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How to enhance your workforce by tapping into neurodivergent talent
In the eighth episode of Leading into Tomorrow, Kait Borsay talks to professionals from EY and beyond about why employers can’t afford to leave neurodivergent talent on the table.
In this episode, presenter and reporter Kait Borsay leads a discussion on the huge value of tapping into neurodivergent talent for employees, employers, society and the world. Joining her are Hiren Shukla, EY Global and Americas Neuro-Diverse Center of Excellence Leader; John Leonard, Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner of the Office of Trade at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and Rob Austin, Professor of Information Systems at Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada.
Understanding and acceptance of neurodiversity have grown in recent years, but some organizations still view these efforts as charitable rather than what John calls “a mission enabler.” To combat this, our guests share positive examples from their own organizations, including faster hiring processes at CBP and the world’s largest neurodiversity model and program at EY. They also suggest ways to recognize, support and unlock the strengths of neurodiverse people, who make up an estimated 15% to 20% of the population.
Key takeaways:
Employers increasingly recognize that neurodiverse people aren’t a homogenous group with superpowers. They’re individuals with unique strengths that have historically remained untapped.
Organizations that recognize those strengths, and structure assessments and roles to optimize them, will see more innovation, creativity and problem-solving across the board.
To reap the benefits, employers need to embrace new ways of hiring and working from the top down. This includes educating managers to be aware of their biases and using proof points to drive change.
If you’d like to read more, a full text transcript of this podcast is available.
Kait Borsay
Hello and welcome to Leading into Tomorrow, a podcast series from EY looking at how governments are using technology-driven strategies to help deliver their visions of a better future.
I'm your host, Kait Borsay, and each episode we're joined by expert guests from around the world sharing their specialist insight.
This time, we're focusing on neurodiversity and its benefits for governments, including talent transformation and value creation. Joining me are Hiren Shukla, EY's Global in America's Neuro-Diverse Center of Excellence Leader. Hello Hiren.
Hiren Shukla
Hello Kait — thank you so much for having me today.
Borsay
It's a pleasure. John Leonard, Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner of the Office of Trade for Customs and Border Protection for the US government. Hello John.
John Leonard
Hello.
Borsay
And Rob Austin, Professor of Information Systems at Ivey Business School in Ontario. Hello Rob.
Rob Austin
Hi there Kait — it's great to be here, thanks for inviting me.
Borsay
Thanks for being with us. Hiren, it's estimated that 15% to 20% of the world’s population exhibits some form of neurodivergence. First, just explain the conditions that neurodiverse people have.
Shukla
Sure. I think it's really important to set the context. Neurodiversity is the dimension of cognitive variation in the world, and it's a paradigm that suggests that variation in cognitive style, social thinking, communication style, that's expressed, that those variations are normal variations and not deficits in how we categorize people. And so, Kait, we've found that, in the world today, about 80% or so of the population converges in social thinking and communication style. This is the neurotypical population, which is the majority, but somewhere in the range of 15% to 20%, as you say, have an inherent hardwired cognitive difference. We often think about this in terms of conditions or diagnosis — dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, ADHD, dyscalculia and dysgraphia — and so it's really the blending together of all of these cognitive differences, very much like biodiversity, is where we get this term “neurodiversity” and each of us are neurodiverse, we can often be categorized as neurodivergent, or neurotypical. So, hopefully that helps set some context.
Borsay
That's really interesting. Now research suggests that teams with neurodivergent people in some roles can be 30% more productive than those teams without them. Rob, what specific abilities do neurodivergent people have compared with neurotypical people?
Austin
It's a great question. There is scientific evidence to suggest that people who are neurodivergent have some abilities that are specific to those conditions. So, for example, pattern recognition, detail orientation, focus; these are characteristics that science shows us certain people may have if they are on a neurodivergent scale. One of the things, I think, we have to be careful about here though is most of the organizations that I know of, that we study, that are working with neurodivergent people for the purposes of employment, have kind of backed away from justifying the programs in terms of the people who are neurodivergent being better. They are, of course, a source of talent like every other source. One of the reasons is it kind of tends toward stereotyping. I think that one of the sayings that you'll hear in these contexts is “if you've met one neurodivergent person, you've met one neurodivergent person.” So they're individuals just like the rest of us, and just like the rest of us they have talent. The difficulty for them has always been getting people to see their talent. Not all of them are associated with super powers. That's the kind of idea that I think it's important to diffuse a little bit. It's not quite fair to people to ask them to have super powers.
