Back in 2019, I interviewed Theo Smith about Neurodiversity at work. At the time, I didn’t have much of an understanding of Neurodiversity, and it was great to learn from Theo about the challenges neurodivergent people face in the workplace, what employers can do to support them and the enormous benefits this support would bring to everyone.
Theo has since teamed up with Professor Amanda Kirby, and they are about to publish a book on Neurodiversity at Work. A couple of weeks ago, I caught up with them to find out more about the book and what talent acquisition professionals can be doing to be more inclusive in recruiting and assessment.
In the interview, we discuss:
▪ What is Neurodiversity
▪ How do we get the best out of everyone at work?
▪ Cognitive strengths and cognitive struggles
▪ Spiky profiles
▪ Unrealistic job descriptions
▪ Focusing on what people can do rather than what they can’t do
▪ Making interviews and assessment more inclusive
▪ How will work change post-pandemic
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:05]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 335 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Back in 2019 I interviewed Theo Smith about neurodiversity at work. At the time I didn’t have much of an understanding of neurodiversity and it was great to learn from Theo about the challenges neurodivergent people face in the workplace, what employers can do to them, and the enormous benefits this support would bring to everyone. Theo has since teamed up with Professor Amanda Kirby and they’re about to publish a book on neurodiversity at work. A couple of weeks ago I caught up with them to find out more about the book and what talent acquisition professionals can be doing to be more inclusive in recruitment and assessment. Hi Theo and Amanda and welcome to the podcast. Could you just introduce yourselves and tell us what you do?
Theo Smith [00:02:03]:
Yes. Hi Matt, I’m Theo Smith and I’ve worked within kind of HR recruitment for a good while now. But also I’m a passionate kind of advocate champion for neurodiversity as well and I work for a HR tech startup called Zinc.
Amanda Kirby [00:02:22]:
And I’m Amanda. Hi Matt and great to be here. And I’m a funny headed animal. So I’m the other half of this duo and I’m a professor in learning neurodiversity and also come from a really neurodivergent family and worked in the employment space for the last 20 years and I’ve got an academic practical background so we’re coming as a duo.
Matt Alder [00:02:48]:
Fantastic stuff and you’re both very welcome to the show. And Theo, welcome back because you’ve been on before. I suppose the first question to ask you is how did you meet? I understand you’re writing a book together. What’s it about and why are you.
Theo Smith [00:03:03]:
Writing It I’ll jump in there, Matt, because I was lucky enough to be introduced to Amanda as part of a webinar that we did some time ago. I was aware of Amanda and we managed to do this webinar together. And it was from that point that I guess the relationship started. But as part of my journey and my expedition, I’ve spoken to quite a few people like your good self Matt and Katrina Collier on writing a book. And I really wanted to write something on neurodiversity because I couldn’t see it out there in the space. But I’m kind of not probably the best person to sit down and write a whole book. So I thought what incredible person can I get to work with me who is going to be like the kind of the brilliant academic, the kind of almost the scientist behind my garbled kind of crazy thinking and that from my perspective, that’s what happened. I reached out to Amanda and said I would absolutely love for you to come on board on this journey and help me write this book. Amanda, do you remember it that way?
Amanda Kirby [00:04:21]:
I think so. I think it’s a bit of a blur now because. But yeah, I think it was like that and I liked the way you view the world and thought as well. There was a space for a book around neurodiversity in the workplace that was practical and helpful, but also had a residence that it was evidence based as well, it was practitioner useful for practitioners and it just felt like a good combo. And we started the journey and been great fun and learning for both of us really, haven’t we? I think we’ve both been learning as we’ve been going along.
Theo Smith [00:04:57]:
Absolutely. And I think the idea of writing a book seemed very, very scary indeed. But it’s such an important topic and because we couldn’t find anything that was out there that directly talked to the workplace, to organizations and kind of when I, when I scrambled around looking for this map, when I wanted to learn more, where I wanted to understand myself, I wanted to understand what neurodiversity was, how it’s been impacted in the workplace. I just couldn’t find something that was brought together that was easy to access, that kind of answered the many questions that I had as an employee, as a manager, as kind of a leader within the HR recruitment space. It just wasn’t there and I needed it and I wanted it. And it seems that there’s too many bits and pieces all over the place. And you know, this idea, this concept, neurodiversity has really exploded and definitely taken off this year, last year, with everything that’s been going on. So it’s become even more important that we’re able to bring the narrative into a book, a guide that can help people really explore what neurodiversity is and how they can make their workplaces more accessible for all, really.
