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From Academia to Industry: C-Suite Perspectives on Neurodiversity in the Workplace Lisa J. Knowles, St. Thomas University Jason K. Styles, University of The Bahamas
From Academia to Industry: C-Suite Perspectives on Neurodiversity in the Workplace
Lisa J. Knowles St. Thomas University
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Jason K. Styles University of The Bahamas
Abstract
After completing qualitative academic research seeking human resource managers’ perceptions
of workers with learning disabilities in the workplace, the results were presented at a recent
industry conference. Attendees included managers holding various human resource positions, as
well as vice presidents and top decision-makers from many of the top banking, industry,
government, and tourist organizations in the Bahamas. After presenting this group with the
findings from our initial research on workers with neurodiversity, the researchers asked attendees
to respond to the same demographic questions as the original research. Then, attendees were
asked to write down what they, as industry professionals, could do to assist those with learning
disabilities in the workplace. The research utilized Boyer’s Model of scholarship’s third element,
that is, the application of research findings shared directly with those in a professional
association. Thus, we had academic research presented to those in industry, who then added to
the existing research by providing their perspectives after attending the academic presentation.
This qualitative inquiry utilized a collaborative social research methodology. The generated
responses were coded and analyzed. NVIVO software further analyzed the results by producing
a word frequency cloud. This research adds to the knowledge of addressing workers in the
workplace that possess a learning disability and human resource management’s (HRM)
responsibility and knowledge to train, educate, and make reasonable accommodations in
accordance with HRM’s diversity requirements.
Keywords: HRM practices, neurodiversity, neurodiverse employees (NDE’s), Bahamas society
human resource management (B-SHRM)
Introduction
Academic research serves educators well by providing new knowledge built upon
previous research. However, when academic research is extended to the greater community, it
seems only reasonable that more people benefit from the knowledge acquired. Bringing
academic research front and center to industry professionals is not always a common practice.
However, when it does occur, as is the case of this paper, the real benefit of research is gleaned
by a wider audience. The essence of this paper reflects a true praxis, as “it is knowledge that is
infused with human organizations and human interest as represented in the situation under
study.” (Evered & Louis, 2001, p. 390).
Embracing workplace diversity capitalizes on the creative and innovative benefits
brought to the work environment; it also represents socially responsible practices that are further
enforced by equal opportunity and non-discriminatory legal obligations. Robbins and Judge
(2018) defined diversity as surface-level and deep-level differences. Surface-level differences
are those that are visibly noticeable, such as age or gender. Deep-level differences embrace areas
such as values and personality. The aspects of neurodiversity fall under the deep-level
differences as described in Robbins’ and Judge’s (2018) dichotomy, since they are not easily
perceivable in the workplace.
Collaborative social research is a qualitative research strategy described by Miles and
Huberman (1994) that is “undertaken in a social setting,” (p. 8). The social setting for this
research is an industry conference presentation of academic research findings. Following the
presentation, conference participants were asked to identify four demographics: position, years in
position, gender, and public or private organization. These attendees were then asked to offer
written responses as to how they could help their workers who may possess neurodiversity.
The intent of this research is to provide additional knowledge for both industry and
academic professionals. Gleaning new knowledge from the conference on a deep-level diversity
topic with little previous dissemination to the industry exemplifies the approach of presenting the
right message to the right individuals. Senior management and HR professionals in attendance
now have new material and knowledge to share with their respective organizations and make a
difference in how they view and develop their workforce moving forward.
Rationale
Capitalizing on worker talent and managing such in today’s workplace environments are
essential for organizations to maintain a competitive advantage. Lawler (2008) defends that
“business strategy is determined by talent considerations, and it in turn drives human capital
management practices,” (p. 9). Styles and Knowles (2019) demonstrated that human resource
managers did, in fact, view learning-disabled workers as being potential leaders, one may now
conclude that developing talent must include neurodiverse workers. Furthermore, “strategic
talent management is the ability to identity key talent and plan for future talent needs,”
(Anderson, 2019, p. 168).
To increase the benefits of academic research, Boyer (1997) furthers the “scholarship”
concept to include a four-level framework. His framework consists of discovery, integration,
application, and teaching (Boyer, 1997). Emphasis on the application level serves this research
well. Boyer (1997) defends the application framework as an “aid to society and professions in
addressing problems,” (University of Phoenix 2016 and Nibert, 2020).
Background
Previous research by Styles and Knowles (2019) identified human resource managers’
perspectives of workers with learning disabilities in The Bahamas. Study results indicate that
human resource professionals are not aware of effectively addressing workers with learning
disabilities (Styles & Knowles, 2019). The overall impact of underutilizing a talented worker, if
not for a neurodiverse factor, inevitably could hinder the full potential of a productive workforce.
