• Being an inclusive workplace means adopting universal design principles and attitudes that go beyond a tick-box exercise

  • Maureen Dunne, author of The Neurodiversity Edge, shares her thoughts

  • We have therapists who have specialist experience in working with neurodivergent clients – find them here


“Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” ― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Clouds parted and we were all momentarily blinded by the blast of mid-morning sunlight that pierced through the high-set clear windows of the conference room. At almost the same moment, a thunderous clatter erupted in the room as the tower of large wooden puzzle blocks smashed back down to the hard oak surface of the conference table. Crash. Thud. Boom.

It would be a bit jarring to the senses for anyone. But I suddenly felt a pang of concern for Jim. Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw him rocking with his hands over his ears and his eyes pinched shut in a rictus of suffering. I seemed to be the only person in the room who noticed his anguish. 


How did this happen?

A well-intentioned group leader decided we would begin with “a fun exercise to get us all energised” for the many hours of work we had ahead of us that day helping the firm make capital allocation decisions, which mostly boiled down to listening to pitches from around 30 project leaders focused on programs broadly related to neurodiversity. It was myself and my team of neurodivergent consultants with lived experience, about 10 other advisors with ties to the firm, the project leader at the firm, and the group facilitator who had devised the activity. 

We were each given a bag of irregularly shaped wooden blocks. The goal was to stack them as high and as fast as we could. If—and more likely when—your blocks fall, you’re out of the running. The person left with the tallest mountain of blocks when the timer went off would be the winner.

At the start of the exercise, I pointed to Jim and registered my concerns with the group facilitator. But she shook her head and said everything would be fine. “You’ll see. This is a great way to loosen up and get our minds into the right gear!”

Sounds like an interesting and innocuous team-building exercise, right? For someone like Jim, with his notable hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli overload, it was torture.

The irony was that we were there to help guide decisions about investments in neurodiversity, but apparently no consideration was given to making our own process inclusive. As we discovered much later, it also turned out that there was an amazing Quiet Zone Garden on the corporate campus. But no one thought to bring it up. It would have been a lifesaver for Jim.

As leaders and allies, it is important to familiarise yourself with the concept of sensory overload to build into any blueprint for an inclusive organisational culture strategy. Many of these strategies often either cost nothing or are very cheap to accommodate. Yet, these simple strategies can make a significant impact on the quality of life of neurodivergent teammates, which, in turn, will translate into increased loyalty and engagement within the organisation.


What does it really mean to be an inclusive leader?

Being an inclusive leader is not about “check the box” solutions where neurodivergent people are merely hired or present at a team meeting. It means learning to become sensitive to the range of environmental stimuli that may be making a work environment intolerable as well as embracing the flexibility to develop policies that allow for the kind of communication feedback mechanisms that employees and employers alike can appreciate and augment continuously over time so everyone can thrive.

I am often asked where a leader, manager, or ally should begin in designing and encouraging more welcoming and neurodiversity-friendly environments.

A good place to start is with this question: Under what conditions will people with diverse backgrounds, strengths, challenges, and sensory experiences be able to express the greatest possible value in this organisation? Then apply that process universally with the assumption of an employee base that includes the full spectrum of human cognitive variation.


Universal design benefits everyone

In other words, it’s not about autism or ADHD or dyslexia. It’s about universal design, which is a valuable concept that holds that systems can be built from the ground up to accommodate nearly everyone.

This is a profound change from the standard one-size-fits-all model and its many assumptions about which cognitive profiles fit best into the linear world we have constructed in our current post-industrial framework. It is also a necessary shift. As with every approach to improving inclusivity, universal design requires a fundamental resetting of perceptions about value, choice, and context when it comes to building great organisations.

While it may end up being the case that only a small percentage of employees require access to extra supports or different working conditions, if you start out with the premise that those options are necessary to accommodate all possible employees, you will end up with a system that gives you the widest possible access to available human performance and contribution.

One candidate for the most basic distillation of the thesis of this book might be: there’s a vast gulf between “being willing to hire neurodivergent people” and “embracing authentic neurodiversity inclusion.”

However, an even better one might be this: the paragraph directly above this one represents a value-added transaction—organisations that embrace this philosophy proactively will enjoy a competitive advantage, and as more and more organisations come to the same conclusion, the world becomes a better and more functional place.

Remember the world before wheelchair ramps existed? Think about how many people who are not in wheelchairs that also benefit from ramps: elderly people, moms with babies in strollers, pregnant women, young kids, people with visual impairments, people using crutches, those recovering from a stroke or anyone else who would prefer to avoid stairs. Now consider the total value all those people have to offer.

This is universal design at work—everyone wins when everyone can fully participate.

Dr Maureen Dunne is the The Neurodiversity Edge: The Essential Guide to Embracing Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Neurological Differences for Any Organization


Further reading