Divergent Blog

with Alexandra Standley For Neurodiversity Celebration Week, we wanted to explore something a little different from the usual workplace posts. Because sometimes the thing that drains your energy isn’t your workload. It’s the “small” stuff your body has to tolerate all day. That’s why we teamed up with Alexandra Standley for this guest piece on sensory comfort and style: https://www.alexandrastandley.co.uk/post/neurodiversity-style-sensory-comfort If you’ve ever stood in front

If your job description reads like a wish list, you’re shrinking your talent pool and raising legal risk. A good JD does three things: states measurable outcomes, lists only true essentials , and tells candidates exactly how they’ll be assessed. Everything else is noise—or worse, a barrier. Start from outcomes, not adjectives Open with the mission and the 3–5 outputs the role is accountable for this year. Then name the capabilities that directly drive those outputs. Keep the

Most managers don’t need more training content. They need language they can use in the moment. Because the moments that make or break neuroinclusion are ordinary: setting expectations changing priorities running meetings giving feedback handling support needs preventing overload Below are nine manager scripts that reduce ambiguity and cognitive load, improve performance, and make support feel normal (not awkward). If you want a session that helps managers practise these scrip

Workplace needs assessments (sometimes called workplace adjustment assessments) are one of the most powerful tools organisations have for supporting neurodivergent employees. When done well, they improve performance, retention and wellbeing. When done poorly, they create mistrust, delay support and increase legal risk. Under the Equality Act 2010 , employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments where a disabled employee is placed at a substantial disadvantage. A workp

Most neurodiversity-related tribunal cases do not begin with hostility. They begin with drift. A manager notices that an employee is struggling, but assumes it is a performance issue. A support request is raised, but gets delayed. Communication remains vague. Adjustments are discussed, but not implemented. Trust drops. Stress rises. Performance concerns escalate. By the time the organisation is thinking legally, it has often already mishandled the practical part. That is why

For day 2 of Neurodiversity Celebration Week, we teamed up with Jacki Edry for a guest piece on her new “Organizing Minds” series: Organizing Minds: The Hidden Weight of “Keeping It All Together” . Jacki’s framing is the reason this collaboration felt like such a natural fit: the aim isn’t to “fix” people, it’s to reduce the invisible load that piles up when systems assume one default brain. Jacki's book Moving Forward Here’s the heart of the piece (and why it matters at wor

One-size-fits-all roles create invisible friction. Tasks arrive in the wrong format, priorities shift without explanation, and good people spend energy working around the job rather than doing it. A better approach is job crafting : giving employees structured permission to align tasks, relationships and sense-making with how they work best—while holding outcomes constant. Done well, crafting reduces executive-function load, surfaces strengths, and improves performance witho

Most communication problems at work aren’t about attitude. They’re about ambiguity: unclear asks, missing context, decisions not written down, and priorities that live in someone’s head. That creates cognitive load and rework for everyone—especially neurodivergent colleagues. Below are practical, copy-paste templates you can use in Teams/Slack/email to make work more checkable, more inclusive, and faster to deliver. If you want your managers and teams trained to embed these h

Onboarding sets the tone for everything that follows. If a new starter spends their first weeks trying to decode vague expectations, chase missing information or hide support needs, the organisation is already losing energy it could have invested in confidence, belonging and performance. That is why neuroinclusive onboarding matters so much. It is not a “nice to have” extra after recruitment. It is one of the clearest places where inclusion either becomes real or falls apart.

Autism in the workplace is still too often framed as a problem to manage rather than a difference to understand properly. That is one reason so many autistic employees end up spending energy not just on their jobs, but on decoding vague expectations, managing sensory overload, navigating unclear communication and masking their natural way of working. Practical support makes a difference because many workplace difficulties linked to autism are not caused by lack of ability. Th

Last year, the NAS South Hampshire Branch Autism Seminar brought together autistic people, allies, and experts for a day of meaningful discussion and practical insight. Held on Saturday 17 May 2025 at Chandlers Ford Methodist Church, this volunteer-led event stood out by blending scientific understanding with lived experience. The seminar featured two autistic speakers who focused on mental health, personal stories, and strategies that truly help in everyday life. This post

Interviews often measure how well someone tolerates ambiguity, speeded conversation, bright rooms and unfamiliar tech—not whether they can do the job. UK law expects employers to remove that disadvantage where it’s linked to disability. The result should be a fair test of the role , not of coping with the format. Here’s how to run interviews that hold standards high and stay lawful. Your legal footing (two plain-English rules) First, the Equality Act 2010 requires employers t

Most workplace communication problems aren’t about “tone”. They’re about information design . When instructions are vague, priorities shift without trade-offs, and key context lives in someone’s head, people spend energy guessing instead of doing. Neurodivergent colleagues often feel that cognitive load first—but everyone pays for it in rework, delays, and avoidable friction. This post gives you a practical communication standard you can adopt quickly, without new tools or a

In 2016, I was named a finalist for the Pride of Britain Prince’s Trust Young Achiever award . At the time, it felt enormous. I was in a room with some of the most extraordinary people in the country, and on paper my story fit the kind of arc these awards often celebrate: a young person who had experienced adversity, overcome barriers, and emerged into visibility. I had gone from being a “bottom set” student, from being too anxious to leave my room, to speaking up for neurodi

Autistic people have long faced barriers to work that have nothing to do with talent and a great deal to do with how workplaces are designed. The UK government’s Buckland Review of Autism Employment reported that only around 3 in 10 autistic people of working age are in employment , compared with around 5 in 10 disabled people overall and 8 in 10 non-disabled people . The review also noted that autistic graduates are significantly less likely to move quickly into full-time

Apprenticeships offer a fantastic opportunity to learn on the job, build skills, and grow a career. For neurodivergent people, they can be especially rewarding but also cognitively demanding. The variety of tasks, new environments, and social expectations can sometimes feel overwhelming. That’s why understanding neurodiversity in apprenticeship settings matters—not just for apprentices themselves but also for the managers and teams supporting them. In March 2026, we had the p

If your process screens for polish, you won’t hire potential. Neuro-inclusive hiring swaps noisy proxies—CV formatting, small talk fluency, perfect recall under stress—for transparent, skills-first tasks aligned to real work. You still raise the bar; you just measure the right things. Why proxies fail Traditional filters (prestige institutions, long unbroken employment, “culture fit,” rapid-fire interviews) correlate weakly with job performance and strongly with advantage. M

Most organisations “measure” training with one question: “Did you like the session?” That’s not measurement. That’s hospitality. If you want neurodiversity training to translate into safer disclosure, clearer work, and better performance, you need to measure what actually changes: manager confidence, behaviour adoption, and reduced friction. This post gives you a simple, practical measurement approach you can run in 30–90 days—no huge evaluation project required. If you want

Growth is often talked about as though it is only a commercial issue. More clients. More revenue. More market share. More output. But sustainable growth depends on something deeper: whether an organisation can attract, support and retain different kinds of talent, think flexibly under pressure, and build systems that do not exclude the very people who could help it adapt. That is where neuroinclusion matters. A neuroinclusive organisation is not just one that knows the langua

ADHD at work is still widely misunderstood. Too often, it gets reduced to stereotypes about distraction, restlessness or poor organisation. In reality, many employees with ADHD are highly capable, creative, resilient and productive — but they may be working much harder than other people to stay afloat in systems that were not designed with them in mind. That is why practical support matters. The question for employers is not whether someone with ADHD can succeed at work. They