Neurodiversity may be subtle and well hidden by an individual. Leadership potential may be
underutilized also, as these workers may carry great leadership potential, but err on the side of
caution in the workplace, due to hiding a learning disability.
Literature Review
Neurodiversity
Neurodiversity emerging phenomena was initially introduced by Harvey Blume (1998) in
an article name the Neurodiversity: On the neurological underpinnings of geekdom. According
to Blume (1998), neurodiversity may be crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in
general. Not to mention, the concept continued to grow through the establishment of support
groups, representing a new addition to the familiar political categories of class/gender/race,
augmenting the insights of the social model of disability (Armstrong, 2010; Baron‐Cohen, 2017).
Another pioneer, Judy Singer, a sociologist in 1999, defined neurodiversity as the
impression of autism and Asperger’s. However, it took on broader labeling as a movement
among individuals who present a natural range of differences in human brain function, and
among employers, becoming the term to describe alternative thinking styles including dyslexia,
autism, ADHD, and dyspraxia as they relate to diversity and inclusion in the workplace
(Armstrong, 2010; Baker, 2011; Banerjee, et al., 2020; Dalton, 2013). Loiacono and Ren (2018)
postulate that organizations must embrace neurodiversity because its’ powerful impetus enables
real diversity of thought and perspective in an organization.
Furthermore, integrating and taking account of neurodiversity enables companies to
succeed in the continuous global market (Brinzea, 2019; Powers, 2019). Significantly, Kapp et
al. (2013) substantiated how neurodiversity promotes subjective well-being and adaptive rather
than typical functioning, such as reliability, but not necessarily spoken communication, and
subjective well-being (p.6). Notwithstanding, organizations need to recognize the individual
differences in their employees as they capitalize on workers’ unique strengths, which is
beneficial for organizations (Styles & Knowles, 2019).
Neuro Diverse Employees (NDE’s)
According to Armstrong (2010), Baker (2011), and Dalton (2013), everyone is, to some
extent, differently-abled, or no two neurodiverse persons are precisely similar. Neurodiverse
employees exist in all organizations and come from all walks of life-impacting organizations
worldwide on the individual, group, and organizational levels (Loiacono & Ren 2018; Visagie,
Linde, & Havenga, 2011). Neurodiverse employees (NDE) are not readily identifiable because,
sometimes, they might be diagnosed later in life or outside the workplace context (Krzeminska et
al.,2019; Powers, 2019).
Moreover, as Styles and Knowles (2019) explicated organizations must not focus on the
negative tone against neurodiverse individuals, as talent may be overlooked. Most compelling
evidence about NDE, Powers (2019) in an article How to Attract and Support Neurodiverse
Talent highlights how cognitive diversity produces better results because these individuals
analyze a problem through a different lens. Additionally, Powers (2019) adds that having people
with different problem-solving abilities, such as NDE, think differently, contribute more and are
critical for organizational success. Providing NDE both economic security and the context in
which they can contribute their talents and skills to society, anchor themselves in a social role
(Krzeminska et al., 2019). This talent type is untapped, and organizations must create stratagems
to foster and integrate NDE’s into the organizational culture without destroying the person
(Loiacono & Ren, 2018; Styles & Knowles, 2019; Trivedi and Trivedi, 2018).
Human Resources Management Accommodations for Neuro Diverse Employees (NDEs)
To increase awareness and utilize NDEs to foster organizational effectiveness, human
resource management (HRM) is the impetus for managing diversity challenges and
opportunities. Austin and Pisano (2017) eruditely recommended that HRM must apply
changeability to the mix when hiring, recruiting, and including people and ideas from “the
edges,” in other words, neurodiverse talent. Because, as Sam and Berry (2010) and Jin et al.
(2017) both excoriate that human resources are globally advancing, driving HRM practices to
acknowledge diversity management and actively promote an inclusive organizational climate for
NDEs. For HRM to succeed in creating an inclusive organizational culture for NDE, companies’
implementation practices need to be agile, innovative, astute, and, in turn, this requires a diverse
workforce with a variety of views and talents.
Expressively, HRM orchestrating a diverse workforce leads to increased adaptability and
flexibility to meet customer demands (Brinzea, 2019; Loiacono & Ren, 2018). Necessary to
realize, for HRM to accommodate NDEs, Rouvalis (2020) mentions much of this depends on if
the NDEs disclose their disability to the employer. Furthermore, the employer only should
accommodate a disability, once aware, based on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
(Rouvalis, 2020). As mentioned earlier, NDEs do not relay having challenges because of the
negative tone against them, so they instead remain private and keep their health conditions
private to refrain from any repercussion (Styles & Knowles, 2019). At the same time, worldwide
companies, including SAP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft, Willis Towers Watson, Ford,
EY, Caterpillar, Dell Technologies, Deloitte, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS are increasing
awareness and accommodating by reforming HRM practices for NDE (Austin & Pisano, 2017).
