How to Build Neuro-Affirming and Inclusive Workplaces

Neuro-inclusion isn’t just good practice - it’s smart business.

In this episode of The Inclusive Growth Show, host Toby Mildon chats with Andy Ryan, neurodiversity specialist and a new associate at Mildon. With a background in social care and a passion for reshaping how organisations view neurodivergence, Andy shares his journey into inclusion and offers practical ways to build neuro-affirming workplaces.

You will learn:

• Why inclusive workplace adjustments are often simple and low-cost
• The myths that hinder neurodivergent inclusion
• How communication shifts can improve workplace culture for all
• Why designing flexible systems supports individual success
• How to adopt a mindset of continual inclusion

Andy also offers a glimpse into his workshops, including training for line managers of neurodivergent staff, and shares his personal strategies for staying well while working in the EDI space.

If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to The Inclusive Growth Show with Toby Mildon. Future-proofing your business by creating a diverse workplace. Hey there. Thank you ever so much for tuning into this episode of The Inclusive Growth Podcast. I'm Toby Mildon and today we've got another special episode because we are going to be meeting our new associate, Andy Ryan, who's a lovely guy, and he's a specialist in neurodiversity. And a term that I really like that he uses is creating neuro-affirming workplaces. So it's going to be really great to just delve into that conversation with him. So Andy, thanks for joining us today, it's lovely to see you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate your time. So Andy, can we just dive straight into the first question, which is, who are you? A bit of a broad question, and what do you do for us? Yeah, of course. So I'm Andy. I'm by trade a trainer and pseudo-consultant, working predominantly in the social care and charity sectors for most of my career. So I've worked in mental health services and learning disability services and domestic abuse services. And I've been doing that for about 17 years now. And nowadays, I tend to focus on neurodivergence and, as you mentioned, specifically helping organizations to create neuro-affirming workplaces. Brilliant. Can you cast your mind back to how we met and how we ended up working together? Of course, yeah. So I, in addition to my other various strands of work, do some content creation specifically on TikTok, where I talk about neuro-affirming workplaces. And I had been mutual followers with your colleague Brooklyn, your senior consultant for... Some time we'd sort of commented on each other's content here or there, there's some overlap in the work that we're doing and I'd always found her content to be really interesting, and I liked her presentation style. So I reached out to her and introduced myself and felt like it would be nice to put a face to a name. And we got talking about the work, and we found a crossover. And that was when she introduced me to Mildon and to you and the work that you do. It was felt that some of the stuff I talked about might be useful for some of your customers, which is how we ended up meeting and how I ended up coming on board as an associate. I just love how when we're working in businesses, we just randomly connect with people. Louis, who's one of our other associates, I met him because I saw him on the TV. So he was in a previous job. He was on Dragon's Den on the BBC. And I went into the living room and I saw him on TV and immediately saw that he had the same disability as me, or I felt that he had the same condition. So I just reached out to him just to make that personal connection as somebody who's got the same condition as me. And then he ended up working for me. It's amazing how these sort of chance encounters can lead to quite significant changes of direction in our lives sometimes, can't they? Definitely. I only really started making content in the first place as a way of exploring my own neurodivergence. And my initial content wasn't professional, it wasn't designed to be. It was personal. And I transitioned into a more kind of professional way of working, so that decision I made about six months ago to start making that content has sort of fundamentally shifted the direction of my professional life in some really interesting ways and has led me to speaking to you today. And it is really interesting how these things land, isn't it? Absolutely. So what got you into inclusion work in the first place? So I've been delivering training in the charity and social care sector for a while and always have an interest in inclusion, a personal interest. And my first sort of foray into the world of inclusion work professionally was just starting to deliver some inclusion-adjacent content to my customers, I had a lot of customers that would ask me for that kind of content. And it all started really when I delivered a workshop to a housing association on unconscious bias, which they requested, like a short workshop. And it went down really well via that particular customer, I picked up five or six more customers who just wanted unconscious bias work and that sort of expanded into me stepping into more areas and doing more inclusion-related content. So it wasn't really a deliberate decision as much as a sort of meeting of my personal interests and my professional life in a very kind of comfortable way, and it sort of all developed from there. And what does a typical morning look like for you? Well, like a lot of autistic people, I definitely have some ADHD traits. And what that often means is that I tend to overstack my plate sometimes with activities and enterprises. And so my days are typically quite hectic. I have a young family and I work a full-time job as well as doing freelance work and self-employment work, so I tend to find that no two days are the same. But my days will generally start with your typical parenting start to the day of getting at least half an hour with my family before the chaos begins and that's sort of an important part of my day and sort of helps me ground myself, I think, getting that time in the morning. So in the work that you do, what is an inclusion myth that you often challenge? I think that neurodivergence work is sort of stacked with myths, I think. We're kind of cusping a sort of wave of interest in neurodivergence. We're starting to see a desire for organizations to understand a little bit more, but there are still lots of myths that persist. And often they're myths that people don't realize are myths, which can be some of the most harmful to me. But if I were to zero in on one thing, I'm sure it's something that you'll be familiar with because I heard you speaking about it before, is the idea that making adjustments and