Is Neurodiversity Good for Business? And should we be focussing on that?

Employment rates are worryingly low for neurodivergent people in general and autistic people in particular.

Recently I’ve seen a lot of discussions focussing on the benefits of hiring neurodivergent folks because we are ‘good for business’, extolling the often financial benefits of having us around.

While this is well-meaning, and the end result may well be positive if it means we get better job opportunities, it feels like it’s missing the point.

Yes, having a diverse workforce is always going to be positive for business. Diversity of thought, skills and problem solving approaches will give your business a boost in terms of productivity, creativity and hopefully creating a culture that is more understanding and accepting of difference.

But should we be targeting neurodivergent recruitment because we think it’s good for the bottom line?

Would you replace ‘neurodivergent’ with any other minority group in that phrase? I’m going to guess that you wouldn’t.

Neurodiversity is good for business, there’s no denying that. And let’s be clear- neurodiversity is everyone. It’s neurodivergent and neurotypical folks. It’s embracing the whole range of different brains and ways of thinking, processing and feeling.

Neurodivergent people do bring different skills and strengths. In fact, LinkedIn has even added dyslexic thinking to its official skills which shows just how valuable a different perspective can be.

But we aren’t all the same (shocking, I know!) and there are some very unhelpful stereotypes out there about us. So we can’t assume that by hiring autistic folk you’ll automatically be getting fabulous mathematical savant-type abilities (thanks again, Rainman!) or that every ADHDer will be amazing at coming up with new business ideas.

We can absolutely be an asset, but we are individuals and need treating as such. We also need support. You can’t have a huge drive on recruitment, basing that on the positive impact you’re expecting that to have financially, and fail to properly invest in making your organisations genuinely neuroinclusive.

Hiring across the whole range of neurotypes is great but we should not focus on this because it’s financially beneficial. That’s missing the point and pretty demeaning to us. There’s a lot of pressure put on neurodivergent and otherwise disabled folks to be ‘productive’ in a capitalist society that means if we aren’t making money we often aren’t seen as ‘good enough’ and it’s not an angle we should be using to try and address the imbalance and inequities in employment.

Let’s focus instead on removing barriers to employment, reducing stigma, challenging stereotypical narratives around neurodivergence and making our workplaces genuinely accepting and embracing of all differences. You’ll get an even better result in the end and hey, it’s just the right thing to do.