Shukla
We've seen, Kait, our neurodivergent colleagues in all kinds of roles, but it's interesting — Rob said something when we are intentional about the fit for the role, in terms what are the things that John or Rob or I are good at, and how do we structure these roles that really enhance my strengths? Clearly we are seeing increased innovation, creativity, complex problem solving, technology design and implementation, but I think, Kait, it's an interesting paradigm that we are now seeing very applicable from a universal application perspective.
Borsay
What jobs particularly suit people who are neurodiverse? The fact that Bill Gates is thought to be on the autism spectrum and the astronaut Scott Kelly, for example: he says his ADHD gives him the ability to hyperfocus. Might they give a sense of the type of roles?
Shukla
Yeah, you know I think it is probably high-profile exceptions where we see Bill Gates, Elon Musk, for example, or others. So again, I would say, Kait, we see neurodivergent professionals working in all kinds of roles: data and finance, and technology and HR, and marketing and customer service, what we are seeing, the success really being again comes back, Kait, to how are we first of all opening the aperture in organizations to even make sure we're accommodating that these differences come across in the interview process, for example, and then how do we make sure that we are sustaining the support levels? And there is an interesting concept, Kait, around “spiky profiles,” and let me describe. Neurodivergent individuals are often very strong in certain areas and could be the ones that Rob mentioned, you know, technology design and focus or pattern recognition, for example. And then, there's some lows in there and it's really supporting those as we would anybody else. But, Kait, at EY, we have greatly applied this in our innovation, transformation, cybersecurity, technology design, as well as our traditional accounting, auditing and finance functions. So, we're really following the demand for skills we see in the workforce and in the workplace to meet that gap, and the neurodivergent population is this rich untapped population that allows us to enhance our workforce.
Borsay
John, you oversee a diverse portfolio of US trade enforcement and security which requires using advanced data analytic capabilities. How are you assessing the opportunity, then, of employing neurodiverse people to transform your talent pool and perhaps deliver new insights into your operations?
Leonard
Okay Kait, thank you, that's a great question. Let me begin by kind of addressing diversity, equity and inclusion from a macro level, then I'll try to focus down into the neurodiverse aspect of it. So, first and foremost, US customs and border protection is committed to enhancing diversity within our workforce, and I think there are two reasons for that. One, we have to reflect the communities we serve, right? So what our mission is, basically, is to protect America while facilitating legitimate travel and trade, and it's a very, very big responsibility, and it involves many, many different peoples and industries and folks coming in and out of the country. So the workforce, by its very nature, must be diverse to be effective.
Secondly, I think that a diverse workforce really helps with specific challenges that we face, and you talked about this issue of data analytics, which is kind of more in my mission set of cargo and trade. So really, we look at DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) as a mission enabler. We really think that it is something that's not only the right thing to do but will help us execute our mission more effectively. Then moving down into, how do you get these people on board? I think we're blessed in one sense that the US federal government has avenues, if you will, or processes where we're able to hire folks of differing backgrounds, abilities, etc., quicker, which is good. There's a process that we have called Schedule A Hiring and that is across the federal government and in customs and border protection (CPB), we utilize it quite often. And so if we were to talk about the possibilities of looking into a neurodiverse type of workforce that could help us tackle our very, very challenging issues with data analysis. So it's very promising.
Borsay
Professor Rob, for you've studied neurodiversity evolution in organizations. What do your findings say about how business's attitude to neurodiversity has changed?