HRM Accommodations for Neurodiverse Employees (NDEs) in The Bahamas
In regards for HRM accommodating NDEs in the Bahamas, it is not enforced but for
Equal Protection of the Law: The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities) Act, 2014,
Bahamas presence. However, according to Bain (2016), there is a lacuna or gap in the law, which
hinders purposeful rights. In detail, The Bahamas, a developing nation, suffers many
shortcomings that prevent them from attaining higher levels of performance and productivity
(Styles & Knowles, 2020; Marquardt et al., 2004).
Furthermore, identified as a collectivist society, the Bahamian society emphasizes family
interest, and business leaders with family companies are currently the dominant type of local
businesses (Hofstede et al., 2011). The Bahamas power distance, as defined by Hofstede et al.
(2011), is high due to a post-colonial mindset deriving from the British vestiges. According to
Styles and Knowles (2020), this continues to impede the development of an elaborate system of
licenses, regulations, and accompanying red tape to establish a business, which in turn, affects
intrinsic rewards, employee satisfaction, career success, overall HRM practices. To emphasize,
private and public organizations must create reasonable accommodations for qualified employees
to perform their jobs. However, according to the Equal Protection of the Law: The Persons with
Disabilities (Equal Opportunities) Act, 2014, in The Bahamas, Bain (2016) states:
how to accommodate NDE's the Minister responsible for Labour, Social Services, Youth, Sports
and Culture, and Education shall design, collaborate and implement programs that provide
NDE's too engaged as apprentices or learners; (b) persons with disabilities with skills to enable
them to engage in gainful employment; and (c) appropriate vocational measures which serve to
develop the skills and potential of persons with disabilities and enable them to compete favorably
for available, productive and remunerative employment opportunities in the labor market. (pp.9-
10)
Concerning the HRM accommodation, Styles and Knowles (2019) reveal how public and
private organizations fail to embrace neurodiversity, via recruitment practices, and enabling
NDE's to perform at their best once they are in the assigned role.
Methodology
An initial qualitative research inquiry of Bahamian human resource managers’
perspectives towards workers with learning disabilities gained visibility at the closing general
session of the Bahamas Society for Human Resource Managers (B-SHRM) 2019 annual
conference. In an effort to glean from this prestigious audience, researchers invited the attendees
to hold an interactive question and answer period, and participants were also invited to help
further our research. Miles and Huberman (1994) identify collaborative social research as
research that is a “collective action undertaken in a social setting.” With senior vice-presidents,
human resource managers, executive officers, and talent managers in attendance, the opportunity
to glean from this group of specialized and highly seasoned professionals’ perspectives within
the collaborative social research setting as described by Miles and Huberman (1994) provided a
unique qualitative research experience.
Participants were asked, at the end of the session, to provide their position, years in their
position, gender, and whether they were employed by a private, public, or quasi organization.
This is the only demographic information gleaned. One open-ended, qualitative research
question was presented: What can you do to help workers with learning disabilities? Responses
totaled 70 (N=70). Although the conference hosted over 150 participants, there were
approximately 80 attendees remaining by the closing session.
Furthermore, Corbin and Strauss (2015) emphasize the researcher as an active
participant. For this present research, after findings were presented, the audience gleaned from
the presentation, and were then asked, introspectively, how they can now basically become part
of a solution, given their various leadership and human resource management positions.
After collecting the conference participants’ responses, a spreadsheet was initially
compiled. Responses were then coded resulting with two distinct outcomes as either actions or
behaviors or emotional impact. In addition, researchers utilized NVIVO computer program to
create a word frequency cloud using all the open-ended responses.
Data Analysis
The researcher estimated there were about 80 total attendees for the closing general
session. A total of 70 (N=70) responses were received at the end of the conference time. This
was a response rate of 87.5%.
Demographics identified 91% female with 9% male attendees as depicted in Table 1.
The listings of position include senior executives, human resource managers, and a few identify
as clerical. Table 2 depicts the breakdown of the participants’ position in their organization. In
summary, 23% are senior executives, 69% are human resource managers, 5% are clerical, and
3% did not identify their formal workplace position.
Length of time in present position is also identified. Table 3 illustrates general statistical
measures for years in present position: 40% reflect 2-8 years, 29% are under 2 years, and 29%
are over 30 years in their present position. The mean is 7 years, mode is 4 and the median is both
2 and 4 years, respectively. Overall, length of time in present position ranged from 3 days to 30
years.
Results and Findings
Two strong themes emerge after coding responses to the open-ended question: What can
you do to help workers with learning disabilities? Coded responses emerged into two different
categories. The first category identified actions/behaviors to take or implement. The second
category identified emotional responses.