Matt Alder [00:06:12]:
And I think that, you know, that really kind of leads into to my next question because perhaps we should just back up a little bit because I think that there may be people listening who, you know, don’t fully understand what you mean when you talk about neurodiversity in the workplace. So could you give us a bit of. A bit of an overview and perhaps at the same time sort of talk about some of the way you describe things in the book?
Amanda Kirby [00:06:34]:
Sure, I can come into that. So neurodiversity as a concept has been talked about for a while, but as Theo says, has exploded. And when we’re talking about neurodiversity, we really think about all of us. So we’ve all got different ways we communicate, see, hear our way our brains work. We’ve got billions of cells that are connecting in all different ways. And neurodiversity is about the differences in the way our brains work that is variable for all of us. Now, sometimes people talk about neurodiversity as if they’re talking about people who with autism, autistic people, different people use different language. But what we’re really talking about is difference of thinking and variables of thinking to ensure that we get the best out of people and they can be access work and stay in work and show their talents. And it was really the move. The first time it was sort of talked about was in the late 1990s by Judy Singer in Australia, was a sociologist. And she was saying at that time, which is we always talk about conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and we talk about difficulties and disabilities. And actually we should have much more of a social framing. And that’s where this terminology has come from. Moving away from like medical models to more social models. That’s what we use. The terminology we use.
Matt Alder [00:07:54]:
And Theo, talk us through your experience and how it relates to the workplace.
Theo Smith [00:07:59]:
Well, that’s exactly the thing, Matt. For me, you know, I’m as Amanda, I’m neurodiverse. I have a family who are neurodiverse. And when I looked at the workplace, when I looked at recruitment processes, when I looked at the way that we assess people and just the way that we treat people within organizations, right. I could see that something Was. Was not quite right. And certainly the way that I fitted into an organization, sometimes it felt quite comfortable and fluid and somebody understood my skill set and what I could. What I could add to that organization. And other times it went drastically wrong. You know, really painfully wrong. And I could see this across organizations and across people that why can somebody come into an organization and perform really well in a particular role, and then their manager changes, or they indeed change their organization, but they still do the same role, but all of a sudden they fail significantly. And it just kind of. It really makes me wonder and think, how is this even possible Now? Of course, there’s a wide variety of reasons why this may happen, but absolutely, certainly. And we’ll. We’ll come on to this. Some people, they have significant strengths and skills in certain cognitive areas, but they really struggle in others. And this. I wanted to explore this further, and I wanted to bring this to organizations to give them some tangible things that they could think about and consider. Based on all of my experience of being a recruiter, of interviewing people, of sitting through more interviews than I care to imagine, and seeing a wide variety of different levels of capability. And this often does fall short with the level of support the likes of hiring managers being given or the employees are being given within the workplace. You know, the support and guidance that they’re being given and the help. And people are scared to come out right. People are scared to say, I may think differently, I may act differently, because they’re worried around the stigma and how they’re going to be treated, because often people have been treated badly, whether it be in school or in other work environments. So I really wanted to be able to change that kind of. That process and the way that you can feel quite competent one day, and the next day you feel completely incompetent.
Amanda Kirby [00:10:33]:
We also wanted to think about giving people the right language. So like Thea was saying about people are frightened to disclose is actually giving information to recruiters and to line managers about having a conversation. They don’t need to be experts in ADHD and dyslexia and dyspraxia and everything else. They need to be able to know how to have a confident conversation so somebody feels comfortable. How do you encourage somebody to share that they might need some support and it’s not seen as a stigma? So that was really important about getting. Shaping that in the book as well.
Theo Smith [00:11:06]:
It’s really interesting, Amanda, because we’ve spoken about this quite a lot, and what’s fascinating, and I think what people need to be encouraged by is we don’t know the right language necessarily. We don’t own that. We can’t say, you must say neurodiverse, neurodivergent, neurodifferent, you know, we don’t have the right to own that. All we can do is help and facilitate people understanding what the current terminology is, how it’s being utilized, and how people may prefer different words. And then, you know, that encourages people to think, okay, well, we don’t have to get bogged down by language, right? Because ultimately language can become the barrier to making the changes that are required through fear. And I think Amanda and I decided that, you know, that’s okay. It’s okay for us to feel like we’re getting it wrong even as the so called people who are trying to, you know, make the real change. And that’s all right. And I think a lot around the book and the journey that we’ve gone on, oh, goodness gracious me, during COVID writing a book to two people with adhd, you know, running around like mad hatters trying to time trying to get 90,000 words down. But I think a lot of what we’ve been able to capture is kind of just a real human element of what neurodiversity is. And the fact that it is every single one of us and it touches every single one of us through our families, our friends, our work environments, the way that we approach work, you know, there’s the introversion, the extrovert, you know, kind of piece as well. It is complex. However, it’s also something that we should just be open to discussing in a really normal way, which we’ve not been, you know, we’re fearful of it.
Matt Alder [00:12:55]:
So I mean, there’s obviously so much that we could talk about in detail here, and by the sounds of it, you’re covering a lot of, a lot of ground in the book. In the interest of time, I want to dig into one particular area that I’ve seen you write, writing and talking about Theo, which is this concept of spiky profiles. Tell us about that.
Theo Smith [00:13:15]:
So I’m gonna be the patient here, and Amanda is the expert. So the fact you said you see me write about is humbling, but I write about it because of incredible people like Amanda, you know, so let me just put that clear there. I’m not the expert, I’m the patient. And, and just, you know, from a personal perspective, from a human perspective of somebody who struggles sometime with the most basic of tasks, you know, I can’t hold a pen properly, and that’s because I’ve not been holding it properly since I was a child. I can’t spell properly. I really struggle to take notes, to listen, to be attentive, to understand what you’re telling me. If you’re giving me too much information, even though I talk really quickly and give lots of information out myself, which is kind of quite amusing, but I struggle with so many things. However, I no longer allow myself to be defined by those things that I struggle with, which in a lot of instances, I felt that was the case. I’m empowered by those cognitive skills where I knock stuff out of the park right when I’m good at and I try and reposition it and focus on those areas. So that’s from a human kind of. That’s how it affects me. I’m going to pass it over to Amanda to give you what it really means, what Spike Profile really means and how it’s come about. And I’m sure she’ll frame it much better than I will.
Amanda Kirby [00:14:41]:
Not really, but I’ll build on that, Ruth, because I think what you’re so a spiky profile really, is that if we look at our different areas of functioning, all of us are good at some things and most of us are not good at everything. So that’s the first thing. So all of us have got a variable we’re not going to be good at. Most of us are not good at sports, music, writing, communicating, the way we do our maths or reading. We’re all going to have varying skills in a number of those different areas. So what we see is that neurodiversity is a sort of concept using the spiky profile, that some people will have bigger spikes and bigger dips, so the up and the downs will be greater. So. And if we can actually maximize the top bits, the peaks, and minimize the bits that are challenging, like Theo says, the sort of struggles he has in some of the areas. And I would find I lose concentration, I get bored very easily. I love multitasking. I find it hard to stay on one task at once. If you look at my office at the moment, you see papers all over the place. I hate filing. There’s lots of things that I’m not very good at, but at the same time, I can bring thoughts and ideas together from a number of different domains. So if we maximize skills and somebody else helps me with my organizational stuff, then you’re going to get the best of me. And that goes for lots of different people. But the important thing is we each have a different spiky profile. So I can think, I come from this huge neurodivergent family and I’ve got people who are creative people and we’ve got scientists and we’ve got some people who are non verbal and they all have a whole variety of different strengths, but they also have different challenges. And that’s where if you understand your own spiky profile, you can then sell the good stuff and get help with the bits which you find challenging, particularly if it’s in the work that you want to do. So it’s that difference between the peaks and the troughs, really.