accommodations in the workplace is inherently a complicated, time-consuming, impractical, expensive process that acts as a barrier to productivity. And a great deal of my work is trying to dispel that notion and trying to make sure that people understand that often making these adjustments is very affordable, sometimes doesn't even cost anything. It's more cultural and emotional than it is practical and financial, and that it often will pay for itself very quickly. And as a result, we often make business sense to make these accommodations that we don't have to view this as a kind of moral endeavor, although I think we should. We can also consider a business case. That sits at the core of a lot of the work that they do. Definitely. I like your point that a lot of adjustments don't cost a lot. I think managers just have to have an open mind. When I worked for the BBC, I worked with an autistic software engineer, this amazing software engineer, and he used to use noise-canceling headphones a lot, which don't really cost much. But he used to have this sort of cuddly bear, it was a big lion that he would take around with him. I think it was almost like a kind of comfort device or object and it was just having an understanding that he would bring this bear to the meetings and that the bear had a role to play. And I went to a meeting with the director general of the BBC, like the top man of the BBC, with my colleague and his lion. And I think what was amazing was that the director general just didn't bat an eyelid. He was like, oh, it's just. Yeah. And that's a perfect example of what you're actually doing in that scenario is having to rethink some ideas that you have about what professionalism looks like. Exactly. It costs nothing. All it takes is a moment of consideration about your own thought patterns, being willing to challenge some of your own assumptions. And the benefits of that are really significant because this person who you described as very talented is able to do their job really effectively. And the accommodation in that case is just being willing to step outside of your expectations for a minute. It's very simple to do. So on that subject, in a way, what is it that you wish more leaders said or did? I think that for a lot of autistic people, some meaningful changes are going to be related to communication, be related to the way that we are spoken to, the methods by which we are communicated with. And I think that one of the most meaningful things that you can do to support and include autistic colleagues is to ask, what can I do in my communication and style to make your life and your working life a little bit easier? And then adopt those things meaningfully. And that can be practical stuff like changing from verbal communication to written communication, that's a really classic example that will benefit a lot of autistic people. But it can also be the avoidance of vague phrases, which I mean, I will acknowledge will be very difficult, It will be very difficult to stop using phrases like ASAP. It's hard. These things are baked into the way that neurotypical people communicate. But making those changes, asking for those preferences, and then taking seriously the answers you get can reduce or remove a great deal of stress and unproductive discomfort from the days of your neurodivergent colleagues. Yeah, I've spoken to managers who realized that if they are more specific in their language, it benefits everybody, not just autistic colleagues. So if you say, instead of saying, I need this task done ASAP, if you say something like, I need this task done by today before 5 p.m., that actually sets better expectations for anybody and everybody. Absolutely. That's the case with a lot of accommodations and adjustments, really, is that they are either going to be neutral or beneficial to everybody. They're very rarely going to impact other colleagues negatively. And ASAP is a really good example because I'm generally able to discern meaning, generally learned, and sort of taught myself to be able to discern what these phrases mean but I've always still continually found it difficult to judge levels of urgency. If somebody says, this is urgent, I recognize that that can mean anything from, I need it in the next 20 minutes to in the next week. And it's impossible for me to know what that means. So that clarity is going to be massively beneficial to me and other autistic people but that's not to say it's not also going to help you to get work done in the ways that you want them done in the time you want them done. It's going to be of use to everybody, including the organization, in my experience. Yeah. So how do you personally define inclusion? And has your definition changed at all over the course of your career? Yeah, I think that the biggest change for me came relatively early on, I would say, but it's still something I have to work on, is the shift from seeing inclusion as being almost like a passive process with an end date to being an ongoing and active process that we all have to engage in. I think that before I started doing this work, it was easy to think that it was about identifying problems and fixing them, and then you're kind of done, right? Like if you just find problems and resolve the problems you're sort of finished. And as long as you're not, sort of actively going out of your way to be discriminatory, then you more or less will be fine. And it was for me, the most important moment was the recognition that first of all the inclusion work is ongoing, it's a constant process of tweaking and improving, and it will be different for everybody that you work with. And also that it's more about a mindset shift than about a series of practical steps, the practical steps are really important, but they often flow naturally from the mindset shift rather than being the place to start. And when I'm doing training work or consulting work, the focus for me and my colleague who I work with is always on mindset shifts. It's always on getting people to understand and really adopts the mindset. And then I think from there you tend to find that the practical stuff shifts along with it, so it's about recognizing the ongoing and continual process, recognizing the active nature of this work, you have to... Because even as a neurodivergent person, I still can have, you know, I can still hold unconscious bias about neurodivergent people. I can still find things leaking into my ways of thinking. So even I have to actively challenge myself consistently in an ongoing way, we can't just assume that we will reach a point where we no longer have to do this work. So that for me is really important, recognizing the active nature of inclusion work and the fact that it's this kind of ongoing work on your mindset. So what is one practical tip that you've got for building inclusion