Supporting Neurodiverse Employees at Work: Katie's 3-Part 'Coach Approach' Toolkit & Open AMA Panel

🗒 Summary

We brought together a panel of People leaders, founders, and specialists - all with lived experience of neurodivergence - to tackle one of the topics that keeps coming up in conversations with people teams: how do we actually support neurodivergent employees well, not just in policy, but in practice? Katie shared a practical 3-part toolkit, and the panel opened up on what's working, what isn't, and what managers need to do differently.

📡 What You Need to Know First

👉 15-20% of the population is thought to be neurodivergent - and most feel unsupported Only 34% of neurodivergent employees feel supported at work. Only 40% of managers feel confident supporting them. Those two numbers together explain why this keeps coming up.

👉 Neurodiversity is much broader than ADHD and autism Those tend to dominate the conversation, but the umbrella covers dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and more. Every person has a different profile. If you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD.

👉 The spiky profile matters for performance conversations Neurodivergent people tend to have significant highs and lows across cognitive abilities - not a consistent line. This means someone might perform brilliantly on one task and struggle with the same task another day. That variability is not unreliability. It's the brain responding to task, environment, and individual factors.

👉 Late diagnosis is the norm - and it changes everything Most people currently in the workforce were diagnosed late, if at all. By age 12, children with ADHD have received approximately 20,000 more negative or corrective messages than their neurotypical peers. The person in front of you has likely spent years wondering what's wrong with them. That context matters in every conversation.

👉 People often don't know what they need - and that's not awkward, it's expected Years of masking mean many neurodivergent employees haven't yet separated what is ADHD from what is personality. They're figuring it out in real time. Give them grace, time, and a safe place to do that.

⚡ Katie's 3-Part Toolkit

Part 1: Start with Strengths

Neurodivergent brains have real cognitive strengths alongside their challenges. The goal is to surface those strengths and use them as tools.

• Use the free VIA Character Strengths Survey to give people a starting point - so they're not working from a blank page
• Build a strengths bank through one-to-ones, reviews, and onboarding
• Turn strengths into strategies: how will you use your creative brain to tackle getting started on a task?
• Make space for people to use those strengths as much as possible - restricting them tanks productivity and confidence

This matters especially given that stat: by age 12, children with ADHD have received around 20,000 more negative messages than their neurotypical peers. Surfacing and naming strengths actively counters that history.

Part 2: The TIE Model - Task, Individual, Environment

Performance variability in neurodivergent employees isn't random. It's shaped by three factors:

• Task - (The work). What made it hard(er)? Was the brief clear? Was it the first time they'd done it?
• Individual - (The person). How's their sleep? Their stress levels? What story are they telling themselves about the work?
• Environment - (The setting). What are the noise levels like? Do they feel psychologically safe? Is there clarity about urgency?

Use these as coaching questions in a one-to-one when something has gone wrong. Then co-create the fix.

Example: Abby keeps missing deadlines.

What the TIE model reveals:

• Task: brief was vague, multi-step, deadline set without checking her workload, first time doing it
• Individual: carrying stress outside work, privately telling herself she's lazy
• Environment: open-plan desk, constant noise, no quiet space, unclear whether it was urgent

The fix:

• A written brief with a realistic deadline
• Quick daily check-ins with her manager
• Option to wear noise-cancelling headphones at her desk

Not lowering the bar. Changing the setup.

Part 3: Clear, Clean Communication - The What, When, Why Framework

Vague briefs cost neurodivergent employees disproportionate cognitive load just to decode. Use this framework when setting any brief:

• What - exactly do you need? Be as specific as possible
• When - exactly do you need it? A real deadline, not "sometime this week"
• Why - what's the purpose? What's this for?

Give this to managers to check their briefs against. Also give it to individuals so they can ask for what they need. Both directions matter.

Before: "Please can you read through this document and we'll touch base to catch up on your thoughts."

After: "Please read this document and annotate it with any edits you'd suggest, then email me your notes by 5pm today. Please prioritise it over other work but still attend your existing meetings. It's going to a client tomorrow morning and we need your input before it goes."

✅ What You Should Do: A Practical Step Plan

1. Build psychological safety before anything else People won't tell you what they need if they don't feel safe doing so. Before any tool or policy, ask: can someone come to their manager and be honest about what's going on for them without fear? If the answer isn't clearly yes, that's where to start.

2. Use the VIA strengths survey in onboarding and one-to-ones Don't wait for a performance conversation to start exploring strengths. Bake it in early. Give people a language for what they're good at, and then build that into how you manage them day to day.

