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How neurodiversity drives value at the intersection of talent and technology
In this episode, Hiren Shukla meets thought leaders from ServiceNow and Ivey Business School to explore neurodiversity and identify new sources of talent to drive transformation, innovation and sustainable growth.
Podcast host Hiren Shukla, EY Global and Americas Neuro-Diverse Center of Excellence Leader, welcomes Robert D. Austin, Professor of Information Systems and Innovation at Ivey Business School; Rick Wright, Senior Vice President of Customer Outcomes at ServiceNow; and Angelina Herrera, Vice President of Equity & Inclusion Programs at ServiceNow, to discuss the issue of neurodiversity and businesses’ pressing need to identify new sources of talent to drive transformation, innovation and sustainable growth.
Neurodiversity describes the rich tapestry of human thought patterns, behavioral traits and brain functions that people exhibit throughout society.
The science of neurodiversity states that these variations are not only “normal” but also can be viewed as strengths, enabling individuals to have new and often unique perspectives, which can disrupt established ways of thinking, drive innovation and generate multi-dimensional value.
As organizations become more data-driven and connected, there is a growing need for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) talent. Moreover, the overall workforce is shrinking.
Employees with autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia, however, are often technologically inclined and detail-orientated. They also often possess exemplary math, pattern recognition and memory skills, to name but a few. However, only 16% of autistic individuals are in full-time employment according to the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute.
Our thought leaders explore the extent to which forward-thinking corporations are adjusting their approach to neurodiversity so they can welcome the rich skills and unique perspectives neurodivergent individuals contribute.
Key takeaways
We're witnessing fundamental shifts in the way diversity, equity and inclusion are being aligned to the corporate strategic agenda.
Neurodiversity programs are building new and important competitive capabilities for the companies operating them.
For companies to innovate and drive transformation, they must bring diverse ways of thinking to the table.
A combination of dedicated programs, workforce strategy and partnerships can accelerate the journey to a neurodivergent talent pool.
For your convenience, a full text transcript of this podcast is also available.
Welcome to the EY Think Ecosystem podcast, a series exploring the intersection of technology collaboration and innovation. In each episode, we orchestrate insights, stories and perspectives from across the EY Partner Ecosystem, our client base and leadership team, to address the important issues and challenges of today.
Hiren Shukla
Welcome, this is the EY Think Ecosystem podcast, and I am your host Hiren Shukla, Leader of EY Global and Americas Neuro-Diverse Center of Excellence. In today's episode, we'll be discussing the exponential power of neurodiversity in the workplace through the lens of talent, technology and transformation. As businesses adopt technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning robotic process automation, they're becoming more and more data-driven, and more and more connected. However, there's a critical shortage of STEM skills we need to do this vital work, and the overall workforce is shifting and shrinking. Today we're going to talk about a very interesting talent pool, which is the neurodivergent or neurodistinct population.
Neurodivergent employees, those that often identify as autistic, dyslexic, having ADHD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, are often highly creative, technologically inclined and detail-oriented. They also often possess extraordinary math, pattern recognition and really high brainstorming and ideation capacity, just to name a few. However, the neurodivergent population has historically been underrepresented in the workplace with just 16% of autistic individuals in full-time employment. This is according to the CFA.
In today's episode of the EY Think Ecosystem podcast, our thought leaders will explore the extent to which progressive corporations are adjusting their approach to neurodiversity, such that they can welcome and integrate rich skills, unique perspectives and benefit in a multi-dimensional value way to what neurodivergent individuals can contribute. And we're in really good hands. Today we have three esteemed thought leaders to take us through the challenges and opportunities associated with this fascinating topic. Before I introduce them, please remember conversations during EY podcasts should not be relied on as accounting tax, legal investment, or other professional advice, listeners must consult their own advisors.
Joining us now from Ontario, Canada is Robert Austin, Professor of Information Systems and Innovation at Ivey Business School. Rob, great to have you on board, and you've been at the forefront of exploring neurodiversity as a corporate competitive advantage, so we can't wait to hear your insights.
Rob Austin
Thanks, Hiren. It's great to be here. And I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Shukla
Also, from Jackson, Wyoming, I am delighted to welcome Rick Wright, Senior Vice President of Customer Outcomes at ServiceNow. Rick, thanks so much for fitting us into your really busy schedule today.
Rick Wright
Thanks, Hiren, excited to be here. You know, this is a topic that you and I have talked a lot about, and we're making some interesting progress here at ServiceNow.
Shukla
Last, but definitely not least, joining us from San Jose, California we have on Angelina Herrera, ServiceNow's Vice President of Equity and Inclusion Programs. Angelina, so great to have you with us today.