Theo Smith [00:16:41]:
And the reason why I think this is so important, Matt, if we put this in the context of recruitment, human resources is what we’ve done for many, many, many years is we have assessed people based on, you know, a number of things that they can do. So, you know, can they, are they organized, can they, are they detail orientated, can they focus their attention on X, Y, Z? You know, we want them to be everything right? And we do this long list and as these long lists get passed from one manager to the next, they get even longer. So before you know it, you have these job descriptions and person specifications or adverts that have these ridiculous list of things that people need to be and it’s impossible right now. Some people may be able to kind of show off that, yeah, I can kind of do most of these things. But a lot of us, we struggle. So when we get into that assessment process, when we, when we’re sat with somebody who is interviewing us, we fail. We fail to be able to deliver on all the things that they want rather than them focusing on those things that we can be incredible at. And that’s something I’m really passionate about, about changing the way that we look at assessment broadly. And that can be something as simple as like really laser focusing down on like the three or four key things that you need and then questioning, do you need all of those three or four things? Or actually based on the team dynamic, could you take two of those things where somebody has significant strengths and put in the support mechanisms to kind of hold them up, to make sure that they can outperform others in those areas that they’re really strong at? And I think that’s the future of teams. That’s where we’re going to see incredible teams doing out of ordinary things. But we’ve got to put some mechanisms in place to assess them and to employ them, basically, because I don’t think that we’ve done enough and we still have this kind of outdated old school view to how we do interview and.
Amanda Kirby [00:18:52]:
Assessment, I mean, that’s definitely in the view with people have used things like IQ measure, which isn’t really very good when you’re thinking about neurodiversity because some people will perform much better. And also from a medical perspective, people have looked at either somebody’s been dyslexic or they’re dyspraxic or they’ve got ADHD rather than looking overall, what’s your pattern of strengths and challenges and how do I mix with the team? So as Thea is saying when we’re recruiting is how do your team work best and how do you fit people in that team rather than actually having cookie cutter? So everybody’s got to have all the skills. Let’s see actually, how do we get complementary skills? And that’s what the spiky profile helps you to do. That’s why we’ve developed computer systems to be able to do that as well.
Matt Alder [00:19:36]:
It’s such an interesting point that you raised there about the list of requirements gets longer and longer as you go through the, the generations of, of recruiting. And, and people don’t necessarily even question why they’re looking for those things or assessing those things. And you know, is, is, is it actually of any benefit to them at all? And we kind of see that all the time, I suppose, sort of leading on from what you’ve both just said, what would be your advice to talent acquisition leaders and talent acquisition professionals in terms of how they should think differently about assessments? What should they be doing?
Amanda Kirby [00:20:12]:
I think one of the things is that the standard forms of psychometric assessments for recruitment bias, neurodiverse talent, and so you might be losing a whole load of people who are really good in the jobs just by the mechanisms that we’re using that we’ve used for quite a while. And the other thing is to, as Theo says, really think about your job descriptions and hone them. And don’t use words like flexible and multitasking, which don’t really have much of a meaning. So question the words you’re using and hone the job description and you might attract people you don’t know. Who doesn’t apply. I think that’s one of the keen things. And one in six people are neurodiverse. So you’ve got lots of people who might be your talent that you could actually be missing.
Theo Smith [00:20:57]:
So what I would add to that is, I would say, you know, often when people are going through the interview process, we have something reasonable Adjustments, which, you know is great. It’s kind of a legal obligation for organizations to kind of ask that question. Right. But I would never say. I would never tick the box to say I need a reasonable adjustment because I don’t feel. It doesn’t feel right for me. I don’t feel it’s uneasy somehow. But what I would respond to and what I have responded to and what I’ve used myself within previous organizations is at each key point to share the question around. Is there anything that we can do to improve this process for you? Is there anything we can do to give you a better experience during this interview where you can better show your skills and capabilities? And I tell you, Matt, you’d be surprised on the difference that that makes. You get a lot more people putting their hand up huge.
Amanda Kirby [00:21:58]:
And it’s not about a disability because as Thea says, lots of people don’t feel I’m disabled. They won’t tick that box. And that actually helps everybody. And it’s a question that everybody can answer as well.
Matt Alder [00:22:10]:
So in your research for the book, have you come across any employers who are doing this. This really well, any. Any sort of great examples or case studies that you’ve uncovered?