3. Replace vague briefs with What, When, Why Train managers on this framework and make it standard. It costs nothing and helps everyone - not just neurodivergent employees. Clear deadlines, specific asks, and stated purpose remove cognitive load across the board.

4. Apply the TIE model when things go wrong Before jumping to conclusions about an employee's performance, run through Task, Individual, Environment. Get curious. Ask the questions. You'll almost always find a practical fix that doesn't require lowering expectations - just changing the setup.

5. Make environmental accommodations available to everyone Noise-cancelling headphones, Loop earplugs, quiet spaces, flexible hours - don't make these things people have to ask for. Where you can, make them part of your starter kit. That removes the othering, makes your managers' lives easier, and signals your culture before anyone even joins.

6. Share examples of adjustments at the hiring and onboarding stage Go beyond the bog-standard reasonable adjustments statement. Give candidates examples of what adjustments have actually looked like at your company. And share interview questions in advance - it's an equity builder that levels the playing field for everyone.

7. Separate the adjustment from the standard Adjustments change how someone gets work done - not what counts as done. The expectation stays the same. The route there can flex. Noise-cancelling headphones, written briefs, daily check-ins - none of these lower the bar. They remove the obstacles between a person and their best work.

8. Don't suggest a diagnosis - address the behaviour If you think someone might be neurodivergent but they haven't disclosed, focus on the specific situation and outcomes rather than labels. What's happening with this task, in this environment, for this person? That approach helps regardless of diagnosis - and doesn't risk doing harm.

9. Role model it from the top Senior leaders talking openly about their own neurodivergence - or about how they've adapted how they work - is one of the most powerful things an organisation can do. It makes every conversation that follows easier. If managers are reluctant to talk about this, explore why. That reluctance has a ripple effect.

💬 Q&A Highlights

What do you do when someone tells you they have ADHD but doesn't know what support they need? (Kru, Katie, Clément) This is the most common scenario - not the exception. Someone who has recently been diagnosed, or who has spent years masking, won't immediately know what they need. Give them time and a safe space to figure it out. Use the VIA survey and the TIE model as practical starting points to explore together. Ask curious questions about specific tasks and situations rather than asking broadly what they need. That's a more answerable question.

How do you support employees who need a quieter environment in an open-plan office? (Katie, Ro, Kru) Start with what you have. Noise-cancelling headphones and Loop earplugs are low-cost, widely available, and don't require anyone to declare a need. Better still, make them part of your standard starter kit so nobody has to ask. For organisations that haven't allowed headphones - challenge that. And if a manager has ever made someone feel uncomfortable for wearing them, that's a coaching conversation worth having.

Should managers lower expectations for neurodivergent employees? (Katie, Clément, Ro) No. The expectations stay the same. What changes is the setup. Adjustments are about how someone gets to the result - not what the result is. When someone uses neurodivergence as a reason not to deliver, use the TIE model to explore what's actually getting in the way and co-create a solution. That's the right response, not lowering the bar.

How do you handle it if an employee seems neurodivergent but hasn't disclosed? (Clément, Kru) Don't try to diagnose or suggest a label. Focus on specific behaviours and outcomes in specific contexts. The coaching tools - clear briefs, strengths work, TIE conversations - work for everyone. Build the conditions where people feel safe disclosing, and let them come to you in their own time.

How do you support colleagues who are scared to say the wrong thing to neurodivergent colleagues? (Ro) Education and senior role modelling are the two biggest levers. When organisations have a clear position on how they talk about and support neurodivergence - and when leaders talk openly about their own experience - it makes every other conversation easier. Also worth exploring with any manager who is actively avoiding this: is that reluctance about fear of saying the wrong thing, or something else? Don't let that reluctance become the neurodivergent employee's problem to manage.

How do spiky cognitive profiles affect performance reviews? (Katie) Use strengths work to paint the full picture before going near the challenges. Reviews that only focus on development areas miss the real context. For neurodivergent employees especially, make sure strengths are documented and visible - then use those to frame conversations about where things are harder. The goal is a complete picture, not just a list of gaps.

How do you support a manager who is themselves neurodivergent? (Katie, Kru) The same principles apply - but with more touchpoints. Managers communicate upwards, sideways, and downwards, so it's worth going a step further: have the whole team create a "how I work best" document, not just the manager. That normalises it, creates psychological safety, and means no one is singled out for doing it.