Austin
So, I think the story there is largely a very favorable one. It's a story of progress. So I think companies in, let's just say, the old days before neurodiversity employment programs got started, they were not trying to avoid talent pools, they just didn't have the means and the methods, and they didn't realize that the existing processes for hiring, for bringing people on board, for assessing talent, those processes, and we take some responsibility for this in business schools, the methods that have been developed had inherent biases. Hidden biases, unintended biases, but they were there. And so I think, since about 2004, and I mentioned that date because that's when a small company, a consulting firm in Denmark called Specialisterne, was established with the explicit idea of employing people on the autism spectrum, and one of the things they did, for example, they worked with Lego, another Danish company, to come up with alternative talent assessment methods. So, methods that did not require people to interview well, necessarily, was a way to try out for a job rather than to interview for a job, and if you think about it, some of the things I like to think about is, it's a little bit odd that we have evolved to a place where we think the best way to assess talent is to listen to people talk about their talent. People are good at talking about being talented, but that's not necessarily diagnostic of the best talent.
So, I think once we were able to develop these methods and prove that they worked, then there were companies like EY, like SAP, like Microsoft who noticed that these methods did work and, at the same time, these companies were experiencing talent shortfalls. They were having trouble finding enough people with talent in certain categories. So it just made sense that you use these methods to tap previously untapped talent pools. So a lot of progress and a lot of enthusiasm now in the business community for these approaches. That said, there's a lot still to be done. As you started saying, there are a lot of people in the world who are neurodivergent, and so there's a lot more talent out there that we still are figuring out how to tap.
Borsay
Let's look more at making change happen and how neurodiverse people are recruited and integrated into the workforce. In the US, for example, it's estimated that 85% of people on the autism spectrum are unemployed, and yet there are talent gaps in data analytics and cybersecurity. John, I understand that US customs and border protection collects more data daily than any other US federal agency. What recruitment challenges do you have finding the talent to support CBP's work and analyze all the data?
Leonard
So yeah, you're correct. We do collect an incredible amount of data on a daily basis in any of our mission sets, whether that involves border security, passenger processing, migrant processing, or cargo and trade, which is the area that I look after. That particular mission set in that international trade space, this is where we really collect a mind-boggling number of pieces of data, if you will. So literally, every piece of cargo that comes into the US, whether it's a 40ft container coming by maritime type of modality or a small parcel coming in by e-commerce, if you can believe it, we're seeing two million small parcels a day coming to the US in various ports of entry. Each one of those things, articles of commerce, has a great amount of data associated that's required for a shipper, an importer, a custom house broker to transmit to CBP, and that's really how we do a lot of our targeting to try to ferret out, what are these packages or containers or trucks or trains, or pipelines, what do we want to examine? There's just too much stuff to examine, or we have to use risk management to try and figure out what has the most risk, in order to again carry out our mission, protect the country, collect the right amount of duty — all that other stuff.
So how do you analyze that data? Of course we've jumped headlong into using artificial intelligence, machine learning, all the modern techniques, but for us, the human part of it — either our officer or our specialist knowledge, folks that know the business — is incredible and really essential to it, but we think that a neurodiverse type of workforce could add value here, because again, it's just a different way of looking at data, looking for anomalies, looking for ways that “what about this particular problem set can we make a decision out of, or a deduction out of?” I believe that a neurodiverse type of workfoce, and I'll tell you we haven't really dipped into it in any sense yet, but my feeling is they could bring value to this type of exercise and we're excited to try and pursue it.
Borsay
And John, when you do look into it further, and to speak to Rob's point about how neurodivergent people often don't interview well, are you thinking about how to address the challenges of enabling neurodiverse people to navigate the hiring process and grow careers with you?
Leonard
Yeah, exactly, and that's a real change of pace. I mean, Rob mentioned the typical interview process, and that would have to be really turned on its head, or at least people will need to have different techniques to know how to carry that out. But we would definitely want to lean in with our management staff to say, “Hey, listen, this is a different thing, it's not your typical onboarding interview type of process with this workforce,” and so we would definitely need to take care to do that right.
Borsay
Rob, what does government need to consider when designing an inclusive neurodiverse employment program to encourage talent and innovation in a competitive environment?
Austin
That's a great question, Kait. I think a lot of it begins with what John was just talking about on awareness. I think, even just a general awareness on the part of people who are engaged in interviewing. Even if the process is not completely switched over, to a more of a tryout method that an awareness of the potential for biases, some training on the people who do assess talent, can go a long way. In the companies we study, it's not true that interviews have been completely abandoned. There are still uses of interviews, and it is possible to train people who are assessing talent in ways that help them see past things like inability to make eye contact or nervousness, people with anxiety issues that have been reinforced by their experiences in schools and jobs over the years.
