Designed for Every Mind: Neuroinclusion, Universal Design, and How Leaders Can Move Beyond Diagnosis-Based Accommodation
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Abstract: Neurodivergent employees, including autistic people and those with ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia, remain underemployed and inconsistently supported despite a decade of high-profile hiring programs. Most organizations still route support through a diagnosis-and-disclosure gate: an employee must obtain a label, reveal it, and then receive adjustments drawn from a condition-specific checklist. In October 2026, the UK Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity concluded that this model is slow, inequitable, and poorly predictive of what people actually need, and recommended needs-led support anchored in universal design. This article synthesizes that report, recent employer and employee surveys, and peer-reviewed research on neurodiversity at work. It examines the scale of the employment and experience gap, its consequences for organizations and individuals, and five evidence-based responses: needs-led adjustments, universal design of work systems, skills-based recruitment, manager capability and psychological safety, and specialist programs integrated into the mainstream. It closes with three pillars for building durable neuroinclusion capability and practical takeaways for leaders.
Ask most HR leaders how their organization supports neurodivergent employees and you will hear some version of the same process. An employee who is struggling is encouraged to speak to occupational health or HR. If they have a diagnosis, they share it. Someone consults a list of adjustments associated with that condition, and a few items are put in place: noise-cancelling headphones, extra time for written tasks, perhaps a quieter desk. If they do not have a diagnosis, the conversation often stalls until they get one.
That process feels responsible. It mirrors the way many organizations handle physical disability, it creates a paper trail, and it gives managers something concrete to do. The trouble is that it rests on two assumptions that the evidence no longer supports. The first is that a diagnosis is a reliable doorway to support. In many places it is not: waiting lists are long, access varies by condition and region, and some diagnoses are effectively unavailable to adults through public health systems. The second is that knowing someone's diagnosis tells you what they need. It usually does not. Two people with the same label can have very different profiles of strengths and difficulties, and one person's needs can shift as their role, team, or environment changes.
On 2 October 2026, the UK Department for Work and Pensions published the final report of its Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, chaired by Professor Amanda Kirby, alongside the government's response (Department for Work and Pensions [DWP], 2026a, 2026b). The panel's central message was blunt. Support in employment should be needs-led rather than dependent on diagnosis, and employers and government should increasingly adopt universal design principles so that workplaces are built for human variation from the outset rather than retrofitted one adjustment at a time (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The government accepted the needs-led principle and launched a sixteen-week policy discovery exercise on applying universal design to workplaces (DWP, 2026b).
The panel's conclusions land at a moment when many employers are uncertain about what to do next. Autism hiring programs pioneered by firms such as SAP, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase have shown that neurodivergent talent is real and often overlooked (Austin & Pisano, 2017; Krzeminska et al., 2019). Yet those programs reach a small number of people relative to the neurodivergent workforce already employed, much of it undiagnosed or undisclosed. Employee surveys continue to report uneven support, long waits for adjustments, and lower psychological safety among neurodivergent staff (CIPD, 2024; City & Guilds Foundation & Do-IT Solutions, 2026). Meanwhile, return-to-office mandates, AI-enabled hiring tools, and tighter budgets are changing the conditions of work in ways that can help or harm.
This article makes the case that leaders should treat neuroinclusion less as a specialist accommodation problem and more as a design problem. It draws on the panel's report, recent survey evidence, and peer-reviewed research to describe the landscape, its consequences, and five organizational responses that the evidence supports. The goal is practical: to help leaders move from a model in which a minority of employees must prove a label to receive help, toward one in which clear, flexible, accessible ways of working are the default and individual support is fast, conversational, and reviewed.
The Neuroinclusion Landscape
Defining Neurodiversity, Neuroinclusion, and Universal Design
Neurodiversity refers to the natural variation in human neurocognitive functioning. The term is used both descriptively, to say that all brains differ, and in a narrower sense to describe neurominorities or neurodivergent people whose cognitive profiles differ markedly from the population average. Doyle (2020), in a widely cited review in the British Medical Bulletin, identifies a consensus that several neurodevelopmental conditions can be grouped as neurominorities characterized by a "spiky profile," in which difficulties with executive functions sit alongside neurocognitive strengths. Doyle also notes ongoing controversy over terminology and over whether these differences are best understood as disabilities or as naturally occurring variation, and observes that diagnostic practice and legal protection vary by country, leaving employers with unclear guidance.
The Expert Academic Panel took a deliberately broad view. Its scope covered autism, ADHD, developmental language disorder, developmental coordination disorder (dyspraxia), dyslexia, dyscalculia, tic disorders, and acquired conditions such as traumatic brain injury, recognizing that these frequently co-occur (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Rather than organize its advice by diagnosis, the panel grouped workplace challenges into functional areas: communication, planning and self-organizing, movement and coordination, and sensory processing, with secondary challenges related to emotional regulation and fatigue. It argued that if employers design features and adjustment options around these areas, they are likely to meet the needs of many neurodivergent employees and applicants.
Neuroinclusion describes the organizational practices, cultures, and environments that allow people across the range of neurotypes to participate, perform, and progress. It is broader than hiring. The CIPD (2024) frames it as making neurodiversity a consideration in the design of workplace processes, management practices, environments, and the organization of work, noting that typical norms may suit some employees but not others.
