There is a risk that organisations’ OHS management systems could potentially fail neurodiverse workers because of the different ways they perceive and respond to risk, according to an expert in the area.
“The most common challenges employers experience is with providing neurodivergent workers with reasonable adjustments, when they’re not sure whether what they’re putting in place will really help the worker,” said Catherine Lee, founder and owner of The Neurodiverse Safe Work Initiative.
She also observed that it is common for employers to identify a worker who is having some performance/compliance issues, and begin addressing this through their normal performance management process – only to then have the worker disclose they are neurodivergent.
“Often the well-intentioned employer will ask the worker to provide a letter from their treating medical practitioner, or a medical certificate to confirm the worker’s need for adjustments is required on genuine disability grounds, and to confirm what the worker has asked for is what the doctor recommends,” said Lee, who was speaking ahead of the AIHS Queensland Regional Visions Conference, which will be held at the Novotel Sunshine Coast Resort on Thursday 5 September 2024.
“The problem with this is that most neurodivergent adults have never been formally diagnosed either because they see no need to be diagnosed, or because diagnosis as an adult is inaccessible to them due to the cost and long wait times.”
Lee also highlighted potential shortcomings with organisational OHS management systems.
“If roughly 10 per cent of every workforce thinks, functions, learns, communicates, experiences the physical environment, regulates attention and emotion and perceives and responds to risk differently from the neurotypical workforce, then the OHS management system (which is usually designed with the assumption that most workers think and function in roughly the same way), will lead to the employer potentially failing to discharge their primary duty of care to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of all workers – because the OHS management only provides for 90 per cent of the workforce,” she said.
“A neurodivergent worker whose ability to function deteriorates as a result of work-related factors may be successful in claiming both statutory workers’ compensation and common law damages. There is case law that established the deterioration of a person’s neurodivergence (in this case, autism) to be a “personal injury” under the relevant Workers’ Compensation Act.
In terms of how well most organisations fare when it comes to neurodiversity at work, Lee said: “It’s a bit of a mixed bag” and observed there are employers that have some great initiatives in place to support neurodivergent workers, such as Telstra and the Australian Public Service Commission.
“There are others who are just starting to put some systems in place, and there are others who don’t see the need because they don’t think they have any neurodivergent workers,” said Lee.
“The reality is that 1 in 5 people are neurodivergent and 65 per cent of these are of working age.
So, it can be conservatively estimated that about 10 per cent of every workforce has one or more specialist thinking skills and employers already have a neurodiverse workforce, whether they know it or not.
“In my experience, employers generally view neurodivergence through a disability lens, and when a worker discloses that they are Autistic, or have ADHD or Dyslexia or any of the other profiles and combinations, they know they are required under the Disability Discrimination Act to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the worker. Sometimes this goes well. Sometimes not.”
For organisations that are actively looking to better manage neurodiversity at work, Lee said it is more effective to view neurodivergence through an OHS lens as well as through the Disability Discrimination Act and diversity, equity and inclusion lenses.
She also advised organisations to ‘forget the labels”, as an ADHD or autism label can lead to decisions made based on unconscious bias, misinformation and flawed assumptions.
“We can’t assume that all ADHD or autistic people need the same things and sometimes a neurodivergent person doesn’t know what they need; or what they need this week may be different from what they needed last month,” she said.
“Neurodivergence is complex and different in everyone and it is not static. So, forget the labels and focus on the individual and their functioning; identify their key strengths and challenges and work out a plan that it unique for them.”
Instead, she recommended focusing on designing business management systems (such as HR and OHS) so that they are as flexible and accommodating – so that fewer neurodivergent workers (or others with hidden disabilities) are “disabled” by them.
“Consult with a diverse group of workers for both the design and implementation of your systems and especially in the risk management process. What is not perceived as a hazard for one worker, may be a hazard for another,” she said.