So, those are some of the first things. I think some of the next steps would involve changes in process. That's some of the stuff I think John just said might be a little bit harder. If you can move to an assessment process that is less reliant on interviewing, and it can be difficult, because you still have to ensure that interviewing processes are fair, that everybody has the same, kind of an equal chance, but there's a lot of progress that's been made, and the good news is that companies like EY and Microsoft and SAP and others, they know a lot about this now, and there's an active conversation going on. So the good news is, any organization that wants to get started on this will have a lot of people they can talk to who have been there, who have tried it. There's a few other things, I think, there's typically things in the environment, getting a little bit more deliberate, and thinking about the fact that different people process information in different ways, but a lot of that Is pretty easy, it's circulating agendas for meetings before the meetings, it's possibly recording meetings so that people can listen to them again, or watch them again. It's things in the environment — lighting, noise — that can be easily managed, and it also helps other people, not just neurodivergent people.
Borsay
Hiren, let's talk about EY's neurodiverse workforce model then. It's become a really successful framework, recognized by the World Economic Forum for transforming talent and creating value. What's been your approach then to developing neurodiverse teams?
Shukla
We are extremely blessed that, in our eight-year journey at EY, we now have the world's largest neurodiversity model and program, and, as Rob said, while we've made our progress, there's still a lot to learn. But Kait, there are a few key items, John touched on some of these, that will drive, but we will look at as sustainability and scaleability, because the shifting of the default position of many individuals who may think about this as a charitable effort. There is really a deliberate change management that needs to happen in the organization, and so we start with what the businesses need. I love that John mentioned the mission statement, because the business need and the need for skills is the driver here. This provides a sustainable platform of demand and then, I think from there, it really moves into this change management and organizational readiness journey. You know there's a misunderstanding that this is a hiring program — “Oh, let me hire these individuals, 85% unemployment, or underemployment” when in fact, it's really the organizational change, as Rob and John mentioned, in processes, in understanding, and frankly, in inclusive management style that then benefits everyone — race, age, gender, sexual orientation and cognitive diversity.
But that change management begins to unlock something else too: John said the power of perspectives. We know innovation comes from the edges and so, unless you have the proof points, the empirical evidence — and this is really the eight-year journey that we've been on at EY — can we deliberately orchestrate a methodology and a model that would show how diverse teams always outperform less diverse teams? And so, Kait, it is a nuanced understanding of root causes. It's a deliberate organizational journey and process, and then it's the data points and the proof points that drive the change management all the way from the top, all the way down, that embrace new ways of working. And I think, Kait, this is what has been captured in the recent World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse designation that we're really proud of.
Borsay
John, how might a team of neurodiverse people identify new insights for CBP, let's say in your work of prohibiting the cross-border movement of goods produced with forced labor?
Leonard
Customs and border protection is the only border agency in the world currently that is preventing goods made with forced labor from entering our commerce. We're really leading the way here, globally. It's the law in the US: Goods made with forced labor are inadmissible, they're considered contraband. It's a difficult mission to pull off, just because of the sheer volume of goods that come in, and determining which are made with forced labor and which aren't, we get various processes of establishing that, but as I alluded to earlier, a lot of the work that we do involves first an analysis of the data that is available that is transmitted to CBP, often in certain cases, weeks before the cargo arrives at our ports. We want to make the actual physical examination of goods to be the last possible option, just because of our limited workforce, and the cost and time it takes to examine freight. We'd like to make decisions before goods come to the US, push the borders back as much as possible, and this data analysis is critical.
So, you've got millions of shipments coming in every day. Each shipment may have possibly hundreds of data elements associated with it in our holdings, and so again, that means analysis, and that's where I think a neurodiverse capability would help. They might have insights and abilities unique to that workforce, that talent pool I should say, that could help us spot the anomalies and be able to trace these goods to areas that we know employ forced labor, whether it's through shipping records, production records, certificates of origin — there's just a dizzying amount of data that we have to sort through and I'm very, very eager to see if we could, with little baby steps, bring this talent pool into customs and border protection and really see what they can do.