Two further terms matter for this article. A needs-led approach, as the panel defines it, starts by identifying the barriers an individual encounters in a particular context and how best to support them, without requiring a diagnosis. The panel stresses that such an assessment is consistent with the UK Equality Act 2010 and aligns with the social model of disability, which locates disability in the interaction between people and environments rather than solely in individual impairment (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Universal design originated in architecture and product design. The Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University articulated seven principles intended to guide the design of products and environments usable by as many people as possible without adaptation (Story, 1998). Applied to work, universal design means building recruitment, communication, tools, policies, and physical spaces so that they accommodate a wide range of cognitive styles by default. The panel is careful to say that universal design does not erase individualization. Its argument is that a well-designed baseline makes personalized support more feasible and less stigmatizing (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
Prevalence, Drivers, and Distribution
Estimates of how many people are neurodivergent vary with definitions and methods. LeFevre-Levy et al. (2023), writing in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, cite estimates suggesting that as much as 17% of the US workforce may be neuroatypical. Silver et al. (2023), responding in the same journal, cite an estimate that 15% to 20% of the world's population is neurodiverse. The CIPD (2024) similarly describes perhaps as many as up to 20% of people identifying as neurodivergent in some way. Whatever the precise figure, the implication for employers is the same: neurodivergent people are not a niche population that arrives through a special program. They are already present in every large workforce, often without a formal diagnosis.
Employment outcomes, however, are sharply uneven. The DWP's press release accompanying the panel report states that in 2024/25 only 34% of disabled people with autism were in work, compared with 55% of disabled people overall (DWP, 2026a). The Buckland Review of Autism Employment, published in February 2024 and led by Sir Robert Buckland with support from the charity Autistica, described the autism employment rate as one of the worst of any disability group and reported that autistic people face the largest disability pay gap, earning on average about a third less than non-disabled people (Buckland, 2024). The review also noted that autistic graduates were twice as likely as non-disabled graduates to be unemployed fifteen months after graduation.
Several drivers sustain these gaps. The first is recruitment that relies heavily on unstructured interviews and social performance. Krzeminska et al. (2019) argue that the problem often lies less with neurodivergent candidates than with hiring processes that define talent too narrowly, especially interviews that disadvantage people with atypical interaction styles. The Buckland Review cites survey evidence that many autistic young people see inaccessible application and interview processes as among the biggest barriers to work (Buckland, 2024).
The second driver is the diagnosis gate itself. The panel observes that publicly funded adult diagnoses of dyslexia, developmental language disorder, or dyspraxia are, in most areas of the UK, not possible, and that waits for other assessments are long and variable. When support depends on a label, people either go without or seek whichever diagnosis is locally available, which in turn drives inequity in who gets recognized (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The panel also points to research showing that current diagnostic categories do not map neatly onto how differences in brain function present, and that within any one diagnosis there is so much variation that the label has little predictive value for work outcomes or for the type of support needed.
The third driver is disclosure risk. In the CIPD's 2024 survey of 1,047 UK employees, around three in ten neurodivergent respondents had not told their line manager or HR about their neurodivergence. Asked why, 44% said it was a private matter, 37% were concerned about stereotyping, about a third felt there was too much stigma, and 29% worried about the impact on their career (CIPD, 2024). The Buckland Review reports research finding that only around 35% of autistic employees are fully open about being autistic at work (Buckland, 2024). A support system that only activates after disclosure will therefore miss a large share of the people it is meant to help.
The fourth driver is uneven manager capability. Employers surveyed by the CIPD reported that fewer than half (46%) of their managers feel capable and confident supporting neurodivergent individuals, and that line manager roles are designed to give adequate emphasis to people management in just 28% of organizations (CIPD, 2024). The panel similarly concluded that line managers lack confidence and competence and that there are no nationally recognized standards for managing neurodiversity at work (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
Distribution matters too. The CIPD found that neuroinclusion was a stated focus for 60% of organizations overall but for a much lower share of small firms than large ones, and for more public sector than private sector employers (CIPD, 2024). The panel highlights intersectional disadvantage related to ethnicity, sex, age, and socioeconomic status, which current policy and research rarely address, and notes that research has been condition-siloed, with some conditions receiving far more attention than others (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Doyle and McDowall (2022) reached a similar conclusion through a systematic "empty review," finding that the academic literature offered little contextualized, practical guidance for employers or employees and that a science-practitioner gap was widening.
Organizational and Individual Consequences
Organizational Performance Impacts
The business case for neurodiversity entered the management mainstream with Austin and Pisano's (2017) Harvard Business Review article. They argued that conventional recruitment overlooks people with conditions such as autism, dyspraxia, and dyslexia who often bring strengths in areas such as memory, mathematics, and pattern recognition, and they described how companies were replacing interviews with informal skill demonstrations and pairing new hires with workplace mentors and coaches. Krzeminska et al. (2019) note that by the late 2010s prominent firms including SAP, Microsoft, DXC Technology, EY, JPMorgan Chase, and Ford had launched employment initiatives that de-emphasized interviews in favor of inclusive recruiting approaches.