Amanda Kirby [00:22:20]:
We’ve got lots of case studies in the book. And that’s what’s been great, is talking to organisations who are at various stages in the process of doing well. And we’ve seen. I interviewed people at Admiral Insurance who’ve been working with for the last few years and they’ve really got on board a team. They’re thinking about their whole recruitment process, the onboarding, supporting people who are actually in the workplace. They’ve got neurodiversity champions, they’ve got a dedicated team to support people within the organization. And that was. That was great to see that. We’re seeing some places that are early on in that journey. You know, they’re just saying, let’s. I want to be aware. And we’ve really drawn out a lot of those case studies, which is brilliant, to get the examples of good practice, of what people are actually doing. And there’s certainly enthusiasm. I don’t know if you want to mention a couple. Theo.
Theo Smith [00:23:13]:
Yeah, I mean, different organizations are approaching it in very different ways, which is great. Right. They’re doing it in a way that makes sense to them and they’re working with, you know, they work with Amanda and they’re working with other kind of fantastic influences in the space or organizations that can help. But, you know, a great example is all the work autotrader have done. I mean, they’ve just put. I mean, Christophe Saprunas just put so much effort in his team there. And the organization, you know, they’re a commercial organization, so you don’t always find that they sometimes will take the lead when you’re thinking about their size. But, you know, making changes to the building. Once upon a time where we were in a building to improve the signage, the way that you access the building, the way that you engage with people, I mean, just really simple things, but actually things that really impact people who sometimes will literally walk to an interview and they get to the building, they’re so confused about where they’re supposed to go, they leave. And like, you think, surely not. Well, yes, because there’s a lot of anxiety that goes around the process of going to an interview before you even get to the place. So I think we’ve got to understand that. And, you know, the work they’ve done there is just incredible on that basis. And you look at the BBC, for example, who’ve designed their Cardiff offices kind of almost with neurodiversity front and center of that design. I mean, we’re talking about futuristic things in many respects. Not that outliers, they’re not. This is not stuff that we’re seeing on a huge scale, but I think this is where we see the big change. And this is why I’m so excited to be working with Amanda. And the book will be coming out soon, and the type of examples we’ve got in organizations and the work they’re doing, it’s an exciting time, but we are kind of at the beginning of something incredible rather than kind of in the middle of it, if you see what I mean.
Amanda Kirby [00:25:06]:
One of the things we did find was hearing the voices of people’s experiences, what it’s like to be neurodiverse in a workplace. And some of them are in hr. They’re in recruitment themselves and their experience, and also in all different places and spaces. And that’s really interesting for people to hear, hearing their experience of what it’s like and the challenges and how they’ve overcome them as well and been successful. And we’ve got some great success stories as well.
Matt Alder [00:25:32]:
So, final question. Obviously, we’ve been through a highly unusual and are going through a highly unusual time when it comes to work and life over the last 12 months or so. And it does very much feel that. That as things get back to whatever normal now looks like, that there is a chance for a bit of a reset when it comes to how people think about work and how people think about recruiting. What do you think the future holds in terms of the way that employers think about neurodiversity?
Amanda Kirby [00:26:06]:
I think they’re going to be thinking about, well, being inclusion and neurodiversity and equality, equity, all in the same framing. And that’s a big change. So neurodiversity and wellbeing before this was thought of as separate, even though your brain isn’t sort of separated into neurodiversity one day and wellbeing another day. And I think they’ll see also that the opportunity for remote working and how we’ve been working flexibly, that actually it opens up opportunities for recruiting neurodivergent talent. And I think it’s a different conversation we’re having that might have taken 10 years if this awful event has happened. But I think the fact that we’ve shown as an experiment that we can work remotely and flexibly, I think we won’t go back again. We’ll go when we go forward.
Theo Smith [00:26:55]:
Absolutely. I’m unbelievably excited by the opportunities that now present us. There’s some challenges that we still need to get through, but I think the world is positioned. We’re kind of the platform is ready for really taking this seriously. And I’m just hopeful, you know, for our children and those people who are going to go back to whatever the future of work is like, that they can go back to something that is significantly different to what we had before.
Matt Alder [00:27:25]:
Theo, Amanda, thank you very much for talking to me.
Amanda Kirby [00:27:28]:
Thank you.
Theo Smith [00:27:29]:
Thank you so much.
Matt Alder [00:27:31]:
My thanks to Theo Smith and Amanda Kirby. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes@recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
