Neurodiversity in the Workplace – Part One [TRANSCRIPT]
ELISA LEWIS: Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Today, we will be doing part one of the session Neurodiversity in the Workplace. My name is Elisa Lewis. I’m a Senior Inbound Marketing Manager here at 3Play Media.
And today, I’m joined by Tara Cunningham, Founder and CEO of Beyond-Impact. Tara, I’ll hand it over to you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Beyond-Impact. And then, we can jump right in.
TARA CUNNINGHAM: OK. It’s great to be here. I’m delighted to be a partner with 3Play Media. My name, again, is Tara Cunningham. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I have blue eyes, today I have brown hair, and wearing a blue sweater.
I would love for people to ask questions throughout the entire presentation. That helps me understand what you want to know. I’m going to keep it at a high level. But I’m very happy to dig down.
A little bit about me– I’m autistic. I’m a very late diagnosis. I was 45 when I was diagnosed with autism. And I kind of made sense of my entire life. And the fact that I was working in disability for almost 20 years at the point was shocking, really, both to me and to– not so much my husband and everybody who works with me, but definitely to me.
Beyond-Impact is all set up so that we don’t believe that we should change individuals. We think that the systems that we have established create barriers to entry for all people. And what I’m going to try to talk about is universal design around job descriptions all the way through interview process and to onboarding.
So we’ll just start off the agenda. We’re going to talk about, what is neurodiversity, which in its own right is about a five hour discussion, a very quick business case for hiring neurodivergent individuals, what you need to start up a program that will be truly inclusive, actionable accommodations, things that you need to do like what we’re doing in this presentation is wonderful, having transcripts, showing captions, and having a live interpreter.
It’s amazing. It should be standard practice. And I love to see it here in reality. And then looking ahead to next week on what we’re going to be discussing. Again, please ask questions in the chat. That way, I can really help you guys understand as much as possible.
So what is neurodiversity? Some would say neurodiversity is everybody. Everybody comes to this world with their own viewpoints, their own experiences. You may hear a term, neurotypical. Neurotypicals are people that fall inside the quote unquote “normal” range of behaviors.
Neurodivergent people are– sorry, I should be not paying attention to the chat. I’m going to shut that off because I cannot do two things at once. So I’ll leave it to you, Elisa, to let me know if there’s any questions. What is neurodivergent? I’ll go into some of the labels that we use to describe them.
But what I’d like to make sure that everybody understands is that it doesn’t matter what label you put on an individual. What matters is you treat every individual as an individual, and you help them navigate the world so that it works out for everybody. Gallup just put out a poll that shows 46% of employees know what is expected from them at work.
46%. That means 54% of employees have no idea what’s going on. And that’s because of– if we want to go into the next slide– managers manage to a well-rounded individual. There is an assumption that everybody understands where the organization is going and what is expected from them.
The honest truth– and I’d love to do a show of hands, but with 127 participants, that might be a bit difficult– but how many of you believe that you are completely well-rounded with a show of hands? So four people out of 123. Actually, we’re down to none. None.
Zero people are well-rounded. Wonderful. I’m delighted to hear that. Well-roundedness is a total fallacy. And when we build out job descriptions, we’re looking for a person who can fit every little piece of that. And the only reason that– I’m just so thrilled that everybody said, you’re not well-rounded.
The reason companies look for this well-rounded individual is they’re trying to put one person into a place that they can assume all the roles and responsibilities of that team’s needs. And that’s not really possible. With neurodivergent employees, not only is it not possible to be well-rounded, but there are some things that neurodivergent employees cannot do.
So if you see on the left-hand side, you’ll see that there’s one quadrant where the individual is going off the charts. And then there’s directly opposite another quadrant where they don’t have anything. That could be, for example, me with budgets. I wasn’t diagnosed because I’m very– I’m an extrovert. I’m known as a hyper social autistic, which means I blow away all the, can’t make friends, can’t talk, can’t do anything verbal. I don’t tick those boxes.