Angelina Herrera
Oh, Hiren thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be here. I appreciate you having me here.
Shukla
Oh, it's our pleasure. And frankly, while I have you, we're going to start with you, Angelina. Today, we're witnessing really fundamental shifts in the way diversity, equity and inclusion are being aligned to the corporate strategic agenda. Angelina could you give us a sense of what's going on here, and we'd love to hear some examples of your purview and perspective of what you're seeing on the ground.
Herrera
Absolutely. Let me start with diversity, equity, inclusion. DEI isn't just a program or initiative. It's about making business better by creating a better work and life experience for everyone. What we're seeing is the focus is on equity which continues to be a critical industry term that represents the real challenge in our industry, not just to create a place where you can bring your full self which is belonging. But it's a place that is backing up that culture with measurable impact. Belonging is something that you can feel and equity is something that you can prove and measure which is ultimately aligned to the corporate strategic agendas.
Shukla
Angelina, it's amazing to hear. And I think for a lot of our listeners, we're really talking about equity, belonging, inclusion, driving results and the metrics behind it. So really excited that we'll get into some of that today and how it plays out. Rob let me go to you next, you've been studying the evolution of neurodiversity from an organizational perspective for more than half a decade. Your work has been published in the Harvard Business Review. How have you seen corporate attitudes to neurodiversity change over this period of time?
Austin
So Hiren, I mean, you're right, we track these kinds of activities across companies and across industries. And I would say that overall, it's a very favorable story. It's a story about growing momentum and increasing numbers. Our first publication on this topic was way back in 2008. And at that time, there were just a few small companies that were playing around in this space. But since then, I would say it's followed what might be an exponential curve, you know, the exponential curve is flat in the beginning, but then it gets much steeper. I think it started to take off in around 2013-2014. There was a big boost from a United Nations event in 2015. Now, we're seeing dozens of companies with programs and those programs are growing into dozens of people involved in those programs. And these are all very prominent companies, companies whose names people would recognize. I think we're on the steep upward trend right now. And I think that's a very good thing.
Shukla
Yeah, Rob, the progression and excitement and results that we're seeing around neurodiversity is clearly on that exponential path. And, you know, I'll briefly mention a bit on the Neuro-Diverse Centers of Excellence that I founded about seven years ago. And it's been interesting, we talk about this intersection of talent, technology and transformation. And it's really the need around transformation, creation of an agile and resilient workforce that really prompted us at EY to create a center of excellence model that funnily enough taps into all the beauty Angelina began to describe around equity, inclusion, belonging, and what happens when you unlock the power of human potential? Well, you innovate if you transform, and you harness the power of emerging technology and data. And so Rob, as you have described, our own journey at EY has been exponential as we continue to see that grow. It's been exciting to work with our friends at ServiceNow. And with the backdrop of today's race for talent, especially in technology, and transformation, I'm really excited to talk about the different ways that we're seeing purpose-driven organizations proactively experiment with different teaming models. It's no longer a nice to do when I have time, it's a have to do, and the last two years have exacerbated the need for agility and resiliency. EY and ServiceNow have recently initiated a model that trains and deploys neurodivergent personnel into technical delivery for ServiceNow's customer outcomes team, which Rick mentioned before. So Rick, while we're in the early stages of this, and as a senior business leader, Rick, can I ask you to tell us what ServiceNow's professional services team does that you lead and what you're seeing as the opportunity to create value for your customers?
Wright
Sure, thanks, Hiren. ServiceNow is a rapidly growing enterprise software company where we're growing at 30 plus percent per year. And customer outcomes, the team I lead, is really focused on helping our customers extract value from their investment in their ServiceNow platform as quickly as possible. While we do have some IP and we have automation to help us on this value journey, as you would expect, we're primarily a human-driven business. And recently right due to the rapid growth of ServiceNow in our race for talent or, you know, this great resignation environment that we find ourselves living in, we've had to completely rethink our end-to-end talent acquisition strategy. We used to hire very experienced people. You know, people with 5-10 years experience, but the volume of talent in that space is quickly being diminished for a whole variety of reasons. So we've had to rethink who we look at from a talent pool perspective, whether it's early in career hires, whether it's our next gen program, where we look at veterans and others. And recently, we've really started to look at neurodiverse talent, and how they can play an active role in really helping our customers get to value quickly. But it's been interesting. It's not just our talent sourcing processes that we've looked at, as you mentioned, looking at partnerships, like the one we established with EY to really accelerate our path into various talent pools, in that case, neurodiversity. But it just doesn't stop there as well, right? We've had to rethink how do we drive our interview process? How do we drive our enablement processes, when we have this collection of very diverse, whether it's neurodiverse, gender diverse, experience diversity, and build those teams as quickly as possible? So it's been a challenge, but it's been an exciting part of the journey.