within a team? So I think for me, the important thing when you're building inclusion across a team is focusing on creating systems that are designed to be flexed. When you're working in specifically neurodivergence work but inclusion work more generally, it's important that when we are crafting and designing systems, we build them from the ground up with inclusion in mind and we build them with flexibility in mind. We don't want to create systems that are too inflexible, instead we want to create systems where there is lots of wiggle room for people to design and craft their own experiences. I think the concept of a kind of customisable workplace is a really powerful one. Every employee will have a slightly different experience. So for me, it is when you are designing a new process or system, instead of being too rigid in how that system has to work, you've set the kind of bare minimum stuff that has to be this way, and then you create as much flexibility as you can and build a certain degree of trust into that process and allow people to adapt that system to their own working styles. That's always, for me, where I would start. Excellent. Now, I mentioned at the top of the show that you're one of our new associates, so welcome to the team. Can you just give us a quick overview of the types of workshops that you run for us and who they're typically aimed at? Yeah, of course. So most of my workshops are going to relate to, in some way, neurodivergence, specifically autism and ADHD. And that means that the kind of core work that I do is sort of awareness-building sessions about autism and ADHD and neurodivergence more broadly. But there's also going to be workshops that I deliver that are going to relate to neuroaffirming workplaces to some degree, so specifically about inclusion and about how to be inclusive in your practice when it comes to neurodivergence. There's also likely to be some work that relates to language and culture and behaviour, and I'm going to be doing some work, I think, with Brooklyn about specifically how to line manage neurodivergent employees and the ways that line managers can adapt to their practice because I'm not only neurodivergent myself but I also have and continue to line manage other neurodivergent people so I had experience of crafting neurodivergent line management techniques. I think that that's something that... When I have spoken to line managers who are line managing neurodivergent people, that's the question they always have is how do I do this? How do I create supportive environments? So broadly speaking, my work is going to relate to autism and ADHD and neurodivergence, but I think that there is also going to be content that relates more broadly to culture and language and behaviour and flexible working environments. That's really cool. And the workshops that we've done with you so far, like we've had amazing feedback from our clients so yeah, keep up the good work. I just want to switch gears for a moment and just talk about you outside of work. We've talked a lot about the work that you do. How do you take care of yourself when things get tough? Because it can be quite difficult working in the EDI space. Yeah, it can. It's a difficult place to work in at the moment. And as I mentioned earlier, I also do tend to stack my life with work. And what I found is that, like a lot of people who are both autistic and have ADHD, you find that there are these two conflicting parts of the way that your brain works, this kind of desire for routine and predictability versus another part of your brain that screams out for novelty and new things and new experiences and it's quite a difficult thing to balance. What I've found is helpful for me is recognizing that I thrive when I'm busy and I enjoy having lots of plates spinning at once and I'm very good in that environment. But maybe once or twice a year, I need to vanish off by myself for several days and spend a week completely on my own, because on top of work demands, young family, you have parenting, it takes up a lot of time and energy. So I have a very supportive partner. Thankfully, we have been able to build a system where I'm able to vanish off for a week or so once a year or so and go into the wilderness and not talk to anyone for a week and I find that really recharges my batteries in a very helpful way. Yeah, that sounds really cool. I think I might take a leaf out of your book on that one. It's the highlight of my year. And what is something that's bringing you joy at the moment? So at the moment, it's the fact that the wildflowers I plant in my garden every year are in full bloom, which is always a wonderful time both because I love seeing the flowers in my garden and I love the chaos of it. I very rarely kind of plan what I'm doing, I just kind of throw wildflower seeds around and see what happens. But also because in this time of the year, the garden makes a noise you can hear the insects when you go into the garden. And that always brings me a great deal of joy to feel like I've created this kind of ecosystem, it brings me a lot of well-being to be in nature. So just as we come towards the end of the conversation today, I've just got some quickfire questions for you with some nice snappy answers. What is a book that you think everyone should read? My favorite book of the last couple of years is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, which is a really ethereal, dreamy, captivating book that I would always recommend everybody read. And who is somebody that's influenced you? My mom. My mom brought me up with social justice principles from a very young age, and my politics and views on inclusion were more or less fully formed by the time I was about 12 and I have my mom to thank for that. Amazing. And what is a skill that you're working on at the moment? I'm working very hard on marketing at the moment. I'm very good at what I do, but I'm not very good at telling people that I'm good at what I do so I'm having to do a lot of work to be a little bit more proactive in how I market myself. And what is your go-to comfort activity? I really love cooking. So I tend to default back to long, complex recipes whenever I feel like I need a bit of alone space and processing time. And finally, what is one small thing that brings you peace? Consistently, it is being in nature. Being around trees and plants always brings me peace consistently. Well Andy, thanks for your time. It's been great to catch up and learn from you again. Is there anything else that you want to kind of just say to finish off the conversation? No, just thank you for having me. It's always a joy to talk to you, Toby, and it's lovely to be given the chance to talk about my work. If anybody's listening is interested in anything I do you can reach out and we can have a conversation. Definitely. