As ADHD has only been diagnosable in UK adults since 2008, awareness has skyrocketed in recent years, with a 400 percent increase in the number of adults seeking assessments since 2020.
For HR, this presents a clear challenge, with one in five neurodivergent employees experiencing harassment at work. Harassment involves any unwanted conduct relating to disability that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment. It could include inappropriate behavior or comments such as, ‘Everyone’s a bit ADHD these days.’
Harassment is a type of disability discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, which means employers have a legal duty to prevent it from occurring at work. In 2023, employment tribunals made 278 judgments referencing conditions like ADHD, Autism, and Dyslexia, compared to just 3 in 2015—an increase of 9167 percent!
The benefits of having a neuro-inclusive working environment include higher employee engagement and productivity. The costs for not doing so can be extremely expensive, as disability discrimination awards are uncapped, as seen by a recent award of £4.6 million.
Neuroinclusivity should be an urgent priority for every employer – here’s how HR can empower employees to speak up early instead of seeing them in court.
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Neuroinclusivity & Disability Policies
Using your rights is impossible if you don’t know what they are. Every employer should have a policy explaining terms, approaches, and procedures related to disability, neurodiversity, and reasonable adjustments.
These policies should be accessible and relevant to all employees, particularly empowering managers, HR, and neurodivergent employees alike to understand the implications of disclosing a neurodevelopmental condition at work.
As 3 in 10 neurodivergent employees haven’t disclosed their condition due to fear of stigma, policies like this provide psychological safety for early disclosure, as opposed to when there’s a problem. This also enables employees to access the support and understanding they need to thrive in their roles.
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Mandatory Training
Policies are pointless if nobody knows about or follows them. HR should ensure all employees undertake mandatory training on disability and neurodiversity policies and tailor this to specific groups such as managers.
As a starting point, it can be helpful for HR and senior leaders to receive in-depth neuro inclusion training, ensuring a ‘top-down’, structured approach throughout an organisation.
As neurodivergent people can have a range of different conditions that manifest uniquely to them, managers must receive specialized training tailored to the individuals they are working with. Neurodiversity affects how a person thinks, functions, and performs, so it’s vital to ensure understanding from those they report to. It’s essential managers understand the legal responsibilities of an employer under the Equality Act 2010 about disability, including the duty to make reasonable adjustments and how to put this into practice.
Without mandatory, tailored training, well-intentioned neuro inclusion attempts, such as a general awareness session, may not reach those who most need it.
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General education
Harassment can be wide-ranging, including one-off incidents such as jokes or ‘banter’. Legally, it doesn’t matter if someone didn’t intend to harass someone – only that it had this effect. An individual can bring a claim against this without needing to be disabled themselves, as long as they have been affected by disability-related conduct such as inappropriate language.
As neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD have been highly politicized in the media in recent months, providing education for all employees on these topics is crucially important for employers. This ensures a safe working environment where employees understand their expectations to avoid harassing others.
Employers should do everything they can to prevent bullying and harassment from occurring in the workplace and be able to demonstrate this.
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Be proactive
Employers can utilise schemes such as the UK Government’s Access to Work grant, which provides up to £66,000 worth of support per year to help individuals with health conditions that impact their work.
This support is in addition to reasonable adjustments, but employers can actively signpost employees towards this and support them with the processes. For example, awards could include tailored coaching, training, and administrative support.
Providing support such as an ADHD Champions course can also empower employees to provide peer support, equipping them with a logo to signpost their specialist education and skills in this area for employees who may be afraid to speak to HR or their manager.
Nobody works well in an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment. Neuroinclusivity at work doesn’t just benefit neurodivergent employees but everybody within an organization to support and empower one another as a team – regardless of differences.