Some organizations report striking results. Employee Benefit News reported that JPMorgan Chase's first cohort of Autism at Work hires, recruited from 2015 into roles such as software quality assurance, were 48% more productive than comparison employees in the same jobs who had three to ten years' experience (Nedlund, 2020). EY reported that its Neuro-Diverse Centers of Excellence achieved a 92% retention rate among members and that neurodivergent staff had developed solutions creating almost $1 billion in value (Burleigh, 2024). These figures are company-reported and should be read as such, but they illustrate why the topic attracted executive attention.
Evidence that is less dependent on self-report comes from evaluations of specialist programs. Hedley et al. (2023) conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the DXC Dandelion Program, an Australian Government sponsored three-year supported employment program for autistic adults in the information and communications technology sector. Drawing on data from 56 participants, they found that the program generated a high benefit ratio for government, driven mainly by increased wages and hours worked and by avoided welfare payments, and that most participants moved into open employment after the program. The benefit ratio remained above 1.0 even under higher discount rates.
The costs of exclusion are less visible but real. When adjustments are slow, the panel notes, a "negative confidence/competence cycle" can begin, in which performance dips, confidence erodes, and the employment relationship deteriorates (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The 2026 Neurodiversity Index found that 35% of employees waited three months or more for workplace adjustments (City & Guilds Foundation & Do-IT Solutions, 2026). A quarter of a year is a long time for a new hire to work without the tools they need, and the cost shows up in absence, attrition, performance management cases, and occasionally employment tribunal claims. The panel recommends that government introduce a two-week deadline for employers to respond to adjustment requests, a proposal the government has placed under review (DWP, 2026b).
Retention is another channel. The 2026 report from Neurodiversity in Business and Birkbeck, University of London found that 38% of neurodivergent employees had received a return-to-office mandate and that more than half of those said it made them reconsider staying with their employer (Neurodiversity in Business & Birkbeck, University of London, 2026). The same report described a growing group of neurodivergent entrepreneurs who had left corporate employment, 61% of whom said they would not return. For employers competing for scarce technical and analytical skills, such findings suggest that inflexible policies can quietly push out capable people.
There is also a caution here. Silver et al. (2023) warn against relying exclusively on the business case. Neurodiversity will not always produce performance gains, which makes the case a risky wager; neurodivergent candidates may be put off by organizations that see their inclusion mainly as a business imperative; and framing neurodivergent people as unusually gifted or "superpowered" can other and commodify them. Their proposed complement is universal design: making workplaces accessible and welcoming to neurodivergent people in ways that benefit everyone. This is a useful corrective for leaders. The strongest organizational argument for neuroinclusion is not that a small group of hires will be exceptional, but that work designed around human variation tends to be clearer, more flexible, and more productive for the whole workforce.
Individual Wellbeing and Stakeholder Impacts
For individuals, the consequences of poor fit can be serious. Neurodivergent employees were less likely than neurotypical colleagues to say that time flies when they are working (44% versus 51%) or that they feel full of energy (25% versus 32%), and more likely to say they feel exhausted (45% versus 30%) or lonely (23% versus 17%) at work (CIPD, 2024). A fifth of neurodivergent respondents reported harassment or discrimination at work because of their neurodivergence.
Only 38% of employees in the CIPD survey said their organization provides meaningful support to neurodivergent individuals, and only just over half said they would feel comfortable asking for support or adjustments (CIPD, 2024). The 2026 Neurodiversity Index paints a similar picture: 51% of neurodivergent employees said they did not receive consistent, good support when they asked for it, and only 39% felt well supported from the start of their role (City & Guilds Foundation & Do-IT Solutions, 2026). The Index also found that 70% of employees with a neurodivergent family member said caring responsibilities affect their work, a reminder that neurodiversity touches the workforce through families as well as through employees themselves.
The Neurodiversity in Business and Birkbeck research identified psychological safety as the strongest driver of wellbeing, career satisfaction, and retention among neurodivergent employees in its earlier data, and reported that it had not improved by 2026 (Neurodiversity in Business & Birkbeck, University of London, 2026). The same report highlighted high burnout risk, particularly among people with more than one neurotype, linked to cognitive load, inconsistent support, and inflexible structures. The panel, too, concluded that there is strong preliminary evidence that intention to leave and career satisfaction are driven by psychological safety and relationships with line managers (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
Remote and hybrid work illustrate how the same change can cut both ways. In a qualitative study of neurodivergent employees during the pandemic, Szulc et al. (2023) found that remote work brought a loss of routine, distractions, long hours, and communication difficulties in virtual settings, but also helped people avoid sensory overwhelm and supported a healthier work-life balance. The lesson for HR, the authors suggest, is to offer working arrangements that better suit individual employees rather than imposing a single model.
