Dan Harris runs a company called Neurodiversity In Business, which helps businesses incorporate neurodiverse-friendly practises, policies and structures.
According to Harris, given that up to 15 per cent of employees in the UK are neurodivergent, leveraging neurodivergent talent provides access to hidden talent pools and supports and catalyses the potential of the existing workforce, reducing talent turnover.
“What organisation doesn’t want increases in employee output and reductions in employee turnover with no associated increase in salaries or overheads?” he asks.
Broad, analogical, integrative thinking capable of identifying valuable and relevant connections and opportunities across domains is a strength associated with many neurodivergent individuals.
This core component of “fluid intelligence” happens to be the main driver of innovation, problem solving and creativity, which in turn constitute the main drivers of sustained competitive advantage in 21st century capitalism.
Harris has seen how neurodiversity in a workforce can unleash the value potential of big data. The reasons for this are as follows:
- Business has transformed as the amount of data available to organisations increases and human involvement in basic data processing decreases.
- The skills needed now are more about how to integrate a broad spectrum of knowledge into decisions about what data to look at and to how to interpret and surface the most valuable insights from it. This can be a core strength for many neurodivergent employees.
- There will always remain tasks in relation to collecting and organising this growing amount of data require intense, sustained and narrow focus – another strength.
This capability spectrum is over-represented in neurodivergent populations, he says, adding that as a result neurodivergent workforces “supercharge team working”.
He explains that neurodivergent individuals with highly specific skill sets typically seen as ‘too narrow’ are more valuable than ever, as team environments can synthesise their skills into something far greater than could be achieved by groups of psychometrically similar individuals.
Many of the behaviours managers and organisations are increasingly coming to view as critical to organisational performance, such as integrative thinking or intense sustained focus are challenging for neurotypical employees as they lie at the extreme end of their capabilities and are incredibly hard to learn.
Diversity of perspectives is often just as valuable as a diversity of thought when it comes to maximising creative output and innovation in organisations.
Neurodivergent employees are wired to see the world in a different way than their neurotypical colleagues and therefore offer a reservoir of unique perspectives.
This is why he says it can be useful to develop employee resource groups/ability groups to draw from the wisdom of lived experience among staff.
Dame Amanda Kirby is an emeritus professor at University of South Wales, and chief executive and founder of Do-It, a company specialising in neurodiversity screening, training and profiling.
Within large organisations Kirby advocates having 'champions' on the ground that can help people navigate what is available is really helpful. She says: "ERGs and ability groups can allow a conversation to be had about what is working or not and feed that back to HR."
