Neurodiversity in the workplace can have its challenges without professional help and guidance.
At UKIM Occupational Health & Wellbeing, we recognise this and that’s why we offer support and counselling for neurodivergent clients and employees.
Getting a diagnosis is a challenge in itself, especially with the backlog and waitlists within the NHS, but what happens once you’ve got the diagnosis? There’s no aftercare, support plans, or readily available help as diagnosis numbers are increasing. This leaves many people struggling to navigate neurodiversity within the workplace, and prevents many neurodiverse people from staying in the workforce.
UKIM’s Neuro-inclusive Psychotherapist, Natalie Holmes, explains what challenges neurodivergent people face and how workplaces can support them…
It’ll depend how the person is neurodivergent. There’s lots of different conditions that’ll make someone neurodivergent for example autism, ADHD, dyslexia- it could be any, and probably a combination of different things.
Depending on what that person’s specific profile is, will determine things that they may struggle with. For example, if they’re autistic then one of the hallmark struggles with that condition can be struggling with social interactions.
It might be struggles with spoken conversation, attending meetings where there are a lot of people, or they’re expected to speak in front of a number of people. There are also sensory issues, with both autism and ADHD- there’s a big overlap there. That could be anything from sound, noise distractions, touch, and smells (if someone is near a canteen and they’re getting smells from cooking).
With noise distractions, it could be that one person struggles with background noise, but another person could struggle with silence and needs radio or background noise. Obviously, these people can be working in the same environment as well so that’s why it’s really helpful to have accommodations in the workplace. It could be that one has noise cancelling headphones or that the other can have some headphones with music. There are a number of accommodations that can be made.
When I look at assessing someone for things that they struggle with, what I’ll get them to do is talk through their typical day or time at work so that we can identify things that they find challenging. That could be having to get to work for a certain time; this can be a big thing for someone with ADHD or autism in different ways. Getting to the workplace at certain times can be challenging or stressful, so even 10 minutes flexibility with start times could definitely help. They’re probably things that everyone can relate to on some degree, it’s just that it feels like it has bigger impact on a neurodivergent person.
A big part of counselling in general, but especially for neurodivergent people, is self-awareness. Sometimes we might have struggles or low moods and we might not really know why or what the underlaying cause of that is, we might just feel really overwhelmed or really low.
Counselling is one of those processes where it kind of coaxes that information out of someone, whether it’s talking about their workday or just how they’re feeling and what happened in the run-up to that feeling. Taking through things can help them process and build- and this is the ultimate goal of counselling- a client’s self-awareness so they start to learn what these triggers are.
Once they’ve done this, we can work out ways to help and find solutions so that they’re more comfortable. One they understand themselves; they can advocate for themselves and ultimately be in an environment that suits them a lot better.
