Neurodiversity in Business (NiB), a business forum that shares best practice on the recruitment and retention of neurodiverse people across all industries, recently released its 2024 Research Report. The report outlines NiB’s crucial research into the current landscape of neuroinclusivity in UK workplaces.
As pointed out in this report, the majority of neurodiversity research focusses on ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) such as the UK Government’s 2023 Buckland Review of Autism Employment. However, there is little attention given to the other neurotypes under the same umbrella.
NiB’s research encompasses all neurotypes while advocating for more specific research for each type individually. Around 1 in 7 people in the UK are neurodiverse, which is a significant talent pool of people who have a typically lower employability rate. Changes across every industry and sector need to happen urgently so that we can empower neurodivergent people to not only join the workforce, but thrive in it.
In their 2024 report, NiB found that while more and more organisations have a hunger to become neuroinclusive, the lack of a well-established base for policy and best practice is a significant limiting factor. Essentially, organisations are aspiring to be neuroinclusive, but lack the expertise to do so. This is why Jamescape’s Disability Confident SaaS platform is critical; it will empower HR managers and business leaders to quickly create impact by identifying and breaking down barriers for disabled people in their organisation. Anecdotally, I’ve been to EDI (Equality, Diversity & Inclusivity) training sessions where Heads of HR from major high-street retailers are unaware of the Equality Act 2010 and the protected characteristics, which strikes me as worrying that senior leaders in huge firms are looking at EDI as an after-thought.
Despite more people getting diagnosed as neurodiverse each year, NiB’s research shows that the workplace disclosure rate has actually been decreasing over the past few years, likely due to an increasing dissatisfaction with how reasonable adjustments are implemented. At Jamescape, we address this with a tiered disability disclosure system, that allows staff to choose whether they would like to just disclose their disability to Team People (our HR team), or their Line Manager as well.
Team People then actively reaches out to the staff member to proactively offer reasonable adjustments, with examples. We meet with the staff member before implementing adjustments and then every three months following this, to check that it has been implemented correctly and it is still as useful as possible to the staff member. We also don’t require any proof of disability, reducing the (already high) admin burden for disabled people. In addition, all of our current Line Managers are neurodiverse and have extensive EDI expertise. As we understand how important Line Managers are at ensuring reasonable adjustments are implemented to a high standard day-to-day.
Another key finding of the NiB report was that wellbeing in the workplace has been decreasing since 2023, particularly amongst neurodiverse workers. The report recommended flexible working as best practice, a model which Jamescape has followed since the company was founded. We work off the philosophy of ‘work how you work best’, meaning staff can work where and when they’d like to suit their needs and preferences. There is no requirement or expectation to submit a request for flexible working, meaning that staff can easily attend hospital appointments during the day, or can choose to have a day-off and make up the hours on the weekend. This a great example of how introducing organisation-wide changes can bring benefits to not only disabled staff, but all staff.
As outlined in NiB’s report, UK businesses need to adapt quickly to meet the increasingly neurodiverse amount of talent. Jamescape is committed to driving inclusivity in all industries and if you’re interested in seeing how you can make this impact in your own workplace, reach out for a chat.