Embracing Neurodiversity in the Workplace: 5 Benefits of Hiring Neurodiverse Talent

Employment and the labor market are weird right now, right? Statistics demonstrate that only 62% of the labor force is participating. In Colorado, there are two jobs for every person looking for a job. Yet, companies everywhere are reporting a labor shortage and a lack of qualified applicants. In the skilled trades, only two individuals are replacing the five that retire, leaving an ever-increasing gap. Five generations are working together for the first time in history. Managers and teams are clearly struggling. But, here’s the question: Are these businesses considering actively seeking neurodiversity in the workplace?

READ: How Business Leaders Can Embrace a Multigenerational Workforce 

Some companies are getting creative working with non-profits and workforce development centers to develop paths for individuals moving into our great country and state, while others are working to give second chances to those seeking them. But what continues to surprise me, is that no one is looking at the neurodiverse community and embracing those that are neurodivergent. 20 percent of our population falls into this category! What’s going on? 

Colorado just become the first state to launch a Chamber of Commerce for this disenfranchised and underrepresented group in 2022 (The Colorado Neurodiversity Chamber of Commerce). That comes 34 years after the launch of the Women’s Chamber in 1988, and 59 years after the Black Chamber in 1963.  But in just a few months over 60 big companies have already taken notice and jumped on board. Companies like Charles Schwab, Keiwet, UC Health, Trimble, the Denver Airport, The Dumb Friends League, and more. 

They’re recognizing the possibility and trying to embrace it. Here’s the thing, Neurodiversity in the workplace already exists, and neurodivergent adults are struggling because companies don’t know what it is and how to support their employees that deserve the support enablers to be successful. 

READ: Veteran Unemployment — Untapped Workplace Resources

So let’s start — first, what is Neurodiversity?

Neurodiversity refers to the natural variation in human brain function and the ways in which people process information and interact with the world around them. It recognizes that there is a wide range of neurological differences that are normal variations of the human experience and that these differences should be accepted and valued as part of the diversity of the human population. The concept of neurodiversity includes conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, Tourette’s syndrome, and other neurological differences. It emphasizes that these conditions are not necessarily disorders or deficits but are variations in how people’s brains are wired.

Society should be more inclusive of people with neurological differences and find innovative ways to support their strengths and abilities. Also, we need to reject the idea that these conditions should be “cured” or eliminated, and instead promote acceptance and understanding of neurodiversity as a natural part of human diversity.

And as a business — why hire Neurodiverse talent?

Implementing neurodiversity in the workplace can bring a variety of strengths and benefits to your company. Here are a few examples:

Unique perspectives

Neurodiverse individuals often have different ways of thinking and processing information, which can lead to innovative problem-solving and creativity. Their unique perspectives can also help to identify new opportunities and strategies that may have been overlooked by a more homogeneous team.

Attention to detail

Many neurodiverse individuals have a high level of attention to detail and can excel in tasks that require precision and accuracy. This can be especially beneficial in fields such as engineering, data analysis, and quality control.

Loyalty and commitment

Neurodiverse individuals often have a strong sense of loyalty and commitment to their work, and can be highly dedicated and motivated employees.

READ: 5 Tips for Building a Strong Company Culture in a Hybrid Work Environment

Ability to focus

Some neurodiverse individuals have the ability to hyper-focus on tasks that interest them, which can lead to high productivity and efficiency in those areas.

Diverse skill sets

Implementing neurodiversity in the workplace can bring a wide range of skills and strengths to your business, including strong memory, spatial reasoning, pattern recognition and more.

The Harvard Business Journal did a study and found that neurodistinct individuals can be up to 140% more productive than their neurotypical peers and that’s good business.

There’s so much more to add but It’s time to start the conversation and become aware of this incredible group. They’re already in your organization. And if not, they should be. Hire them not as a DEI intuitive because your company, employees, and teammates deserve a culture of inclusivity and talent. 

Questions? Good! Let’s start the conversation and move forward together. 

 

Danny CombsDanny is the Founder of TACT – Teaching the Autism Community Trades. The states leading supported employment program. Additionally, he’s the Co-Founder of the Colorado Neurodiversity Chamber of Commerce, serves on the Employment Taskforce the for Autism Society of America, is an Air Force Reservist recognized in the Pentagon for his leadership and serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council on Buckley Space Force Base. Danny has a Master’s Degree in Education, is a Board-Certified Cognitive Specialist, a Certified Autism Specialist, also a Grammy Award Winner and a classic car junkie.

The Economics of Exploitation

There is a dichotomy within my ancestral families.  My mother’s side has ties to slave ownership while on my father’s side we find post-Civil War carpetbaggers. Contemplating these disparate realities, I see a common thread—human exploitation of one type or another. In the case of slavery, the exploitation is obvious. With carpetbaggers it’s more subtle. Being a carpetbagger has become a pejorative term describing an outsider filling a political or economic void unscrupulously at worst; or taking advantage of an opportunity without sharing the bounty among local participants at best.

Cultural economics focuses on how societies organize to earn daily bread from the land, and hopefully thrive in futures defined by their cultures. In terms of labor, most participants historically fell under one of several economic modalities. All appear to involve exploitation. These include forms of serfdom, peonage and slavery. Invariably, serfdom involves social hierarchy where people are born to a certain status and someone, or a small group, is in charge (typically elders or lords). In the best of circumstances, the rulers have a reciprocal obligation to care for servants. Then there is peonage where through some means or another people owe those they work for. If fortunate, the debts are paid, thereby freeing the peons, as was the case with indentured servitude. Then there is slavery, which typically arises when one tribe conquers another tribe and forces them into labor; or sells the conquered people to others who pay a price based upon the expected productivity that can be gained over time from the slave labor. In the best of cases some slaves are treated reasonably by their captors.

What happens when labor under these modalities achieves freedom? Sometimes the labor migrates to other areas merging with new groups. In other cases the traditional relationships persist, except a wage is paid in one form or another, such as tenant farming. In our modern age I sometime think the lord of the manor has been replaced by the state, and some degree of upward mobility is afforded lower classes. In other cases, the “slave wages” paid are insufficient to incentivize work. The modern saying, “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go,” sounds like postindustrial peonage. These are all “free” reciprocal relationships among people and economic entities, and exploitation is subject to debate.

Unfortunately, extreme exploitation exists today in the form of human trafficking, which is commonly defined as “the illegal trade in human beings through recruitment or abduction by means of force, fraud, or coercion for the purposes of forced labor, debt bondage or sexual exploitation.” Based upon excerpts from Eric Williams’ “Capitalism and Slavery,” it appears the recruitment process has not changed much since the 1500s and 1600s when many poor people in England and Ireland were trafficked to the New World. Modern slavery frequently starts with desperate people such as migrants and runaway youth looking for any opportunity only to find themselves recruited by traffickers. In the United States, two-thirds of reported victims are U.S. citizens, with women and girls representing the majority through sex trafficking.  Approximately 25% of victims globally are children. Forced labor is more common among men and boys. The most common industries where human trafficking is found include construction, hospitality, manufacturing and agriculture. Globally, a significant percentage of chocolate and palm oil is produced with slave labor. Overall, estimates range from 0.3% to 0.5% of the global population (21 to 41 million people) is held in some form of bondage. According to the National Hotline for Human Trafficking (1-888-373-7888), Nevada has the highest rate of reported U.S. cases; Colorado ranks 22nd at three per 100,000 people.

Exploitation goes hand in hand with opportunism. This can be challenging, as being opportunistic to advance our individual wellbeing is a solid American value. The slave-owning branch of my mother’s family tree goes back to Richard Lee, who arrived poor (possibly as an indentured servant himself) to Virginia in 1639. Through England’s colonial land grant process, which rewarded freed servants for living on Indian lands, he was able to accumulate 15,000 acres in a short time. At first his workers were indentured servants, but when economic challenges and crop failures arose in the 1650s, Richard Lee switched to slave labor from Africa. According to Michelle Alexander in her book, “The New Jim Crow,” this was at a time when indentured servants and slaves were joining forces to rebel against planters, and Virginia passed laws to segregate the two groups. Given my father’s family history, I’m grateful my parents were ignorant of the past as my mother once exclaimed her family would never have allowed the marriage had they known he was descended from carpetbaggers.

