Help for your organisation to retain women, who are often highly skilled and experienced, by accommodating and supporting colleagues and employees navigate the workplace when going through the peri/menopause transition.
Neurodiversity Celebration week
by Caroline Lewis
This week is Neurodiversity Celebration week. There are several sessions over the next few days that cover neurodiversity in the workplace, which is finally receiving the attention it deserves. These sessions are timely because at Saltworks, we’ve seen an increasing number of cases referred to us that we believe have a “neurodiversity angle” – that is, employees seeking legal advice for discrimination or unfair dismissal because of an employer’s mismanagement of their neurodivergence.
Many of the cases I deal with involve cases of neurodiverse employees (diagnosed with ADHD or autism) who have often thrived in their workplace until they come up against a particular manager, supervisor or even co-worker that decides that they do not fit. These individuals then try, either through bullying and exclusion, or under the false premise of redundancy or performance, to force them out.
Of course, this makes someone who may already feel marginalized, feel ever more isolated and misunderstood. Some cases I have dealt with involve individuals whose mental and physical health has so deteriorated so much that they are a shell of their former selves and unable to work or function. Employers can easily avoid this situation if they genuinely embrace diversity through actions and company ethos. Welcoming different types of thinking unleashes individual and collective potential in the workplace and different minds and backgrounds in a room help ensure your team is more creative and innovative.
Yet many employers in my experience, do not see this potential but view neurodiverse individuals as odd, not team players, difficult, or inflexible and ultimately, a burden. Which is why it is even more concerning that some UK employers on Friday announced that they are following America’s lead in pulling back from DEI policies. According to the Guardian:
“The City’s top two regulators have said they will not bring in new diversity and inclusion rules for financial firms because they want to avoid imposing extra “regulatory burdens” and costs, in the latest sign of a retreat from efforts to help underrepresented groups. The Bank of England’s regulatory arm, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said they would instead support ‘voluntary industry initiatives’ aimed at boosting diversity and inclusion in the financial sector”.
This follows Glaxo Smith Kline Smith, the British pharma company pausing diversity activities for UK workers, claiming that it is obliged to do so in response to executive orders by the US president, Donald Trump. The FTSE 100 company has also scrubbed references to diversity from its website.
If you or your organisation would like us to deliver an informal lunchtime talk on how to manage neurodiversity in the workplace and create a safer working environment for everyone, please contact Rumana or myself at: r.bennett@saltworkslaw.co.uk or c.lewis@saltworkslaw.co.uk.