However, if you ask me to do a budget, it’ll take me three and half hours what it would take Mary 30 minutes. Is that a good use of my time? Absolutely not. Is it a productive use of a team’s time? No. And if I am an individual who cannot do 1 plus 1 equals 2, but I could speak eight languages, why do you need the person to do 1 plus 1 equals 2 when what you really need their skills for are languages?
So when we look at job descriptions, skills, strengths, management, we want to look at, where are people’s core skills? What do they like to do? What do they not like to do? What would be a stretch? And what should be something avoided altogether? Hopefully, that makes sense.
If we go to the next slide, this is a wonderful chart that’s been created by Genius Within. They’re a nonprofit in the UK. And what I love about this is it has all these neurominorities, what they call neurodivergence in the UK. We call it neurodivergent over here. You may hear neurodistinct. You may hear autism plus.
There are so many different labels. And again, we don’t want to talk about labels. But I do want to highlight that these are things that many people in your office have. And you’re not aware of it. Or many people that may be coming through your talent pipeline, and you’re not aware of it. That’s because they are hidden disabilities.
So dyslexia– with dyslexia, OK? That’s the confusion of letters and words and numbers. OK? You would think, if you’re dyslexic, that coding would be the absolute worst job for you. However, the best coder I ever placed in a job was a dyslexic coder. He could see patterns better than anybody else, and his attention to detail was through the roof.
His creativity was so amazing that when a massive company was trying to build out a new credit card and they were stuck, within a week, he was able to figure out what the bug was. He has dyslexia. We can’t do coding because we’re dyslexic. OK. Watch what your internal subconscious bias is for different labels.
ADHD– people that are ADHD, it’s like, ooh, something shiny. Something shiny. And they’re running around. Right? You see people that– we think of about ADHD as people that can’t focus on one thing. But their creativity is through the roof. Hyperfocus– when they’re excited about something, they can drill down. Their energy and passion for the work that they do is second-to-none. So again, we want to worry about the subconscious bias that we’re bringing to the table.
Tourette’s syndrome is– you may hear people say it’s a bit of a tic. They have creativity skills that are through the roof. They’re quite extraordinary as a way of thinking and looking at the world. They also have hyperfocus. And they also are innovative thinkers.
When you are looking for people that think differently, that– we hear that companies are looking for critical thinking skills, the ability to be innovative. I want to share a really interesting fact. So with autism alone, 60% of autistic high school students have average or above average IQ. They’re in mainstream school more than 80% of the time.
However, only 17.4% go to a four-year college, and only 20% actually graduate. And of that 20%, 85% are under or unemployed. Now, if you’ve had a system that has been set up to not help you go through the world and you manage to get out with a college degree, can you find anybody with better creative skills, critical thinking skills, innovation? Could you find anybody better?
You could not is the answer. You could not. So if you see an autistic or neurodiverse person that has a college degree, that means they have gone through a world that is truly not set up for them. And so if you want answers to problems that you don’t have solutions for, you need people that have to do that from the second they wake up in the morning to when they go to bed at night. OK?
Mental health– Yeah?
ELISA LEWIS: Tara, I want to interrupt you for one minute. We have a question that just came in. The question is, are there any resources or best practices for workers with ADHD in the workplace?
TARA CUNNINGHAM: There are. There are tons of them. There’s a really good website that– I have dysnomia, which I can’t remember names as well. So I will feed that to the team and make sure that you get it back. But with– want to go to the next slide because I can answer that question.
So there are so many strengths. OK, and I’ve just talked about only half of the slide there. And I can go back to into it. But with the challenges, we’re going straight to challenges with that ADHD question. All right? So there may be challenges with attitude– that’s a good one.
Yep. That’s a really good one. Thank you, Todd. Social interactions, sometimes there’s problems with communication, executive function, could be time management, attention to detail, working memory, language learning, and sensory processing. What that means in practical terms– if you are managing effectively for everybody, you want to ensure that everybody is very clear about what needs to happen, by when, who’s doing what, and that it’s skills-based.
