“The world has been built by neurotypical people for neurotypical people,” notes Dyspraxia Foundation trustee Jake Hobson. He is speaking as part of the panel for a JLL webinar, “Championing neurodiverse workplaces for people and businesses to thrive”.
Hobson was diagnosed with dyspraxia at the age of nine, and, like many others, has had to adapt to be able to function in sometimes hostile workspaces. “But we are not the problem,” he points out. “The world is the problem, and we are the collateral damage.”
Depending on how you look at it, neurodiversity is either a broad range of experience covering everyone, or it applies to around a third of people who are not considered neurotypical. Regardless of the semantics, we all think differently, process differently, and respond differently to stimulus. As JLL’s Robert Moore says: “No one size fits all.”
But around one in seven people is neurodivergent, which can include dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia and the autistic spectrum, among others.
Vivek Menon, chair of JLL’s neurodiversity network, points out that in an organisation the size of JLL around 13,000 people are likely to be neurodivergent. And, as such, they will have different strengths, and challenges and needs.
“It has become a business imperative rather than a social responsibility,” adds senior surveyor Josh Stupples.
“But the real challenge for a neurodivergent person is that a lot of the time they don’t know what their needs are, because they don’t know any different,” says Hobson.
Focus on the individual
Despite knowing about his dyspraxia from an early age, it wasn’t until last year, at the age of 33, that he was diagnosed with ADHD. He describes having that diagnosis as getting another “piece of the puzzle”.
He is hardly alone. Two out of five neurodivergent people leave school without a diagnosis. And while some will be diagnosed in later life, most will not.
For some neurodivergent people, working from home has been a blessing, giving them the ability to manage their own working environment, something that had previously been denied.
But now, as the world starts to get back to what we have classified as “normal”, some companies are looking to force their staff back to the office.
“To be honest I’m a little depressed by that,” says Emma Marfé, a neurodiversity consultant who set up JLL’s neurodiversity network. “Why have you not been listening? Focus on what works for the individual.”
For JLL’s head of workplace for EMEA, Lee Daniels, it shouldn’t be about presenteeism, but giving your staff whatever environments will help them do their best work.
“Once you understand that it stops being about working from home, or the office,” he says. “Let’s be adults and let people do what they need to do in order to be productive. Those organisations that do that, will win the war on talent.”
But why should offices be less than inviting to the non neurotypical? Why can’t they be places that nurture the neurodiverse and help them thrive?
Environments typically require adaptions to enable neurodivergent people to be able to thrive. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if such inclusivity was baked in, right from the start?
“While the real estate sector is behind others in terms of attracting neurodiverse talent, we are in a prime position to create inclusive workspaces,” Stupples says. “We can enable these individuals to thrive.
Space to thrive
For Jennifer Offord, senior planning manager at Homes England as well as Neurodiversity in Planning lead, that is the only way to ensure a genuinely inclusive workspace.
“How often do we think about how we feel in the space around us?” she asks. “What are the sounds, what are the distractions. When someone walks past us does that disrupt our concentration?” For those of us who are not neurotypical, these things can have a huge impact. And for those who are neurotypical, the very things that may seem to make a workplace a better environment might actually prove detrimental. “A really good example is having music on while you are working,” says Offord. “For some people that really helps. For others that would be the worst thing that you can do.”
The key, Offord says, is to realise that everyone’s response is different. “You can’t assume that your experience of an environment will be shared by all the people around you.
“That’s why we need to prompt the conversations,” says Offord. “People need to feel comfortable to say that their desk is in the wrong place. Rather than them just working there, waiting for everyone to go home at night before they can actually concentrate and do their work.”
Sound familiar? The chances are that describes you, or someone in your workplace. It was my own experience for nearly 10 years. But it needn’t be. There is no reason modern workplaces can’t be exactly the right environments to help neuro-divergent people thrive. Or at least some of us.
Design fundamentals
Daniels has been advising clients about this from a design perspective for a number of years. It all comes down to the fundamentals of design – light, form, line, colour, texture, mass, space, patterns and technology. Light levels or types can have an enormous impact on some people. Noise as well. As can scale, symmetry and size. A funky, haphazard workspace may look relaxed and informal, but it could be hellish for someone with dyspraxia.
“Diversity and inclusion is often overlooked by most of my clients,” he says. “But if the client considers all those things, what they will be doing is designing a space that is fully inclusive. And that’s what we should be doing from the outset.”
He says it’s just about being human. “If you take the time to understand your people, understand their wants and needs, guess what? You can create spaces that are great for everyone.”
Of course, adjustments would still need to be made, says Marfé. “But when these basic principles are in place it makes my job much easier, and it makes inclusion for the individual a much smoother process.”
And there is no need to worry if all of this will open a can of worms, legally speaking. “The can of worms has already been opened. The onus is on the company to ensure that their employees have the support they need, even if the individuals don’t quite know what that might be.”
In other words, we need to design our workspaces to be inclusive.
“It needs to be one size fits one, not one size fits all,” says Hobson. “When the workplace is designed inclusively and the infrastructure of how we work is also inclusive, then people will thrive.”
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