Many of the world’s most successful business people will tell you that the difference between success and failure in business comes down to your staff. To quote Richard Branson, “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
Taking this a step further, researchers at Harvard have found that, if employees in an organisation have more negative perceptions of their organisation at one point in time, the bottom line of the company is likely to be weaker in the future.
So, if it is people that makes the difference between business success and failure, those people need to be different from those that your competitors have – right?They need to have unique talents and skill sets and we, as business leaders, need to harness those talents to optimise what they can deliver into our business, making us different and better than our competitors.
Let me ask you a question: If you were pulling together your ‘dream team’ to innovate on a new product or service, what talents would you look for? Lateral or creative thinking? Almost certainly. Problem-solving? Definitely. The ability to see things from a different perspective? You bet. The ability to connect ideas? Deep concentration? Communication skills? Energy and passion? If you want all of these attributes in your ‘dream team’ then you need to be recruiting neurodiverse talent.
We’re increasingly seeing examples of organisations which are embracing – and actively benefiting from – the unique skills that neurodiverse talent can bring. Neurodiverse staff bring a different perspective and skill set to your workplace and can be an extremely valuable asset to any organisation.
What is neurodiversity?
Neurodiversity is an umbrella term for a group of hidden disabilities. A non-exhaustive list might include dyslexia, autism, Asperger’s, dyspraxia, ADHD and others. The most common of these is dyslexia, which affects around 10% of people in the UK.
We’re seeing increasing numbers of organisations globally creating competitive advantage by harnessing the power of neurodiversity. For example, GCHQ (MI5) actively seek to recruit spies and codebreakers who have dyslexia and similar neurodiverse conditions. They recognise that the dyslexic brain has a unique ability to solve complex problems and see situations from a different perspective. It has been proven that this group can spot patterns others do not see.
The BBC has realised that individuals with autism can make excellent software and technology developers. The ability of deep concentration, fine detail processing and extraordinary attention to detail makes people with autism ideal candidates for these roles.
Neurodiverse individuals are often drawn to specific sectors such as blue light services, engineering, IT, and architecture. The health and caring professions, too, attract neurodiversity, indeed the Royal College of Nursing recognise recently that as many as 14% of student nurses have dyslexia.
Approximately 13,000 graduates each year have dyslexia, so that means that you’ll almost certainly already have some neurodiverse staff on your payroll (Prof Peter D Pumphrey FBPsS, 2006/7).
Yet despite the common occurance of neurodiversity, we design our organisations for neurotypical people, measuring everyone against standard performance measures. As business leaders, we need to think differently about “different thinking” because neurodiversity can transform the fortunes of organisations. We live in an increasingly diverse society and successful businesses are ones which recognise this and reflect the diversity of the public they serve, in the staff they employ. Looking outside of our workforce, these talented people also become our customers, suppliers and competitors – something to consider if we are to truly achieve business success.
I’ll be blogging again next week about how you can attract neurodiverse talent to your organisation, but in the meantime you can join the conversation on Twitter @TexthelpWork or visit www.texthelp.com/corporate