The broader stakes extend beyond the workplace. The Buckland Review summarizes research showing that employment is important for autistic people's mental wellbeing and quality of life, and that unemployment is a known risk factor for poor outcomes including suicide (Buckland, 2024). The panel connects inclusion to public health, welfare costs, and economic growth, arguing that greater participation can reduce pressure on health and welfare systems (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Colleagues are stakeholders as well. Spoor et al. (2021), studying non-autistic co-workers and managers in an Australian autism employment program, found that the program was generally viewed positively and increased understanding of autism, but that perceptions of special treatment created challenges and that the program's design limited trainees' social integration into the wider workplace. That finding foreshadows one of the strongest arguments for universal design: support that is available to everyone is less likely to be resented as a privilege.
Evidence-Based Organizational Responses
The evidence points to five mutually reinforcing responses. None is a quick fix, and the research base for several remains preliminary, a limitation the panel itself emphasizes (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Taken together, however, they describe a coherent shift from diagnosis-gated accommodation toward a layered model, in which universal design provides the base, needs-led adjustments sit above it, and specialist support is reserved for needs the first two layers cannot meet. Table 1 summarizes each response.
Table 1. Evidence-Based Organizational Responses to Neuroinclusion at Work
Response | Evidence Base | Key Practices | Illustrative Examples |
Needs-led adjustments without a diagnosis gate | Expert panel review; Doyle (2020); employee surveys on delays and disclosure | Barrier-focused conversations, triage by urgency, time-to-adjustment tracking, portable adjustment records | UK Civil Service; Goldman Sachs |
Universal design of work systems and environments | Silver et al. (2023); Waisman-Nitzan et al. (2021); Story (1998) | Clear communication norms, captioning and agendas, flexible work, sensory choice, tools available to all | Ultranauts; EY |
Strengths-based, skills-focused recruitment | Austin and Pisano (2017); Krzeminska et al. (2019); Hedley et al. (2021) | Work samples, skills assessments, interview adjustments, structured onboarding | Microsoft; SAP; JPMorgan Chase; Ford |
Manager capability and psychological safety | CIPD (2024); Spoor et al. (2021); manager and safety survey data | Manager training, structured one-to-ones, trained coaches, co-design with lived experience | EY; SAP |
Specialist programs integrated into the mainstream | Hedley et al. (2017, 2023); Ezerins et al. (2024) | Supported employment, career progression pathways, evaluation and outcome data | DXC Dandelion; Auticon; GCHQ |
Needs-Led Adjustments Without a Diagnosis Gate
The core recommendation of the Expert Academic Panel is to decouple support from diagnosis. Its review found no evidence that employers can predict which adjustments an individual needs from their diagnosis, and that adjustments are more effective when they are tailored and agreed interpersonally rather than delivered as a condition-specific tick list (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The panel argues that focusing on "what condition someone has" rather than "what they need" produces oversimplified checklists that may not fit the person, their tasks, or their context; the adjustments that help someone in a customer-facing hospitality role may differ from those needed in a laboratory or warehouse. It recommends that employers adopt a triage or graduated model, in which quick and simple changes are made immediately and more complex adjustments are planned and reviewed, and that they measure both time-to-adjustment and outcomes such as retention, absence, and employee relations cases.
The panel also proposes a change of language: reframing adjustments as "performance optimisation" for all rather than special privileges. When adjustments are positioned as standard tools for onboarding and managing performance, the panel argues, organizations reduce stigma, prevent resentment from colleagues, and relieve managers of the impossible expectation that they become experts in every condition (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). This reframing is consistent with Doyle's (2020) biopsychosocial account, which treats neurodivergent functioning as an interaction between individual cognition and environmental demands.
Cost is often cited as a reason for caution, but the evidence suggests it is rarely the real constraint. In the Job Accommodation Network's long-running employer survey, 61% of employers who reported cost information said the accommodations they made cost nothing, and the median one-time cost among those reporting a cost was $300 (Job Accommodation Network, 2025). The panel similarly notes that many of the most popular adjustments, such as those addressing sensory overload, are free or low cost at the point of delivery (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The bigger cost is usually delay.
Effective approaches:
Start with barriers, not labels: Train managers to ask what gets in the way of good work, across communication, organization, movement, and sensory areas, and what would help, without asking for a diagnosis.
Triage by urgency: Implement simple changes such as written instructions, meeting agendas, or a quieter seat within days, and plan complex changes on a defined timeline.
Measure time-to-adjustment: Track how long requests take from first conversation to implementation, and report it alongside other people metrics.
Make records portable: Use a voluntary adjustment record that the employee owns and that travels with them when they change manager or role.
Review regularly: Revisit adjustments when tasks, teams, or locations change, because needs are dynamic.
Separate support from formal processes: Ensure that requesting help does not automatically trigger capability or occupational health procedures unless the employee wants it.
The UK Civil Service offers a large-scale illustration. Civil Service guidance now uses the term "workplace adjustments" rather than "reasonable adjustments," framing them as support for any employee facing a barrier, whether physical, organizational, or communication-based. A 2026 post on a cross-government employment program blog states that adjustments are available regardless of whether an employee has an official medical diagnosis, and lists free options such as preferred messaging channels, agendas sent in advance, noise-cancelling headphones, and a fixed desk in a quieter area (Life Chance Recruitment, 2026). The Civil Service's Workplace Adjustment Passport, a voluntary record controlled by the employee, helps start conversations with line managers and moves with the employee when they change role or manager. One senior civil servant described how the passport spared him from restarting the process each time he changed department and prompted him to check whether his adjustments still worked (Gilbert, 2021).