Shukla
Rick, thank you for that. As I'm listening to you, we always ground ourselves, you know, as your focus is in value creation, right? How are we going to drive the greatest value on Angelina? If I can bridge to you, this whole concept around organizations today are duty-bound to create value not just for shareholders, but for stakeholders. And we think about the relationships with customers, communities, employees, even supply chain partners. Angelina when you think about ServiceNow as investment in the ESG, agenda, environmental, social and governance agenda, especially that S, the social pillar. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing and where companies maybe have struggled historically, around this opportunity for value creation?
Herrera
No, absolutely. We're very proud of our ESG journey, and at ServiceNow we have made fantastic progress. And it's not slowing down. Let me just talk about some examples. Last year, we concluded by gaining approval of our science-based targets which really exceeded our internal stretch diversity representation goals. We've accelerated our employee volunteer programs and corporate gifts. And let me just highlight some examples from the social pillar. We've doubled our grants from previous years, which includes two $1 million donations to Benedict College, which is an HBCU to the UC system in California, respectfully. We've launched several new employee volunteer initiatives that include dollars for doers skills-based volunteering, which would apply to what we are talking about today. Earth Day celebrations in our month of service in October. We are especially proud, I'm going to say the word proud several times because we've had some great success, which is we've logged in over 20,000 hours volunteered by employees, supporting over 450 organizations, which is an increase of 95% and 150% respectfully. And there's a lot more focus on ESG solutions, including the reporting that we're providing, management workflow, which combines the power of ServiceNow's platform, to companies' workflow, a better world. And then not lastly, because there's so many more, but that I'll call out today is that we've answered the call of social unrest by creating over $100 million in racial equity fund to help the underserved communities and it's fully funded in December. So what's ahead of us this year, we're going to focus on driving our path to increasing that investment for our people in the talent development programs. We've established the new diversity, equity and inclusion strategy throughout our organization and it's going to be launched broadly in a few weeks. But we are also accelerating the employee and community engagement programs such as next gen, which was referred to earlier, traditional in kind and skill-based volunteering, through several programs that we have. And we're going to continue to maintain that leadership position in our security and data privacy efforts. So a lot of focus on ESG, a lot of focus on the S pillar and more to come. This rocket ship is not slowing down.
Shukla
Wow. Something to be very proud of. And what I keep hearing as I listened to you, is the power of an organization to create multi-dimensional value. And when you channel that, and you focus it and you measure it, this not only how you create value, but you really can bridge this to this need for organizations and business leaders to drive transformation, so we've now connected these two anchors, value creation and transformation, at the intersection of talent and technology. And this is where we're seeing an amazing channel and an opportunity when organizations are reframing how they think about talent. And in this case, it's neurodivergent talent. But clearly as it extends and expands, we think about this amazing opportunity for brand, for relationships, for employee engagement, and how all of that converts into how you service your customers and your clients. So Rick, let me come to you for a moment because I'm excited to bridge off of something that you really focus on, which is transformation. And the close collaboration with ecosystem partners, you briefly mentioned that before. And you're focused on helping your customers drive value from their investment in ServiceNow, and ServiceNow platforms. As one of EY's partners in leveraging our neurodiverse team on ServiceNow projects, we're early in the stage here, any early thoughts or ideas on this program? And maybe where you'd love to see some of that go?
Wright
You know, it's interesting. I've been in the enterprise software world for more than a few years. And a long time ago, CIOs used to ask and be really concerned, was this digital transformation program going to work? It wasn't even called digital transformation back then, you know, then we moved into a world where people were very focused on cost, and that drove a whole bunch of offshore build-ups of resources and talent in the consulting world. Yet every conversation I've had with a C-suite member in the last probably 12 months at this point, they don't want to talk about cost as their number one driver, they want to talk about time to value. They are so focused in this new world of how do I drive digital transformation across my enterprise? How do I do it quickly? How do I do it in a very risk-averse way. And that has kind of required us to think differently about how we show up, right? Gone are the days where we show up with a kind of a busload of consultants, and you just, you know, work long hours, you get things driven, it's got to be out of the box innovative thinking. How do we take a program that is typically three months to deliver and move it down to one month? That takes out of the box thinking, it takes creativity, it takes diversity of thought in how we think about the problem. And I think that's where our partnership, we've already started to see some benefits of as we continue to build diversity of thought across our teams. We are already seeing some very interesting collaborations, cross functional collaborations appear, we're starting to see some innovative out of the box thinking in terms of hey, I just, I've always done it this way. Why didn't I think of that before, but it takes someone new to the environment with very different perspective and thought process to drive it. Whether it's through some of the automated testing we're doing, the approach to driving kind of out of the box digital transformation, leveraging our platform, none of that could have happened if we hadn't continued down this path of building a very diverse workforce across everything we do.
