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The Success Spectrum: Neurodiversity In The Workplace

ServiceNow

Neurodivergent employees are a largely untapped talent base. Here’s how to recruit and welcome them into your company.

Nicola Whiting is an experienced technology executive with a long history in cybersecurity. Over the past decade, she’s helped the UK cybersecurity firm Titania evolve from a startup into an award-winning success story.

She’s also a neurodiversity advocate.

A neurodivergent woman in tech, Whiting has written numerous pieces and given myriad talks on neurodiversity in the workplace. In an interview with ServiceNow, she shared her perspective on hiring and retaining neurodivergent talent, the power of neurodiversity in cybersecurity, and what neurotypical people often get wrong in their efforts diversify the workplace.

How did you get started in cybersecurity?

I’m a natural researcher and a reflective thinker who came from a poorer socioeconomic background: six of us in a three bedroom house. Because of that, I always wanted to be the best version of me possible. I think that’s why I’ve ended up with such a broad range of careers. 

At one stage, I was an award-winning jewelry designer who owned multiple jewelry stores and served as the chair of a jewelry guild. At another stage, I collaborated with a group of women on a book called Extraordinary Women, which became an Amazon bestseller. Around the same time, my ex-husband and I separated, and I quit the jewelry business.

I came back to my hometown, where a friend introduced me to Ian, Titania’s founder. He’s very much an innovator, whereas I’m a natural researcher and strategist. I joined the company, became the “Roy Disney” to his “Walt” and we later married. The company let me focus on my passions, one of which is inclusion. This led to an invitation that changed my life. 

I was asked to speak at a NeuroCyber event, centered around increasing neurodiversity in the cyber security industry and creating inclusive hiring practices. They had a host of neurodivergent speakers, many of whom were Autistic*. Those speakers discussed the sensory  and emotional impact of things like perfume, light, and sounds within the workplace. They talked about managing energy levels and how they managed change differently. Everything they said resonated with me hugely—and I realized I felt many of the same things! 

I started investigating and came to understand myself as Autistic, first through self-diagnosis and later through a formal diagnosis.

How do you define neurodiversity?

Think about the infinite variety of the human species. Within that variety, there are some traits that end up being more common. Those would be neurotypical people. Then there are people who diverge from that typicality, and those people are neurodivergent. Our common ancestors may have travelled the same path, but at some point there was a branch in the road. 

The problem, however, is that although the two paths have diverged, only one is maintained, while the other is allowed to fall into disrepair. The neurodiversity movement is really all about making it so that both paths are maintained.

Can you talk about how employing a neurodiverse workforce can help us build better products and create other positive outcomes?

I think it’s easier to explain this concept in terms of what happens when you don’t have diverse voices at the table. You tend to miss things that otherwise would have been spotted. For example, if you are in a wheelchair, you will spot if a building design doesn't have ramps in it.

If you have a heart condition, you will notice if no one has placed defibrillators within reach. If you create a hiring AI, then use data with bias towards male candidates, you are in danger of building in discrimination by design. That’s a challenge as the AI field is still a long way away from equitable gender representation and that has huge societal implications.

The cost of getting it wrong, of not diversifying our seats at the table, is highly visible. If you get it right, you end up with companies that are more effective and more successful. Diverse boards, for instance, bring in more revenue and lead to strong business outcomes.

Cybersecurity can be a very rigid, rules-based environment. At the same time, the holy grail is figuring out how to think like an attacker. How might recruiting neurodivergent talent get us closer to that goal?

Let’s start by thinking about who these attackers are. Attackers are not simply white men. Like the rest of us, they are different genders, different ethnicities, they have different thought processes, backgrounds, and approaches. Surely, if we want to think like them, then our defenders must also have an infinite variety of thought processes and experiences. If not, we are very likely to miss the cybersecurity equivalent of the wheelchair ramp.

One of the legacies of the pandemic is that many companies will not return to a traditional office environment. As businesses explore virtual and hybrid options and build an inclusive workspace for remote work, what steps can they take to make neurodivergent employees feel more welcome?

  This question is interesting because it begins from the premise that our business leaders have already decided what the workplace will look like post-pandemic. However, if the organization truly wants to maximize the effectiveness of their workforce, then they should include their workforce in this decision-making process. Let’s not make the same mistakes we did when we first started planning our offices. 

Open offices, for instance, are extremely common, but in most cases, they don’t lead to increased happiness or productivity. If we had perhaps asked our employees whether they would prefer an open office, we might have ended up with a workplace that looked different: one that better suits everybody.

It’s really all about using the principle “nothing about us without us.” If you want to build a more inclusive workplace, then you should start by including us in conversations that impact us. 

You’ve talked about the challenges of recruiting neurodivergent talent. Rather than targeted recruitment drives, you recommend making job descriptions more inclusive. Can you talk about what we can do to create more inclusive job descriptions—and, more broadly, an inclusive environment?

Most Autistic people I’ve spoken to—and there are numerous studies to support this—say that if they look at a job description and see they don't meet all of the criteria, they will not apply. The same holds for most women. To create more inclusive job descriptions, we can start by boiling them down to only the most essential elements of the job. That will level the playing field by empowering people to apply who normally would not have done so. 

Importantly, we should also move away from the standard legalese of diversity and inclusion policies that usually accompany job descriptions. Instead, talk with your neurodivergent employees—and women, and people of color—and work with them to build a welcome mat to accompany job descriptions. 

That welcome mat should explicitly say something like “we welcome neurodivergent applications, and here are the things we have done to create an environment in which they can thrive.”Job descriptions are simply the tip of the iceberg, and if you do not have the right culture behind your job description, you may succeed in increasing diversity but your new hires could quickly become demotivated. Cultures where employees feel consulted, supported and valued, creates high performing teams—that’s the core of good diversity practice and the core of good business.

What is something you wish people knew about their neurodivergent teammates?

There’s a growing momentum of self-advocacy in neurodivergent communities—it’s in response to being unheard for so long. For example, for decades the autism community has spoken over the Autistic community. Everything about Autistic lives—our narratives, our charities, our language—has been controlled by non-autistic speakers and organizations. One of the ramifications of this legacy is that the language non-autistic people have created for us is often framed around deficit. That has led to widespread imposter syndrome, stress, and low self-worth among many of our community members.

So one of the things I’d love people to do is to listen to Autistic and other neurodivergent communities and change their framing. Our allies, including parents, relatives, medical practitioners, and employers aren’t taking our platform—they’re making our platform, they’re actively, listening and they’re changing their language and practices. 

Currently, the emphasis is on equality, not equity. To illustrate that further, let’s say you had two children, a daughter who could walk and a son who was in a wheelchair. Your two children are at the bottom of the stairs. Telling both of your children that you’ll meet them halfway up the stairs is equality. Equity is meeting your daughter halfway up the stairs and going to the bottom for your son.

To that end, listen to Autistic self-advocacy networks. Read work by Autistic people. Invite Autistic people to your panels and talks. Do some homework instead of expecting everyone to climb the stairs and meet you in the middle.

*Though some prefer person first language “people with autism,” the majority of Autistic self-advocates and Whiting herself claim Autism as an inherent identity. So we refer to her as Autistic (capitalized, as we now capitalize Black and others groups with a shared cultural identity) and discuss the Autistic community throughout the interview.