Goldman Sachs took a related step at the point of entry. Its Neurodiversity Hiring Initiative, a paid eight-week internship in New York and Salt Lake City with a route to full-time employment, asks applicants to identify as neurodivergent and hold a bachelor's degree; the program page does not state any requirement for a formal diagnosis (Goldman Sachs, n.d.). Assessment activities are designed and delivered by the specialist partner Specialisterne, and interns receive training, coaching, and mentoring throughout. Self-identification lowers the barrier for people who suspect they are neurodivergent but cannot easily obtain an assessment.
A common pitfall is to remove the diagnosis requirement on paper while keeping a process that still feels like a medical gate: lengthy forms, occupational health referrals by default, and approvals that sit with a central team for weeks. The point of a needs-led model is speed and dialogue. If the first conversation does not lead to a visible change within days, employees will reasonably conclude that nothing has changed.
Universal Design of Work Systems and Environments
Needs-led adjustments still require someone to ask. Universal design reduces how often anyone has to. The panel describes it as a proactive framework that anticipates human variation and embeds accessibility in practices and environments from the outset, reducing the need to retrofit adjustments and supporting all employees, not just those with visible or diagnosed conditions (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). It explicitly states that universal design is intended to reduce the number of people who need to disclose and request adjustments, and notes that it has proved effective in other areas of disability access but has been applied less to hidden disabilities.
Silver et al. (2023) make the same argument from organizational psychology, drawing on universal design principles to suggest that making workplaces accessible and welcoming to neurodivergent people can benefit neurodivergent and neurotypical employees alike. Qualitative research supports this framing. Waisman-Nitzan et al. (2021) interviewed 19 autistic employees in competitive jobs and developed a classification of workplace accommodations addressing communication and attitudes, daily routines, and physical and sensory environments. Their title quotes a participant who compared accessibility to a ramp for a wheelchair user, and their findings underline the centrality of environmental factors in successful employment. The panel adds that there is strong preliminary evidence that designing workdays to reduce sensory overstimulation, through options such as hybrid or remote working, quiet break areas, and off-peak travel, improves some neurodivergent employees' performance and may reduce anxiety (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
For the built environment, the panel directs employers to PAS 6463:2022, the British Standards Institution's guidance on designing for the mind, and emphasizes giving people clarity, choice, and calm spaces so they can self-manage their needs (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The government's response declined to legislate on sensory-friendly building design but pointed to PAS 6463 and to the WCAG 2.2 digital accessibility guidelines as existing standards (DWP, 2026b).
Effective approaches:
Set communication norms for everyone: Share agendas in advance, caption video meetings, confirm decisions in writing, and state deadlines and priorities explicitly.
Offer choice in where and how work happens: Provide a range of spaces (quiet, collaborative, low-light) and flexible arrangements, rather than a single default.
Make assistive tools universal: License text-to-speech, dictation, and task-management tools for all staff so no one needs to justify access.
Design documents for clarity: Use plain language, consistent templates, and accessible formats in policies, job descriptions, and intranet content.
Audit environments against standards: Use PAS 6463 for spaces and WCAG for digital tools when refurbishing offices or procuring systems.
Ultranauts shows what a design-first organization looks like. Founded in 2013 by Rajesh Anandan and Art Shectman, the software and data quality engineering firm reported that more than 75% of its employees are on the autism spectrum (Winn, 2020). According to MIT News, the company shares meeting agendas in advance, captions every video meeting, asks employees for daily feedback, assesses candidates through work simulations rather than prior experience, bases work weeks on employees' desired time commitments, and uses public management dashboards to make decisions transparent. Revenue had grown by roughly 50% a year, including during the pandemic. These are not adjustments granted to individuals; they are how the company works for everyone.
EY offers an example inside a large professional services firm. Alongside its specialist centers, EY makes the Texthelp literacy platform, with text-to-speech, writing support, and dictation features, available to all staff (Burleigh, 2024). Universal availability means that an employee with undiagnosed dyslexia, a non-native English speaker, and a tired manager reviewing a long report can all use the same tool without asking permission.
A common pitfall is to treat universal design as a facilities project. A quiet room helps, but if meetings remain unstructured, instructions remain verbal and ambiguous, and performance is judged on how someone presents in group settings, the most important barriers stay in place. Universal design has to reach the way work is assigned, communicated, and evaluated.
Strengths-Based, Skills-Focused Recruitment
Recruitment is where many neurodivergent candidates are filtered out before their abilities are ever seen. The panel found consistent evidence that neuroinclusive practices in recruitment, selection, and assessment improve neurodivergent people's chances of being hired, and recommends strengths-based, skills-focused methods such as work samples, accessible job descriptions and interviews, and the availability of assistive technology (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Austin and Pisano (2017) describe the same pattern among early adopters, who replaced conventional interviews with extended, low-pressure opportunities for candidates to demonstrate skills to managers. Krzeminska et al. (2019) describe interview reliance as a key mechanism through which talented people "at the edges of the bell curve" are excluded.