Shukla
Wow, Rick, it's so great to hear from you, as a business leader in your focus in your team on servicing clients, on where you see this amazing value of diversity, inclusion and thinking differently. And, Rob, I'd love to ask you a question just feeding off of this, as you've been listening to Angelina and Rick and particularly ServiceNow's own journey, their focus, their success, a lot to be proud of. Rob, you have a really broad perspective here. And we think about these major themes: transformation, value creation, ESG. Rob, you and I have spoken about this quite a bit. Rob, I'm curious, any thoughts or reactions, if we were to think about what Angelina and Rick have said, in a broader perspective and what you're seeing in the world?
Austin
Sure. So there's a couple of thoughts that I might offer. One is that we clearly see, I think, with these programs that they're sort of a win, win, win. Alright, so we've been hearing a lot in this conversation about some of the advantages for companies, but there's also clearly and this is part, you know, to go to the ESG point, these programs are making people's lives better, right. I mean, one of the fundamental things that human beings feel that they get value out of in their lives is being meaningfully employed. And this is a group of people who haven't always had a good opportunity to be meaningful employed. I say a good opportunity because sometimes they've been employed, but they've been significantly underemployed. I also think it's a win for a societal level, right. At a societal level, what we have here is a story about people who, you know, might have, of course, mistakenly been previously considered unemployable becoming employed. And instead of, you know, drawing funds from the societal coffers, they are instead becoming tech company workers who are taxpayers and the, you know, the per person per year benefits of that to a society are considerable. To pick up on something that Rick said, you know, this innovation economy idea, increasingly companies compete based on innovation and historically, what companies have been really good at is something more along the lines of efficiency, right? We know a whole lot about how to manage factories and to produce consistent results. I worked for a manufacturing firm, many years ago, and when the plant when a product rolled off the assembly line and it surprised us, that was not a good thing, right? That was called a quality problem. But in the world of innovation, we need to do something really different, right? If it doesn't surprise us in some way, then that's not a good thing. And so one of the things these programs are bringing us to realize is it different ways of thinking, or the route to innovation. I heard someone once say, it's not the things that we all share, that allow us to innovate. It's the unique things that we bring to the table, the things that we do not share. Those are the sources of innovation. And if companies are going to need to innovate, they're going to have to bring different kinds of things and different ways of thinking to the table.
Shukla
Yeah, that perspective is so powerful and one of the things that jumps out to me is the application and definition of the word transformation. Clearly, we've thought about this. Rick, you mentioned digital transformation. We know we've heard strategic workforce transformation, Angelina, you've touched on somewhat what Rob was saying, which is community and societal transformation. And we think organizations and business leaders have the ability to do this. It really gives a deep sense of purpose and meaning to what individuals do. And we think about the things that are competing for our time and attention today. What energizes us, what gets us up in the morning. And when you combine and wrap these pieces together, transformation becomes very meaningful at the individual level. And Rob that really jumped out was you are talking about this power to allow individuals, business leaders employees to say, wow, you create this space to think differently, you're actually activating and unlocking innovation, power and capacity in your organization. Let's start to wrap up. And I'm going to ask each of you to almost flip the script. We've been talking about individuals who inherently think differently, the neurodivergent, or neurodistinct community. I'm going to flip and ask you all to share a way that you think that organizations and business leaders can think differently in order to create value. And again, this comes at the intersection of technology, talent and transformation. Angelina, can I ask you to start off for us?
Herrera
Absolutely. You know, across our organization, here's what I'm finding really encouraging, is our leaders are asking important questions to ensure DNI is embedded in our work and the way we get work done, which automatically unlocks transformative thinking, that's just how it goes. And just as important, leaders are listening to the answers, we're acting on them. So recognizing that DEI excellence is not a corporate initiative, but a moral imperative. I think we've said that throughout the discussion today. Employers should have equitable processes, policies, practices across the whole employee lifecycle from onboarding to development to advancement. And what I'm very excited about is learning from the overwhelming success that EY has experienced with the neurodivergent employees who are highly creative, you know, technologically inclined and detailed oriented, it just opens up and widens the talent pool for us. And we've seen this through our partnership that during neurodiversion, individuals have helped meet the needs of EY in the changing demands for jobs and has led to additional paths of innovation and again, widening the talent pool. So we're excited for what's ahead of us and to continue our partnership to, you know, tap into those new sources of talent. And as we all know, diverse teams and broad perspective generate better results for all of us.