While we have no control over the past, we can work to understand it from multiple perspectives. More importantly, we should work diligently to improve the future by confronting blatant exploitation—even when it is economically or politically convenient to look the other way.

 

(THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN COLORADOBIZ PRINT MAGAZINE SUMMER EDITION – PUBLISHED JUNE, 2022)

Tom BinningsTom Binnings is a senior partner at Summit Economics in Colorado Springs. He has more than 30 years of experience in economic and market research for public policy, strategic planning, business analytics and project finance. He can be reached at: [email protected]

 

 

Being kind to those who show up

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We’ve all seen the “We’re Hiring” signs on nearly every shop, store and restaurant, and those of us who shop brick and mortar and eat out have personally felt the effects of a too-tight labor market and a shortage of pre-pandemic staffing levels. Patience is the key.

I saw a sign in a store window that summed this all up beautifully. “The world is short staffed. Please be kind to those who showed up.” 

First, a shout out to those people who really showed up–showed up in spades. Health-care workers, grocery workers, restaurateurs and restaurant staffers, the nation’s truck drivers who kept supplies coming, and, when they finally opened, the short-staffed retail workers. When you think of the throes of the pandemic, those people who did show up command our respect and eternal thanks. The health-care workers of America in particular should be elevated to saint status. Oh, and teachers too have earned sainthood: shifting on the fly to the virtual classroom and making the last two school years possible was a miracle.  

Showing up is changing for everyone in the workforce. As someone who watches the comings and goings of economic issues with a close eye, I have been fascinated by what’s happening in the labor market. 

On the low end, the minimum wage jobs mostly in retail and hospitality, I am reminded that in the few years leading up to the pandemic the nation was in the thralls of arguing about laws and regulations that would raise the minimum wage–a “living wage,” proponents were calling it, targeting $15 an hour.

Of course, the nation’s businesses were saying that level of compensation was too extreme, and if they were forced to pay it they would cut the number of workers.

Now, in the throes of the pandemic, we’re not talking about legislation, rather the economy itself–the law of supply and demand, if you will–is making the transition on its own. I’ve seen job postings in fast-food joints offering signing bonuses and more than $14 an hour in wages, sometimes even higher, and still the “Hiring” signs stay up because they can’t attract enough workers. 

Some say the reason for this is unemployment compensation, bolstered by additional payments being doled out by the federal government enhancing benefits (which mostly expired in September). In other words, the argument has been, people are making more money on unemployment than on a job, so they won’t work.

But recent studies have shown that in the 25 states that began to limit and restrict unemployment pay beginning in June there was no effect on the labor market–the unemployed didn’t want those jobs even without the government dole. The net effect, I believe, is that even long term these so-called entry-level jobs will have to pay more money, offer more benefits and generally maintain better working conditions–and all of this will be a result of market-driven circumstances.

Suddenly, the labor market, at least on the low end, has shifted from business-centric to worker-centric, and this dynamic is very likely to play out like that for some time to come.   

In the labor market for higher-paying jobs–the white collar workforce that moved from the office and has been working from home for a year and a half–the news is also a bit more worker-centric. While productivity has apparently remained relatively high with a dispersed workforce, those people apparently spent a good deal of time at home contemplating their lives–and looking for new careers.

According to a study published in USA Today, Americans are quitting jobs in record numbers since the pandemic, looking for work that allows for a more family-friendly environment or more fulfilling to their dreams. And, some economists are saying, 20% or more of those sent home to work following COVID would prefer to stay home and not work in a traditional office setting any longer. 

It seems that at every level of the workforce spectrum, workers are from now on going to demand and command more from their employers. The market has spoken: Business is going to have to be kinder to those who show up.