Research on specialist programs adds detail. Hedley et al. (2021) conducted focus groups with autistic adults in a specialized employment program in the information and communication technology sector and found that changes to recruitment and selection processes were among the factors participants experienced as beneficial. Earlier, a systematic review of employment programs for autistic adults found the evidence base limited by small samples and weak designs, a caution against overclaiming (Hedley et al., 2017).
Effective approaches:
Assess the job, not the interview: Use work samples, practical tasks, or trial projects that mirror the actual role.
Publish the process: Tell candidates in advance what each stage involves, how long it lasts, and what adjustments are available, without requiring disclosure to access them.
Offer standard adjustments to all candidates: Provide questions in advance, extra time, breaks, and a choice of format as default options.
Rewrite job descriptions: Remove generic requirements such as "excellent communication skills" where they are not essential, and specify the actual tasks.
Check tools for bias: Scrutinize automated screening and AI-enabled assessment tools for features that may disadvantage neurodivergent candidates.
Plan onboarding before day one: Pair new hires with a manager briefed on their working preferences and a mentor or buddy.
Microsoft began a pilot in April 2015 that evolved into its Neurodiversity Hiring Program. By 2021 the company reported hiring more than 100 neurodivergent employees across teams including Azure, customer support, HoloLens, Windows, and Xbox (Obermaier, 2021). Its process includes a prescreen, a four-day virtual skills evaluation run by senior software engineers that assesses both skills and job readiness, and 90 days of onboarding support involving the hiring manager, mentors, a job coach, and an HR manager. Built-in accommodations include extra interview time and longer breaks.
SAP launched its Autism at Work program in 2013. By its tenth anniversary the company reported more than 215 colleagues on the autism spectrum across all board areas and active programs in 16 countries, with recruitment through partner organizations, onboarding training, mentorship from other autistic employees, development planning, and an employee-led Autism Inclusion Network (Loucks, 2023). JPMorgan Chase's Autism at Work program, launched in 2015 with a first cohort of five, initially focused on filling talent gaps in software engineering and quality assurance (Nedlund, 2020). Outside technology and finance, Ford ran a pilot of its FordInclusiveWorks program with the Autism Alliance of Michigan that added four full-time employees at its Dearborn plant, and in late 2016 announced plans to bring in 12 to 24 more people on the autism spectrum the following year (Taylor, 2016).
A common pitfall is to build an excellent specialist hiring pathway while leaving the mainstream process unchanged. Programs of this kind are valuable, but they typically recruit dozens of people a year. Every other neurodivergent applicant still meets the standard interview. The lasting gains come when the lessons of the specialist route (clear expectations, skills-based assessment, structured onboarding) are applied to all hiring.
Manager Capability and Psychological Safety
Line managers are where neuroinclusion succeeds or fails. The panel found strong preliminary evidence that psychological safety and the relationship with the direct line manager drive intention to leave and career satisfaction, and it lists building psychologically safe cultures through policies co-designed with lived experience as its first recommendation to employers (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). It defines psychological safety as a climate in which people can ask questions, raise concerns, or admit mistakes without fear of embarrassment or punishment, and argues that in neuroinclusive contexts it is especially important for enabling disclosure and supporting diverse communication styles.
Yet the CIPD's employer survey found that only around half of managers appreciate the value of neurodiversity, fewer than half feel capable and confident to support neurodivergent individuals, and 39% of organizations had taken no action specific to line managers to create a neuroinclusive organization (CIPD, 2024). The Buckland Review describes the problems autistic employees encounter in one-to-one meetings, including feedback that is either too blunt or too implicit, unclear timings for tasks, and check-ins that never ask whether adjustments are working (Buckland, 2024).
The evidence on what helps managers and employees is still developing. The panel reports preliminary evidence that coaching and training to support executive functions can help, as can mentoring and reflective supervision, and stresses that coaching should be delivered by properly trained and supervised practitioners rather than through generic awareness sessions. It also notes emerging evidence that group coaching can be effective and cost-efficient at scale (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Ezerins et al. (2024), in a review of autism and employment research in the Journal of Management, identify barriers and enablers across the stages of employment and argue that management theory and autism research each have much to offer the other.
Effective approaches:
Make good management the default: Train all managers in structured one-to-ones, explicit expectations, written follow-up, and asking about working preferences, framed as good practice for every employee.
Protect time for people management: Design manager roles with realistic spans and time for regular check-ins.
Provide expert backup: Give managers access to trained coaches or specialist advisers so they do not have to become experts themselves.
Co-design with lived experience: Involve neurodivergent employees in shaping policies and run regular feedback loops, without treating employee networks as a substitute for professional support.
Address microaggressions directly: Make clear that mocking communication styles or questioning adjustments is unacceptable, and equip managers to respond.
EY's approach combines manager development with specialist support. According to Fortune, the firm has 40 managers trained in executive functioning and neurodiversity and three full-time neurodiversity job coaches who work one-to-one with staff on strategies for areas such as time management and communication (Burleigh, 2024). Its Neuro-Diverse Center of Excellence, founded in 2016, has grown to 23 locations in 10 countries with more than 500 members, who often work within other EY groups such as cybersecurity, finance, and risk.