Borsay
Well, we're almost out of time. So, to sum up, we've heard some great ideas, but to demonstrate progress, what long-term views should governments take on neurodiversity's contribution to creating value in a more equitable world. John?
Leonard
So, as I've stated, for CBP, we look at diversity as a mission enabler. It's something that we embrace and we want to pursue, whether we're talking race, sexual orientation, cognitive ability, whatever, we feel it makes our agency stronger and better able to carry out the mission. So, that being said, the challenge statement is in the recruitment, in the onboarding, how do we get, for instance, a neurodiverse audience to be interested in CBP or even know that we're hiring folks of that talent? Rob also mentioned challenges in the workplace. We would have to transform at least that part of our workplace to be a comfortable and safe environment for them to thrive, and so there would be some changes needed in that space. I think all these are very much overcomeable, durable — it's just a matter of getting the ball rolling. So I'm excited about it.
Borsay
And Rob, your thoughts on this from an education perspective?
Austin
You know I think we see our mission in business schools in this area, we'd like to get a point where this becomes part of the way that we train managers, and there's a certain way that you need to do this in academic settings, you need to have the research. You need to be able to show that this is important, and it is something that we should teach all managers. But for me, it kind of boils down into what I like to call a win, win, win, win. So there's four wins there. This is an obvious win, I think, for the people who have access to opportunities who didn't have access to opportunities before. This is transformational. The dignity of being able to go to work and being able to earn your pay and to go home and talk with your family about it. This changes life not just for the participants but for their entire families and everyone around them. For the organizations to be able to access talent, where they might not have been able to access talent before, to be able to innovate in ways that result from the differing perspectives. To be able to access all of the other benefits that we've seen associated in organizations with these programs.
The third win would be society, right? I mean if you think about it — and this has been discussed — many of the people who are adults and who historically have been considered unemployable have been on public support. If you take someone who's on public support and you translate them into a taxpaying citizen in a tech job, that's a huge swing per person per year in terms of income for government. Those are huge savings, which to me should make governments willing to invest in programs like this. And the final win, I think, is just for the world. The world, as we all know, faces some very big challenges, and what I'd like to say is, “We can't really afford to leave talent on the table. The world needs all the talent it can get.” So, what we try to do from an educational perspective is to facilitate that win, win, win, win.
Borsay
That's really inspiring. Hiren, I'm going to give you the last word.
Shukla
What my fellow panelists talked about I think is spot on. I will add something here to say there are so many competing agendas and priorities that organizations have today. The agility and resilience you need today is greater than ever. How do we take something that is on the fringe right now, maybe not even on someone's radar, and say we're not talking just one in seven or one in five in a hiring program, our organizations today already have neurodivergency in them, are we recognizing, acknowledging, supporting and unlocking that power of cognitive diversity in our own organizations, even if we don't hire one person right now? And so it's very interesting, the deliberate methodology that we know can accelerate this journey versus the hand-to-hand combat that will take a very long time and frankly, at some point, competing priorities will edge this out. And I think, Kait, the danger right now in our next steps is not only how do we learn from each other, how do we be more deliberate in driving outcomes, like the mission statement that John talked about, these outcomes and proof points to those outcomes are critical right now, and I think leaning in to the methodologies that exist and frankly the success, on others, I think will help drive collaborative value in the world. This is not a competitive issue, there's nothing proprietary about it. This is really about sharing and leaning in where we see robust ecosystems, government academia, nonprofit, private and public sector, and when we come together, my goodness, we're going to create value in the world that we've never seen, and frankly, the shocking part is under our nose.
So, really excited there's a bright future ahead, and I think that we've got some great opportunities for us all to share it.
Borsay
Well, thanks very much to all of you for being on the podcast. It's been such an enlightening and important conversation to have. John, thank you to you.
Leonard
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Borsay
Rob, thank you.
Austin
Yeah, it's been great very nice to chat with all of you.
Borsay
And Hiren, a big thanks to you.
Shukla
Amazing conversation, Kait, thanks for facilitating.
Borsay
Well, do join us again for more insight into how governments are delivering technology-driven strategies, and also subscribe to this series so you won't miss an episode.
From me, Kait Borsay, thanks for listening and goodbye.