With all neurodivergents, ADHD especially, if you notice that there is difficulty with time management, you want to make sure that the individual understands both in written and verbally what is expected of them and by when. You also want to clarify that the individual understands exactly what is required of them. Saying, I need you guys to push the envelope out on this, I need it later, is going to ensure that the person that’s neurodiverse will not understand what you’re doing. And all the neurotypicals will go to the water cooler and try to figure out what the heck the boss wants.
Those statements are used all the time, which is the direct result, or the outcome, of the 46% of employees not having a clue what is expected from them at work. So the challenges that neurodiverse people find themselves in are the exact challenges that neurotypicals find themselves in. But neurotypicals are able to fake their way out of it. OK?
One of my managers said to me, I love hiring neurodiverse people because I know exactly what I’m getting. With neurotypicals, they hide for six months, and then it’s too late. OK? So oh, I’m seeing JAN.
OK. The Job Accommodation Network is an awesome– it’s ask JAN. It’s wonderful. It’s a great website for accommodations. We’re going to talk about accommodations with 3Play at the very end of this. So we can hit that piece in a little while.
All right. So do you want to go back a slide real quick? OK. So mental health– after COVID, we are in a mental health tragedy at the moment. 50% of teenagers are actually clinically depressed. And that affects their parents that are currently working.
But it also is affecting the people that are dealing with depression, anxiety, and social stigmas. There’s so many things that are happening out of people’s control that showing up to work and trying to be your true self at work is becoming more and more difficult. People are very vulnerable right now.
And by managing for all, it really does help put people at ease so that they could say, listen, I’m having a really bad day. My son couldn’t get out of bed. My marriage is in a tizzy right now. We’re in a really bad place.
Can I please have a flexible work day today? May I work from home? That should be an easy accommodation that should be in place for everybody. Neurodiverse people need these flexibility days a lot more often than neurotypical people.
If we’re looking at one in four people being neurodivergent, that means– let’s go to their children– another one in four of your employees have kids that are neurodivergent that need to be able to be flexible. So by allowing your employees to be honest, be themselves, and be able to work in a way that works for them, helps everybody. You may have heard the statistic that neurodiverse people are 90% to 140% more productive than their neurotypical counterparts.
I don’t really believe that’s true. I believe that it’s because managers manage effectively when they have a neurodivergent person that’s openly neurodivergent on their team. And the whole team productivity goes up. So we saw when COVID went from everybody was working in the office, two weeks later, we were working from home. And we remember those stories where managers used to have you looking at the screen the whole day.
They wanted to see you tapping on the screen. They didn’t care about outcomes, they wanted to see you working because there was that lack of belief that you are working if you weren’t in the office. The teams that had autistic and neurodivergent people on them went to work from home with almost no blips because the managers knew how to manage effective. The teams knew how to work together. And everything was skills-based, outcome-based, productivity.
And with very little questions– who, what, where, when, how, why. Written and verbal, everything clear, it’s very simple to follow. OK? So can we go to the next slide, please? OK. So interviews. All right?
This is a huge barrier to entry for neurodivergent people. If you remember, 17.4% of autistics get into college. Only 20% graduate. 80% to 85% are under or unemployed. Why is that? Well, remember, socially, we’re awkward. OK? Universally, OK?
If you have a very small social network, then 70% of the firms that are encouraging referrals, which, 50% of jobs are from referrals, what chance do you have? You’re already at a 50% reduced opportunity to get into the workforce. These are new statistics. In 90 seconds, the typical human resource front door of the interview has decided. 33% of people in 90 seconds decides whether the person is going to get the job or not– 90 seconds.
So that means that if you are against the person, your subconscious bias will ensure that every word they say after you’ve decided you don’t like them will be the answers that they give. That’s bad because, that’s bad because. However, on the other side, there’s bias confirmation.
This person shook their hand. They smiled. They were wonderful. Blah, blah, blah. Every word that they say, you’re going to be like, OK, see? I knew they were like this. They’re like us. OK?