SAP's model relies heavily on peer support. Its tenth-anniversary account emphasizes mentorship from other employees on the spectrum, career coaching, and a volunteer employee resource group, and reports that managers describe teams that include autistic colleagues as having a stronger sense of belonging and a more respectful culture (Loucks, 2023).
A common pitfall is to equate manager training with a one-off awareness module about conditions. The panel warns that condition-focused anecdotes can harden into stereotypes, such as assuming that everyone with ADHD struggles to focus or that everyone with dyslexia is creative (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). What managers need is not a catalogue of diagnoses but practical skill in having good conversations, setting clear expectations, and adjusting how work is done.
Specialist Programs Integrated into the Mainstream
Universal design and needs-led adjustments will not meet every need. Some people require intensive or specialist support, such as job coaching, assistive technology with training, or clinical input, and specialist employment programs remain an important route into work for those furthest from the labor market. The challenge is to ensure that such programs connect to, rather than substitute for, wider organizational change.
Evaluations offer both encouragement and caution. Hedley et al. (2023) found that the DXC Dandelion Program produced a favorable benefit ratio for government and that most participants moved into open employment. Spoor et al. (2021), studying an Australian autism employment program from the perspective of non-autistic colleagues, found broad support but also perceptions of special treatment and concerns that the program's design reduced trainees' integration into the wider workplace. The panel notes preliminary evidence that assistive technology is less effective when introduced without training and mentoring (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). Hedley et al. (2017) caution that the broader evidence base on employment interventions is weak, with small samples and few controlled designs.
Progression is the frontier. The Buckland Review found that autistic employees often miss promotion because of assumptions about their goals, narrow stereotypes about suitable roles, and promotion processes that reward networking, and it recommended mentors, buddies, and strength-based training packages to support progression (Buckland, 2024). The panel recommends that employers use dashboards to monitor retention and identify gaps in progression and representation at every level (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
Effective approaches:
Use specialist partners well: Commission supported employment and coaching from qualified providers with clear safeguarding, quality assurance, and accountability, as the panel recommends.
Integrate, don't isolate: Place specialist-program hires in mainstream teams and career paths rather than separate units with limited mobility.
Pair technology with training: Introduce assistive tools with onboarding and follow-up rather than simply issuing equipment.
Build progression routes: Offer mentoring, structured development plans, and alternative routes to seniority that do not require people management.
Evaluate and publish: Track entry, retention, progression, and wellbeing outcomes, and share what works.
DXC Technology's Dandelion Program, delivered in partnership with the Australian Government, is one of the few employer programs with a published peer-reviewed economic evaluation. Its three-year supported employment model placed autistic adults in technology roles and, according to Hedley et al. (2023), most participants transitioned into productive open employment on completion.
Auticon took a different route by building a business around autistic talent. The Buckland Review describes it as an IT consultancy that began in the Nordic countries in 2008 and employs more than 450 autistic consultants in 15 countries, with over 80% of its workforce autistic (Buckland, 2024). Consultants are permanently employed and matched to client projects at industry-standard day rates, with job coaching, autism training for clients, and career development. The review notes that Auticon is explicit that it is not a charity and does not offer tokenistic roles.
In the public sector, GCHQ, the UK intelligence and security agency, has spoken publicly about recruiting dyslexic and other neurodivergent people. In 2021 its director of strategy, policy and engagement described this commitment as mission critical and said apprentices at the agency were roughly three to four times more likely to be dyslexic than those on other schemes (Wood, 2021). Dyslexic staff described strengths in pattern recognition and big-picture thinking. The claim about apprentice dyslexia rates comes from a spokesperson rather than published data, but the example shows how a mission-driven employer can frame cognitive difference as a capability rather than a deficit.
A common pitfall is to let a successful specialist program become the organization's entire neuroinclusion strategy. A flagship cohort generates good stories, but if the rest of the workforce still faces slow adjustments, unstructured management, and inflexible policies, the program can become what Spoor et al. (2021) describe: valued, but separate.
Building Long-Term Neuroinclusion Capability
The five responses above describe what to do. Sustaining them requires capabilities that outlast any single program, leader, or policy cycle. Three pillars stand out.
Governance, Data, and Accountability
What gets measured gets managed, and neuroinclusion is rarely measured well. The panel recommends that employers monitor time-to-adjustment and the effectiveness of adjustments through staff surveys, retention and absence data, occupational health referrals, and employee relations cases, and that they use dashboards to identify progression and representation gaps (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). At national level it recommends mandatory disability employment and pay gap reporting, which the government has committed to for employers with 250 or more staff when parliamentary time allows (DWP, 2026b). Research cited by the panel found that 70% of employers believe mandatory disability reporting should be introduced (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
Good data on neuroinclusion is difficult because many people will not disclose. That is a reason to design measures that do not depend on disclosure: time-to-adjustment for all requests, uptake of universally available tools, inclusion and psychological safety scores across the whole workforce, and periodic anonymous surveys that allow people to self-describe. Governance also means clear ownership. Neuroinclusion often sits between HR, facilities, IT, procurement, and line management, and without a named executive owner it tends to fall between them. The panel's recommendation that employers carry out due diligence on recruitment, training, and technology suppliers, checking for bias and exclusionary practices, is a reminder that procurement decisions shape inclusion as much as policy statements do (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
Co-Design, Lived Experience, and Psychological Safety
Neuroinclusion designed without neurodivergent people tends to miss the point. The panel recommends co-designing policies and improvements with neurodivergent staff and establishing regular feedback loops, while cautioning against using employee resource groups as replacements for professional support services (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The panel itself combined academic expertise with lived experience, and its report repeatedly emphasizes that the most effective adjustments are devised collaboratively, through respectful conversation about how best to structure work rather than as a transaction about equipment.
