April Month Focus
Creative Communications month
Neurodiversity is an area of diversity and inclusion that refers to the natural range of difference in brain function and alternative thinking styles such as: Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome, and others.
This month we are highlighting the many different ways people communicate in the workplace, celebrating the diverse range of people we work with and shining a light on neurodiverse employees within our networks.
Those with neurodiversity are commonly associated with high levels of creativity and lateral thinking and by bringing together diverse people a different perspective can be contributed and homogeneity of thought reduced.
Traditionally, there are four forms of communication: verbal, nonverbal, written and visual but within these four categories is a vast array of micro communications that we all use every day. We all have our preferred methods, but for those within the neurodiverse community some methods may not only be non-preferable, but actually impossible.
Of course, we can’t generalise the difficulties this community face. Each individual is different, they all have varying characteristics to each other and each employee will need different support in order to excel at work. It’s getting companies thinking about the different ways they can help their staff, and particularly their neurodiverse staff, communicate in their role as effectively as possible that is key.
“The potential is much faster in neurodiverse workers because they have a capacity for things like numbers. Some of the top software engineers brought in neurodiverse people who had no knowledge of coding and they were able to identify 300 errors that the developers had not seen because of their ability to see patterns. They intake information in a different way and see things others don’t,” said the MD at VERCIDA
So how can companies support workers from the neurodiverse community and ensure they’re not missing out on the top talent available?
Raising awareness around neurodiversity in the workplace and the challenges people from this community face is a good step in the right direction but creating workable actions to help individuals needs to be encouraged from the recruitment stage up.
Too many companies still recruit using traditional methods but these methods might be cutting out a huge proportion of people with diverse needs. For someone with dyslexia, writing out a CV may be very difficult, but perhaps they are a top mathematician. Surely it’s the company that loses out by not giving them a chance to display their skills and instead judging them on a completely irrelevant skill.
This month we will be sharing employee stories from our client’s companies to showcase how each business is working to be neurodiverse inclusive.