Shukla
Wow, what an amazing opportunity that's there, and the imperative word really jumps out to me. Rick, as I think about your focus, and again, the pressures, the imperative that you see from the market. What would you add to this on how organizations and business can think differently to create value?
Wright
Yeah, definitely a plus one to Angelina's comments. The thing I would add to that would be, what we have found within ServiceNow customer outcomes team is, it is almost impossible to drive true innovation without a diverse talent pool and diversity across many, many aspects. It has been a night and day difference in the last few years, as we have put our number one focus on driving diversity across our organization globally. And just to add on top of that, the partnership we have with EY around neurodiversity, which was new for us, right? We've had lots of initiatives around whether it's early in career, social, economical, racial, there's a whole bunch of things we've been focused on, this is new for us. And just in the short amount of time we've been working together, we've seen visible indications that we're going to take it to the next level, right? It's just, it's amazing to me that we didn't think of this, you know, 30-40 years ago, that as you get this diverse group of people in a room or in a virtual room these days, collaborating and thinking through how to solve problems in today's digital world, it's a no brainer, that this is the right path forward.
Shukla
Yeah, it really strikes me in that we've not actually brought in talent that doesn't exist. It's literally under our noses in our communities. But we've adapted as organizations and business leaders, that it's now creating these, these channels and these new opportunities. And, Rob, I'd love to give you the last word as you're listening to all this. And we really want to equip our listeners today, to say, your need, the imperative using Angelina's words, to think differently, is absolutely necessary more than ever today. Rob, what do you think about all this?
Austin
So Hiren, you asked about flipping the script? And so I'll be a little provocative. I do think that what we've been talking about is absolutely true? This is a great way to access great talent. But I'm also going to suggest, our research suggests, that these programs, as they're operating in companies are actually building new and important competitive capabilities. It's something that we didn't necessarily go into this for the purpose of, but it's happening, right, there are these what we call spillover benefits. One of the findings that we find in our research is that when we solve a problem within these kinds of neurodiversity employment programs, we also create benefits for employees at large, right, as we learn how to manage this kind of talent, we learn how to manage people and talent better in general. So there's a lot of spillover benefits. I would say one of the most common things we hear in our interviews with managers is that working with a program like this has made me a better manager. And the apparent mechanism is, you know, in a program like this, what you're thinking about is how do I put people in conditions that can maximize their ability to contribute? And, you know, it just turns out that thinking that way for all of your employees is not such a bad idea. I mean, you can imagine increasing the effectiveness of your employees across the board by a certain percentage and what that could yield. So I guess I would just close by saying, I think these programs are actually teaching us something about the new direction in which management is evolving. I mean, we've talked about the pandemic, flexible work practices, the great resignation, a lot of things are moving, a lot of balls are in the air, about the future of work, automation, AI and all that. But I think these programs are teaching companies about what the future of management looks like. I'll just close with a quotation that I pulled out of an article and it said, you know, we're accustomed to thinking about human resources. And even the phrase is kind of weird, right? Human resources, sound like there's valuable human stuff that we just happen to keep in receptacles called people, that's kind of like calling the contents of an art museum paint resources. And so we need to shift the mindset. And I think these companies are helping.
Shukla
Such great perspective and insight, which I hope that one thing that you said in there that just leapt out was the competitive advantage. And I think, wow, what is that opportunity today? And how do others take advantage of this in a collaborative environment? And so, I want to really thank Angelina, Rick and Rob, our thought leaders who shared some really exciting insight today. It's clear, corporate views of neurodiversity are shifting dramatically, especially when you get to that intersection of talent, technology, and transformation.
Wright
Thanks, Hiren, and my fellow guests. It's been an awesome conversation.
Herrera
Thank you, Professor Austin. Thank you, Rick, and thank you Hiren for leading this very important conversation.
Austin
Thanks for having me. It's been a very interesting conversation. And I think I'll just sort of offer kudos to those of you who are out there on the frontlines making this happen.
Shukla
Last but not least, a quick note from our attorneys. The views of third party set out in this podcast are not necessarily the views of the global EY organization nor its member firms. Moreover, they should be seen in the context of the time in which they're made. I'm Hiren Shukla, leader of EY's global and America's neurodiverse center of excellence. I hope you'll join us again for the next edition of the EY Think Ecosystem podcast