Psychological safety is the condition that makes co-design possible. It is also the factor that neurodivergent employees most consistently link to their wellbeing and intention to stay, and the one that, according to Neurodiversity in Business and Birkbeck, University of London (2026), has not improved. Building it requires leaders to model openness about how they work best, to respond well when people raise problems, and to treat mistakes and misunderstandings as information rather than evidence of poor fit. It also requires attention to the everyday interactions that the 2026 Neurodiversity Index flags, such as microaggressions, which can erode trust faster than any policy can build it (City & Guilds Foundation & Do-IT Solutions, 2026).
Universal Design Across the Employment Lifecycle
The deepest shift is to embed universal design across the whole employment lifecycle, from attraction and recruitment to onboarding, performance management, development, and exit. The panel's annexes offer practical examples for each stage, and its concluding recommendation is that government promote universal design as a proactive framework for workplaces that are accessible, inclusive, and equitable from the outset (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026). The government's sixteen-week discovery exercise, due to conclude in autumn 2026, will test whether universal design principles covering physical environments, policies, procedures, and communications are valuable, manageable, and proportionate for employers and employees (DWP, 2026b).
Employers do not need to wait for that exercise. Every policy review, office refurbishment, system procurement, or process redesign is an opportunity to ask whether the result will work for people who process information, communicate, move, and experience sensory input differently. Over time, those decisions accumulate into an organization where fewer people need to ask for adjustments because the baseline already works, and where those who do ask are met quickly and without suspicion. The panel puts the economic logic simply: retrofitting is costly and time-consuming, while many universal design measures, such as clear language, captioning, structured task tools, and good wayfinding, are low or no cost and avoid dozens of individual fixes (Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity, 2026).
This pillar also future-proofs organizations against change. Return-to-office decisions, AI-enabled tools, and new ways of organizing work will each create new barriers or remove old ones. An organization that habitually asks the universal design question will catch those effects early. One that relies on individual accommodation will discover them only when employees struggle, disclose, and wait.
Conclusion
Neuroinclusion has reached a turning point. A decade of specialist hiring programs has proven that neurodivergent people bring talent that conventional systems overlook, and some of those programs have produced impressive results. But the bigger picture remains stark: low employment among autistic people, slow and inconsistent adjustments, persistent disclosure risk, and neurodivergent employees who report more exhaustion and less support than their colleagues. The Expert Academic Panel's report gives leaders a clear diagnosis of why. Support that depends on a label is slow, inequitable, and poorly matched to what people actually need.
The alternative is not to abandon individual support but to place it on a better foundation. Universal design makes clear communication, flexible work, sensory choice, accessible tools, and skills-based assessment the default for everyone. Needs-led adjustments, decided through quick conversations about barriers rather than diagnoses, handle what the baseline cannot. Specialist programs and expert support remain for the needs that require them, integrated into mainstream careers rather than set apart. Throughout, line managers equipped with practical skills and working in psychologically safe teams are the hinge on which everything turns.
The evidence base is still developing, and leaders should be honest about that. Many company-reported results have not been independently evaluated, and the research literature remains thinner and more condition-siloed than the topic deserves. Yet the direction of travel is consistent across government review, employer surveys, and peer-reviewed research. Organizations that design work for every mind will find that they have also designed better work.
Drop the diagnosis gate: Make workplace adjustments available on the basis of need, decided through conversation, without requiring a formal diagnosis.
Measure speed: Track time-to-adjustment and aim for days, not months; delay is often more costly than the adjustment itself.
Design the default: Apply universal design to communication, tools, spaces, and policies so fewer people need to ask for help at all.
Hire for skills: Replace or supplement unstructured interviews with work samples and transparent, adjustable assessment processes for every candidate.
Equip managers: Train all managers in structured, explicit, conversational management, and give them access to expert support.
Integrate specialist programs: Use specialist hiring and coaching as an entry point into mainstream careers, not a parallel track.
Co-design and track outcomes: Involve neurodivergent employees in shaping policy and monitor retention, progression, and wellbeing across the workforce.
Research Infographic
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Jonathan H. Westover, PhD, Chief Research Officer (Nexus Institute for Work and AI); Co-Founder & Chief Workforce and Learning Officer (Future State University); Founder & CEO (Human Capital Innovations); Professor of Organizational Leadership & Change (UVU). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.
Suggested Citation: Westover, J. H. (2026). Designed for Every Mind: Neuroinclusion, Universal Design, and How Leaders Can Move Beyond Diagnosis-Based Accommodation. Human Capital Leadership Review, 40(3). doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.40.3.1