Like us, fits in. These are things that HR and hiring managers are looking for. However, what they’re really looking for when you go underneath the hood is critical thinking skills, innovation, a different approach to things. If you’re looking for– if your systems allow the same people to come in, they may look different. They may have a different gender. But they’re all going to be the same person. OK? That gets eliminated when you bring in neurodivergent people because they don’t fit into any one mold.
65% of HR will not progress a candidate who doesn’t make eye contact. This is one of the number one reasons autistic people don’t get in the door. They don’t make eye contact. They can either make eye contact or they can have a conversation. What does eye contact have to do with being able to speak multiple languages or being able to code or being able to write marketing materials? Absolutely nothing. Except 65% of first interviews do not get through the door because of eye contact. OK?
50% of people can’t get a job because of the way they dress, because of a lack of a smile. And 40% of people don’t get a job because of the quality of their voice. And a lot of neurodiverse people or neurodivergent people have what’s known as robot voice. They speak monotone, and they have very little inflection. And they may have a dead-looking face. And what am I going–
What are you going to do if you’re looking for someone who’s all sunshine and lollipops? Right? What part of the social construct that you have been involved with in your life is making it so that people are not able to walk through the door because of simple, little things like that? OK? Neurodiverse and neurodivergent people have atypical resumes.
The reason I’m bringing atypical is because many people that are neurodivergent either have jobs that are beneath what their college degree is, or they have multiple jobs. They job hop, job, job, job every 10 to 18 months. Now, they’re also extremely honest. OK? So where I’ve had people say that they can speak French because they’ve gone to Paris and they said bonjour once. And they write elementary French on their resume. I’ve had people that literally speak French fluently, but because they haven’t used the language in a few months, they won’t put it on the resume because they might be off a few words. I had a guy who I placed at a Fortune 500. He had a 3.85 degree in computer science from Stanford.
On his resume, he had no computer languages. He didn’t write any languages out. So his resume wasn’t getting picked up by the AI. And so I asked him, why don’t you have languages on your resume? And he said, I have a 3.85 from Stanford in computer science. Of course I know languages. [LAUGHS]
So that makes a lot of sense to a person who’s very pragmatic. But it doesn’t do you a lot of favors if you’re looking for social networks, referrals, a resume that’s going to be picked up by technology that’s looking for certain things. OK? Let me just check to see in the chat, I just want to make sure I’m not missing any questions.
Diagnosed at 48, bad social skills and flaws, really– da da da. They’re not your faults, but you are able to learn them. That’s amazing. So better late than never, indeed. And so when you get that learning, remember to share that knowledge with your coworkers. If you are strong enough to be able to say I’m neurodivergent, I’m a late diagnosis, these are the problems that I had when I was navigating through this company.
What are things that we can do to make it easier for other people? What is the talent we’re leaving outside the door? And that’s when I talk about the finding the right fit. That individual who just said, I’m a late diagnosis, they were able to sell themselves as the right fit for the company. They were able to take the words that are on the job description and turn them into their own words, which if you’ve successfully gotten a job in corporate America, you’ve been able to do that.
That is a skill that is lost on neurodivergent people and people that are disadvantaged communities. They have the exact same barriers to entry– lack of social networks, lack of ability to have referrals, resumes that aren’t beefed up because they’ve been told what they can’t do their whole lives, and then trying to fit in, to be exactly what that organization is looking for. And that brings me to the next one– job descriptions.
By and large, job descriptions that are out there are desperate. They are, here’s the company. Here’s all our corporate speak. Here’s all the things that we require. And there’s usually college is written on that. OK? A lot of neurodivergent people have been to college, and they haven’t graduated.
Sometimes, it’s because their degree is, let’s say, in languages, requires two math classes. But their executive function doesn’t allow them to understand math. They can’t do 2 plus 2. But they’re going for a job that requires two languages. What does it matter that they have a college degree or not if they are meeting the skills that you are actually required? So it’s extremely important.
Can we go to the next one, please? OK, the business case– why hire neurodivergent people? I’ve said about 12 things already, but we’ll go to the next slide, please. OK, so when you hire neurodivergent people, it is one of the greatest things you’ll ever do because– shock, horror– neurodivergent people are already working in your firm. They’re just doing a really good job of masking.
