Here’s What This Means For Your Workplace Culture
Remember when professionals mostly described themselves using only their degrees and job titles? Young professionals today are not just challenging this; they’re embracing identities and differences that older generations often kept hidden in the workplace. One striking data point from a 2023 ZenBusiness study highlights the shift: Over half of Gen Z identify as neurodiverse.
For years, conversations about workplace inclusion focused on visible representation. However, neurodiversity (the idea that people think, learn, and engage with the world around them in different ways) was often overlooked. One out of three neurodivergent employees fear being fired, and one-third of neurodivergent employees are dissatisfied with the support their organizations provide, while more than half have reported taking time off work due to their neurodivergence.
Normalizing Neurodivergence in the Workplace
Against this backdrop of unmet needs and systemic barriers, Gen Z’s willingness to openly identify as neurodiverse is especially important. It signals both a demand for change in the workplace, and a generational move toward normalizing conversations older employees were silent about – or felt pressured to mask. And for leaders, this openness is a cultural sea change that will profoundly impact how organizations hire, collaborate, and thrive. As Julia Armet, founder of Higher Playbook and a transformational leadership coach who is also autistic explains in a video interview, “If we don’t solve for the psychological safety of neurodivergent people, along with creating workplaces that are able to serve this rising generation who has very distinct needs, desires and aspirations, it’s going to be a mismatch between our workforce and our organizations.”
Fortunately, leaders aren’t powerless here. Practical steps can be taken to respond in inclusive ways that unlock the full potential of employees and position organizations to flourish. Here are a few:
Close the disclosure gap (without forcing exposure)
One of the most powerful ways leaders can foster inclusion is by reducing the obstacles to disclosure. Over half of neurodivergent employees avoid disclosure in job interviews due to fear of stigma or past negative experiences. Welcome Brain also describes how a lack of visible role models and opaque procedures often makes silence and masking feel like the safest option, even when it risks burnout.
But as the research cautions, disclosure alone isn’t an all-encompassing solution. Beyond universal design efforts like flexible work arrangements, varied communication modes, and sensory-friendly workspaces that proactively include differences from the start, leaders can go further. Make neuroinclusion visible, clarify what disclosure actually entails in practice, train managers how to recognize myths and assumptions to respond with empathy, and normalize individualization for all employees.
Address the double empathy problem
One of the most persistent neuroinclusion challenges in the workplace is the double empathy problem, a concept coined by autism researcher, Dr Damian Milton. It suggests that communication breakdowns between neurodiverse people aren’t about deficits on one side, but more about mismatches in mutual empathy and understanding. For example, a non-autistic manager may interpret an autistic employee’s directness as rudeness, while the employee experiences the manager’s vague feedback as unhelpful. Both are trying to communicate, but their styles don’t align.
Recognizing this mismatch reframes the issue as it’s not about “fixing” one group, but building bridges of empathy across differences. As Armet notes, “There’s often a misunderstanding of intention, but if we can start to learn to see each other’s different ways of expressing empathy in extreme cases, what ends up happening is we start to have more globalized cross cultural conversations, we’ve expanded our capacity to engage with individuals who might just come from different cultures or upbringings or any dimension of diversity.” As a result, organizations can normalize diverse communication styles and foster curiosity rather than judgment.
Invest in the outliers
Another, and perhaps most transformative, step leaders can take to be neuroinclusive is to intentionally invest in the outliers: Those team members whose thinking, communication, or working style diverges from the norm. Strength-based approaches to neurodiversity show that neurodivergent employees often bring cognitive diversity which fuels innovation, problem-solving, and creative thinking in the workplace, but only if organizations create the space for it.
Armet emphasizes “I see that as the seed for transformation. I see that as the source of innovation. And my objective then becomes, how do I foster a psychologically safe space to integrate that person?” This means resisting the need to make someone “fit,” and instead learning how to engage and support unique ways of thinking. As she adds, “There’s so much innovation and creative thinking to be unlocked when we learn how to interact and harness that energy a little bit, rather than fighting against it all the time or forcing that person to conform.”
Harnessing the Power of Neurodiverse Employees
What does all of this mean for leaders today? The “average” employee no longer exists, and with over half of young professionals identifying as neurodiverse, leaders now have an opportunity to transform differences perceived as challenges into healthier workplaces. This empathy is crucial to ensure neurodivergent employees feel seen, creativity thrives, and organizations gain a lasting advantage in innovation and engagement.