leader

It has never been more important for organizations to focus on their agility and resilience. Around the world, businesses face constant pressure and continual change, whether from disrupted supply chains, climate issues and the rise of data and tech, or soaring inflation, aging populations, and a flood of new regulations.

And amid all of this there is an ongoing so-called race for talent, with skills shortages across many global industry sectors.

Businesses have no choice but to adapt if they are to remain relevant and competitive. Yet, even with all these pressures, long-term value creation remains as important as ever to investors, and employees are increasingly looking at company values and social policies to guide their career choices. Many organizations are struggling to attract and retain the talent they need to thrive.

If all this sounds a little too familiar, it may be worth asking yourself: is your business embracing neurodivergence?

Research has shown that diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a key tool for any company seeking greater innovation, agility and better financial results. Yet DE&I strategies tend to focus on factors like gender, race and education, and not on different ways of thinking.

Neurodivergent people — those with a permanent cognitive difference such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia or dyspraxia —?often excel in analytical thought and innovation, reasoning, complex problem-solving, technology design, programming, originality and initiative.

In other words, a neurodiverse candidate may boast the very competencies that organizations need in this future working world.

Businesses also need leaders who can resolve complex problems and paint compelling pictures of the future that will bring others along with them as they tackle uncertainty head-on. In one high-profile example, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk revealed in 2021 that he has autism.

The power of individuality

In March 2023, EY Sweden, in collaboration with the Prince Couple’s Foundation, published a report, “The Value of Being Yourself”, which was designed to deliver a snapshot of neurodiversity in the workplace. It asked what value we can create for individuals, companies and society if our differences are seen as the norm.

We already had a sense that the business world was missing out on talent that’s forced to remain on the fringes of the labor market, despite offering many of the skills that companies are now lacking. But the extent of that oversight turned out to be far more extreme than we’d imagined.

Estimates suggest that up to 20% of the global population is neurodivergent.[1] Yet EY research found that the current employment rate for neurodivergent people is only 48%, compared to 73% of people in general. That means a significant percentage of the global workforce is thinking, learning, communicating and processing information in ways that aren’t currently catered for by the majority of businesses.

And it’s not just neurodivergent individuals who are missing out here. Society and business are paying a steep price too. The EY research found that if companies employed neurodivergent individuals to the same degree as neurotypical people, GDP could increase by 1.2% per year. This was another huge surprise. Here in Sweden, for example, that would mean an annual benefit of up to $6.7 billion.

This is key. When an organization includes neurodivergence, it’s not merely engaging in an altruistic act to make the world better, or simply doing the right thing in the eyes of its investors and customers. It’s doing all that while boosting its returns too.

Delivering change

These findings prompt an important question: why are most organizations not including neurodiversity in their DEI programs? First, the focus is often on the problems and challenges of neurodivergence, and not on people’s strengths. This is likely to be the result of not having inclusive schools and workplaces in the first place: people lack support in school, and in the transition to the workforce, and those stigmatizations carry into working organizations and recruitment. ?

Second, neurodivergence remains more hidden than other qualities such as race or gender tend to be. Within organizations, those employees who are neurodivergent are often reticent to tell their peers and managers, for fear of being singled out for special treatment. The EY report found that 88% of respondents don’t talk about their diagnoses at work, as they’re keen to be perceived as neurotypical. Meanwhile, many employers shy away from questioning people about diagnoses because it’s such a sensitive issue.

Yet if leadership isn’t aware of the neurodivergent needs within an organization, how can they know what changes they need to make?

The good news is that companies are waking up to the potential. Notable multinational IT and tech organizations have created dedicated neurodiversity programs, offering internships and full-time opportunities. A well-known Swedish bank employs neurodivergent teams to tackle advanced cybersecurity challenges.

Meanwhile, EY has created 19 Neurodiverse Centers of Excellence, designed to fuel innovation in technology, bring a new dimension of creativity, and drive greater diversity and inclusion in the workplace. These centers employ around 400 neurodivergent individuals to work within EY’s integrated client teams across the world. EY is now running a project to help it adapt and implement this model of neurodiverse centers too.

It’s clear that not all organizations will be able to take such steps. Major inclusion initiatives require investment — to educate, build the right processes and policies, and to create the support to make inclusiveness happen. Even when the funds are there, companies may need to modernize their approach to risk. For example, it’s easy to find a risk model for investment in an area like real estate, even when returns aren’t promised for 15 years. But creating risk models around people is a much less understood and more difficult task.

Yet inclusion runs deeper than flagship schemes. There are plenty of simple steps that individuals can take today to kickstart the change that’s needed, so their organizations can start to benefit from neurodiverse talent. As an example, LinkedIn now gives people the option to list dyslexic thinking as an ability in their personal profile. This easy change represents a major stride toward reprogramming perceptions and addressing existing stigmas.

First, it’s about how you treat your existing employees. Organizations should put neurodiversity clearly on the agenda, creating a top-down culture of open discussion around the issue, both to improve the inclusion of existing neurodiverse employees and to make the recruitment process less excluding too. Many people are left out before they even get a meeting with a potential employer.

Written application processes can be excluding, as can face-to-face interviews, where candidates are expected to sell themselves. Recruitment ads often demand that candidates are sociable and able to collaborate or lead, limitations that immediately discount huge numbers of people who may be talented in other ways that are even more useful.

In the course of EY’s research, one employee with ADHD said: “In a perfect world, you should be able to be completely honest in a recruitment process with what diagnosis you have. Then those who recruit can evaluate on the same terms as everyone else, but with an awareness that you have your strengths and weaknesses.”

The way forward

By levelling the playing field for candidates, and clearly supporting neurodiverse professionals throughout their careers, organizations stand to benefit from a far broader pool of talent. But it’s not about suddenly having to employ hundreds of neurodivergent people. Having tweaked your processes, start with one or two new starters, and let your experience inform how you proceed. The key is to do so with intent, with openness, and a willingness to learn new ideas. Which sounds like a solid foundation for navigating uncertainty too.

Greater neurodiversity is an effective way for companies to gain the agility and resilience they need to thrive in a fast-moving operating environment, to address increasingly prevalent gaps in the workforce, and to satisfy the growing demand for social responsibility in the eyes of investors, customers, employees and regulators alike.

?

In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 sustainable development goals, one of which is to “promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”. Including neurodiverse people in the workforce will be a critical part of achieving that goal.

While building workplaces on the premise that differences are the norm can help individuals reach their full potential, it can also create immense value for companies and society at large.?By being truly diverse and inclusive of different ways of thinking, organizations can build a culture where disparate perspectives and abilities mix and thrive — potentially boosting innovation, creativity, agility and resilience, reducing risk, and ultimately creating a future that’s truly sustainable.

[1] https://dceg.cancer.gov/about/diversity-inclusion/inclusivity-minute/2022/neurodiversity