Masking is pretending you’re normal. OK? Pretending you fit in. If you are acting 100% of your day, you are going to get exhausted. Absolutely exhausted. And neurodivergent people act a lot so that they can get through trying to figure out what the hidden rules are, what are the different things that I need to do to be accepted, what I need to do so that I can read my boss’s mind. How can I make friends with individuals?
All these unknown things, which are known as the hidden curriculum. If you are running an neuro-inclusive organization, you will have increased employee retention because you’re running your team as individuals that are there making up a part of the whole. You are explaining to people what needs to be done by when, by who, what your strengths are, what you’d like to contribute. And if you’re doing work that you love to do every day and you don’t have to do the things you can’t or don’t love and you have the opportunity to stretch and learn from your managers, you will be able to create a team that nobody wants to leave.
Neurodivergent teams have been researched. And when I say teams, I don’t mean teams of autistic, teams of ADHD. Teams that have neurodivergent people in them have an increased quality of life, which is huge. Who doesn’t want to go to a company where I know that when I go to work there, my quality of life is improving? That is one of the number one things to increase productivity in your team is making sure that individuals want to be there and are excited about their work and are really eager to contribute.
The other thing is, if you do job descriptions correctly by only asking for the skills that are missing in your team right now or down the line in your company’s strategic plan, then you will be able to attract more people into the talent pool instead of the same people with just a different face. You must be a better communicator. Productivity increases because everybody on the team knows what is expected from them.
Have you noticed I’ve said this about probably eight times now, when we look at the transcript? Managers don’t do that. More than not, managers don’t even know what’s expected from them. It comes from the top. I need you to do, I need you to do, I need you to do. And by the time it gets to the people that are actually going to do the work, the message has been so diluted, everybody is left guessing.
If you manage appropriately, you’re asking, who needs to do what, by when, how? And how– this is really important– how are you going to communicate as a team? Absolutely there are how many different forms of communication that we’ve got going on now in every company? Skype, Teams, Zoom, IMs, text message, email– if there are seven locations where information is shared or information is communicated, how do you know anybody is paying attention to anything of value?
OK? One piece of communication for every project will make it so much easier for everybody to continue. OK? Problem-solving– if you bring in neurodivergent minds, these are people that, I’ve said, have navigated a world not set up for them. They have faster problem solving abilities because they have no choice. OK? They absolutely have no choice.
The world is not made for them. OK? So I had a number of autistic people that were going for an incredible job at a great firm. And we were doing a walkthrough. And during the walkthrough, one of the guys overheard people around a screen talking about a problem that they had. And it was west coast and east coast.
And the individual had no idea what they were talking about and popped his head over the cubicle thing and said, did you ever think of doing X? And it was exactly what they needed. They had no idea how to fix it themselves. As he was walking through, he heard a little bit of the conversation and could pick out what they needed to do.
So this innovative mindset is not something that is typical in neurotypicals. We have to pull that out of a lot of neurotypicals, whereas, if you spend your entire life having to figure out, what does this mean? What does this mean? From getting a cup of coffee in the morning to your cup of tea at night before you go to bed, everything is set up differently. So you need to think differently. OK?
Feedback– if you have neurodivergent people on your team, you want to be very clear about when they are doing work well and when they are not doing their work well. Time is of the essence. You want to have a culture of feedback. That is extremely important.
When somebody is doing their job, they don’t know they’re doing a good job unless you tell them. You can’t expect people to work, and work, and work and not get feedback that this is good, this is medium, this could be better by how. You must be able to tell people, you’re hitting. You got it. You did it. This is awesome. Wasn’t expecting this. Look at this work. Being able to share that immediately is important.
Conversely, if somebody does something wrong, don’t sit on it until their annual review or until it gets to the point where they do one small thing wrong and you blow up like, can’t you get anything right? When an individual, especially a neurodivergent individual makes a mistake, the next time that project is going to be done again or that skill or that task is going to be done again, you explain to the person right before they do it what they did wrong the last time and exactly what you want them to do this time.
