Setting your Neurodivergent Employees up for Success
The importance of creating supportive work environments for neurodivergent employees.
As a lot of organisations have started to broaden their approach to their Diversity and Inclusion work, the topic of Neurodiversity is hotting up.
Working environments play a huge role in helping employees (neurodiverse or not) be effective at work. As a neurodivergent person, my ability to manage my workspace and have autonomy over the way I work, is one of the single biggest contributors to my productivity. The other is my ability to deploy my strengths in the work I do.
Ambiguity works beautifully for me because I can be super divergent in my thinking but actually the more clear I am about outcomes my clients require, the more focused and convergent I can be. You want to be able to tap into and use both types of thinking so that you get the best out of your team members.
Getting Brain-Friendly
So what can you do to support your Neurodiverse employees at work - here’s a general rule of thumb. These are generic and I would recommend that you ask your neurodivergent employee exactly what they need to be successful.
A lot of neurodivergent people like structure and their brain is wired to focus on one thing at a time . From a brain perspective, this is how everyone should operate because multi-tasking is a myth!
“Multi tasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.” - Steve Uzzell
All Employees Needs Should Matter
This cookie cutter approach to managing employees isn’t brain-friendly. So it’s time to change. Understanding what all employees need to be successful, should be prioritised. All human beings have different brains, operating styles, culture, experiences, backgrounds that will have great benefit to organisations if harnessed correctly.
Why does this matter now?
Well in October 2022, the NSW government implemented new regulations that outline the minimum standards expected by employers in managing psychosocial risks in the workplace. Now this may not matter to you if you are not in NSW, however, my guess is that this will become the norm shortly and it’s just hella good practice.
A psychosocial hazard is a hazard that arises from, or relates to:
- the design or management of work;
- a work environment;
- plant at a workplace; or
- workplace interactions or behaviours; and
- that may cause psychological harm.
Resource: Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work
There are two really important things to take-away from this blog. 1. All teams need psychological safety to operate at their best. 2. Managing Psychosocial risks is just bloody good business practice. The goal is to create a thriving workplace where everyone is doing the best job they can do and flourishing.