Action/behavior responses include: “train/educate”, “respect”, “seek strengths”,
“accommodate,” and “mentor”. A full listing of these are presented in Table 4. Responses coded
as emotional include: “sympathy”, “empathy”, “understanding”, “supportiveness”, and
“sensitivity”. Table 5 contains the full listing of the codified emotion-items.
In addition, an NVIVO word frequency creates the content for Figure 1. This was a
summary of all the wording compiled from the responses recreated in the spreadsheet and then
translated into the NVIVO software program. A review of the most cited wording is as follows:
“manager”, “training”, “disabilities”, “awareness”, “assistance”, and “persons” and is based upon
the size and placement in the frequency cloud. These words appear to stand out as the most
frequently used words as represented in the NVIVO software analysis. The additional wording
throughout the frequency cloud shows all the other most frequently used words from the
responses, such as “accommodate”, “educate”, “respect”, “assist”, “mentor”, “encourage”, and
“understand” to name a few.
Discussion
Human resource managers and senior administrators in public, private, and quasi
organizations have the task of maximizing employees’ talent to benefit the goals and aspirations
of their organizations. This point emphasizes that it is employees who perform in a collective
fashion that enable organizational attainment. Harvesting human talent may often be overlooked
when employees with learning disabilities refrain from reaching their maximum potential, due to
their uniqueness.
Reaching out to leadership and management with ways to help them better understand
their workforce is beneficial for both the employees and the organization. Organizations that
strive towards continuous improvement are learning ways to develop their people, inclusive of
diversity (Lawler, 2008; Styles & Knowles, 2019). Overall, managers benefit with greater
awareness while employees benefit with more training. Neurodiverse workers can further
develop their talent and skills by employer actions and emotional considerations. Organizations
benefit with greater productivity. Greater productivity leans towards continuous improvement
and goal attainment. This research aides HRM and c-suite executives with a broader perspective
on how to deal with a hidden diversity: neurodiversity (Styles & Knowles, 2019).
This research represents an interactive experience between the researchers presenting at
an annual conference and responses on how they can help after learning from this research will
bring the praxis to life, full circle. Whenever decision-makers are a captive audience and they
can be challenged on how they can be part of solving people issues and problems, they are
fulfilling their social responsibility in ways that benefit the major stakeholders, that of
ownership, management, and employees.
Our research started small with only 10 managers in a qualitative study. The results were
then shared with cumulating responses from 70 managers, in a qualitative inquiry. Quantitative
research provides data with numbers to support findings. Future research is necessary to acquire
solutions for helping the workforce develop their talent, despite their differences, even when they
are deep-level and nearly invisible with neurodiversity, is just one more way to foster continuous
improvement for both people and organizations. Furthermore, to identify hands-on practices for
management to implement, one may begin by looking at the action/behaviors that emerged from
this research as a place to begin. Organizational leaders and HRMs who strategize to further
develop their workforce (Anderson, 2019) have a new perspective of neurodiversity from which
to train and improve their employees’ talent.
Conclusion
This qualitative research, gleaned from an interactive session at the Bahamas Society of
Human Research Management annual conference, provides insight on what upper management
and human resource managers perceive when it comes to actions to take with regards to
neurodiverse employees. In addition, the management participants identified the emotional need
for sensitivity in the overall workforce to comfortably embrace neurodiverse employees.
Although this is rather unique research, reproducing the model presented, that is, sharing
academic research directly to decision-makers in organizations, thereby maximizes benefits of
what academic research finds and how it becomes most useful to those in industry.
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Appendix A
Table 1
Demographic characteristics of the respondents
Gender Number Percentage
Male 28 9.% Female 93 91 % N=70 respondents
Table 2
Positions of the respondents
Position Percentage
Senior/executive 23.% HR Managers 69.% Clerical 5% Unidentified 3%
Note. General statistical measures for year in present position: 40% reflect 2-8 years, 29% under 2 years, and 29% were over 30 years
Table 3
Years in present position of the respondents
Years Percentage Range Mean Mode Median
Less than 2 29% 3 days to 30 7 years 4 years 2 and 4 years years years 2-8 years 40% 93 76.9% 8-30 years 29%
Table 4
Findings: Action/Behavior Items
Train/educate Embrace diversity Impact Respect Help adjust Culture embracing differences Seek strengths Trust Relevant job fit Accommodate Confidential Specialized work methods Mentor Manage talent Create anti-discriminatory policies/ Provide inclusion Promoter Awareness Procedures
Table 5
Findings: Emotions
Sympathetic Patient Empathetic Open-mindedness Understanding Supportive Sensitive Build confidence Fairness Anti-discriminatory