You get the employee to feed that back to you so that you are clear that they understand exactly what is required from them. Now, remember I said, timing is important. Good stuff– immediately. Bad stuff– you don’t wait till Friday evening to say this was a bad week, you did a bad job, because all that’s going to happen is anxiety is going to go through the roof. And they’re going to be useless for you on Monday.
But if, again, you tell them right before they do the task again, you missed the mark. You didn’t do it right the last time. This is the way you do it. They don’t– overwhelmingly, the individual, when you give feedback like that, they don’t get upset by it. They can grow by it. And good managers know how to give feedback that allow their teams to grow. OK? This is managing for all.
And then Accenture did a wonderful piece of research on companies that have made specific hiring around neurodivergent inclusion. And they experienced 28% higher revenue, 30% higher profit margins, and two times the net income. Is that because they’re nice places to work because they’re really nice giving people jobs? No.
It’s because the managers and the teams are working better cohesively together. They are managing for all. Everybody’s working on the skills, strengths. Next slide.
ELISA LEWIS: Tara, before we move to the next slide, we have two questions come in. The first question is, what does that mean when you say one piece of communication? Are you referring to just one avenue, like email? Can you expand on this a little bit?
TARA CUNNINGHAM: Yes. Thank you very much for asking that clarifier. It’s one type of communication for the project. So it could be, this is multiple parts, so we’re going to use Slack so that we can stay abreast of things as things change. It may be that we’re going to use email because email is the best one for us in this project.
I’m not saying that you must use one form of communication for everything that you do. But for each project that requires teams, there should be one form of communication that’s agreed on by the team so that there’s no confusion. OK?
ELISA LEWIS: Thank you for clarifying. The next question is, as a late diagnosis ADHD, it does make a huge difference. Lots of both neurodiverse and neurotypical use assistive tech without realizing it– captions, screen resolutions, keyboards. Yet employers have no clue about it. How can you ask about what’s needed without asking inappropriate questions?
TARA CUNNINGHAM: Oh, that is such a great question. And that is a brilliant question. So there’s two points to that. So one is disclosure. All right? Do we disclose or not?
And overwhelmingly, I would tell people what’s in it for you if you disclose? If you are looking for accommodations, say a larger screen, or flexible work time, or if you’re looking for those accommodations, are accommodations in your company– do you know where to find them? If accommodations are hidden, if you don’t know where to find what can I ask for, then you probably have a firm that doesn’t understand disability needs or neurodivergent needs.
So then, you can look at talking to your manager about, these are things that would help my ability to do my job better. So you might want to have a list of the things that you require and how that would benefit the team for you to have it. So for example, I have a colleague that– they have really bad eyesight. They’re not legally blind, but they have very bad eyesight.
They’re also OCD. And so they’re extremely worried about asking for a bigger screen so that when– they have a big screen at their desk, but when they go into the conference room, they’re not able to bring that big screen into the conference room. So their ask is that there’s a big screen in every conference room, which they thought was a very hard thing to ask for because they thought that it would put everybody off.
It turned out when they asked for that big screen and they presented it in a way that said, this big screen will help me to be able to effectively participate in larger meetings when the agenda isn’t sent in advance– hint, hint– you should send the agenda in advance– it will make it easier for me to participate. And lo and behold, other people on the team, when they were talking to their team, they needed it as well because they didn’t want to schlep in their computers every time that they went into the meetings. And a larger screen would help the whole company.
So then it became a company-wide accommodation. All right? So they set it up that it wasn’t, I need this so give it to me, which legally, they have to do. But instead, they set it up that, this is what I require. And this is how it will benefit the team. And if you can bring other people in the team along with you, that makes it even easier.
I had another individual who couldn’t have people come from behind them. And they also needed noise canceling headphones. And so they set up this red light, yellow light, green light thing on the desk. And if it was a red light, you knew that you couldn’t come up from behind them. Pop them in email to say, I need to talk to you.
If it’s yellow light, they were able to come through and kind of– hi. And if it was a green light, they could just walk right on up. Well, the whole firm thought this was great. And three weeks later, lo and behold, every desk had red lights. And so what the company realized was that nobody in the team anywhere on that floor had time to work on their work.
They were all being pulled in a thousand different directions. And that person who was autistic who didn’t want people coming from behind them made the company realize they had a culture of confusion and chaos. And they needed to be able to narrow it down so that people could block time for administration so that they could actually work on their job.
So the outcome of that red light, yellow light, green light accommodation wound up– people stopped working 60 hours a week and were down to 50 hours a week because people could block out administration time. So what works for one person, an accommodation that helps one person, typically helps everybody. OK? Oh, somebody just wrote exactly what I just said. Loving you, Martisa. [LAUGHS]
So accommodations work for everybody. OK. Do you want to go to the next slide? All right. And the next. OK.
So how do we go about starting one of these programs? So the first place you want to go, the lowest of low hanging fruit is your diversity, equity, and inclusion team or your employee resource groups. You want to get them to get excited about neurodiversity inclusion. All right?
Inside the ERGs, they are typically higher senior vice presidents. If you can find a senior VP who is outwardly neurodivergent, approach them and ask them, can you help me help the company develop a neurodivergent inclusion program? Maybe it can just be on your team. All right? You need to have high level buy in. You can’t get anything done on a low level.
When you go to that senior VP, review your hiring processes before you go to them. And ask them about potential barriers. All right? So you could look at the job descriptions and say, why is there college degrees required on everything? Is that really necessary?
This job description is asking for four things that we don’t do on our team anymore. Is that just historical or can we get rid of it? And so come with some ideas on what you can do to reduce those barriers. OK? You want to work with your DEI in your HR teams to come up with inclusive hiring processes.
There is a huge movement, an absolutely huge movement to have different types of interviews for people. They get to choose. I would like a telephone interview for my first interview. I would like to have a Zoom. I would like to have a structured interview. And I’d like to know the questions in advance so that I can be prepared.
What we want when we interview people is we want to start with a really wide pool and bring it down to the narrowest pool of the best candidates for the skills that we’re looking for. Right now, we have this little, tiny, narrow door. And people are trying to wedge themselves into it. OK?
It doesn’t work. We’re getting the same results over and over again. We’re getting high turnover. We’re getting people not understanding what they’re supposed to do. All right? An inclusive process starts out wide and then comes narrow. Everybody should be invited in. Ooh, they offer– I’d love to know where Bryn Elliott works. That’s awesome.
That is a new movement. And I’m delighted to hear that people are embracing that. It’s the way forward. We want people to put their best– The Carpentries. Cool. We want to put everybody at ease so that we’re not catching people out on the interview. We’re bringing people in. And if that’s the way your culture is throughout the entire company, that will catch on, that bringing people in, bringing your real self, being allowed to say, this would work better for me if.
Because there is no one-size-fits-all solution for everything. There is no well-rounded individual. OK? We want to allow flexibility. And very importantly, we want to provide accommodations universally. OK? Next slide. Over to you.
ELISA LEWIS: Thank you. Thanks, Tara. And thank you to those in the chat who are sharing some information on interview accommodations and best practices as well. So I want to cover a few other things here. And I think it’s important to note that while certainly reacting to accommodations is always critical, there are several ways that you can proactively design your interviews and that process with accessibility in mind. And again, some of them have been shared in the chat already.
So a few ways to do this are focusing on physical access. If the interview is being held in person, you should ensure that the location is physically accessible. Is there wheelchair access, reserved seating, clear signage, service animal accommodations, and so forth? I actually had a great experience with this many years ago at my interview with 3Play.
Our old office, the elevator opened directly into the office space. It was an open office floor plan. And I remember my manager let me know when I was coming in, she gave me the heads up that when the elevator opens, you’re going to end up in this open space. So just letting people know what to expect, that was a huge relief for me.
I didn’t want to be fixing my hair or something getting off of the elevator. And just having those clear expectations can also really alleviate anxiety. You should also consider any dietary restrictions. Are there allergies? Is this maybe a lunch or coffee interview? Keep that in mind. And also preferences when it comes to inclusive– I think my computer is about to start buzzing.
But any preferences when it comes to inclusive planning along with using inclusive language. Again, we also talked about what that means in a virtual setting. You should ensure that you have appropriate live captioning scheduled for the meeting. Certainly, if it’s requested, you definitely need it. But are you able to provide that even if it’s not requested?
I think it’s important to keep in mind there are differences in quality between automatic and human captioning. But is that something that maybe it’s become standard practice to have, at the very least, automatic captioning on your interview if it’s virtual. Also ASL interpreters– make sure that you have, again, a relationship with ASL interpreters that you can have those, whether it be requested or maybe, again, it becomes best practice standard for your interview process.
And then, again, it’s important that any content or questions, if you can, are provided in advance. I think, again, not only does it allow access and helps everyone to have clear expectations and be able to prepare, but it also can really help alleviate any sort of anxiety or any concerns leading up to the interview process. Advanced access can also include prior to the interview providing that information on what the agenda is going to look like.
Who are you going to be interviewing or meeting with that day? What are the questions? What material should they be preparing for? Are there going to be breaks throughout the day, what does that look like?
If it’s a full day interview, is there a meal? Should they expect to do that on their own or is it going to be something where they go out with individuals that they’re meeting with? And lastly, avoid making any assumptions about a candidate’s needs. It is OK to ask if there are or any accommodations that they’d like to request. But it’s not OK to make any assumptions.
Instead of saying, oh, do you need X, Y, Z, it’s great to say, what can I provide to make this a comfortable experience for you? And this is a good segue into what we will talk about next week. Next week, we are going to continue the conversation about what you can expect in the workplace once you are there.
So we’ll cover how to have an accessible office culture, other and additional ways to have clear communication in the workplace, how to create an environment where you are able to give and receive feedback and implement that feedback, and of course, we will, again, leave time for a live Q&A. So with that said, I would like to dive into questions.
And I know we had some great questions throughout, but please feel free to keep them coming. And we will get started. Let me just take a look at the questions that have been coming in.
And someone else also mentioned chemical sensitivities. I think that’s a really important one.
TARA CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. I was just going to suggest– a lot of firms are also bringing in a scent free environment. There are a lot of really strong perfumes and also some strong lunch foods that come into the office that literally make people physically sick. And it’s quite funny when the scent free office goes in, there’s always one individual who’s really upset because smelling like Jo Malone is their signature brand.
And when they’re no longer allowed to do that, people are like, yay, because nobody wants to smell them four hours after they’ve left the room. So it’s another accommodation that helps everybody. Different– I was just about to say light. Brilliant, Mel. Thank you.
Light and sound– allowing people to wear hats, allowing people to have noise canceling headphones, allowing people to wear loose clothing so that if you have an office environment where you must wear a suit, why? The other bit is with– the fear of seeing some– This is amazing. I love this.
The hot desks– there are so many people that hate the fact that they don’t have a space or that they can’t claim an area. And we often suggest that if a person has a real need to have their own space, whether there’s a diagnosis or not, let them have that space. Unless it’s the corner office with a view of New York City, and it’s beautiful, and you worked your way up to that, you don’t kick out the manager because Bob wants it.
But in a hot desk situation, you want to be able to ensure that a person is in a spot that they’re not going to be bothered by huge amounts of people coming through, by smells, by lights, by sounds. So it’s a preference thing. But for a lot of people, it’s a necessity thing.
ELISA LEWIS: Thank you so much. And I do want to be mindful of everyone’s time. So I think that we will wrap up for now. But we have a list of some of the questions that did come through. Most of them we were able to get through throughout the presentation, which is great.
And anything that we didn’t cover today we will make sure to cover next week. Thank you so much for the great conversation in the chat. And thank you, Tara, for presenting with us today.
And thank you, again, to the attendees for joining us, for asking great questions, sharing personal stories. Really appreciate how engaged everyone was. I hope that everyone has a great rest of their day.
TARA CUNNINGHAM: Thanks, everyone. See you next week.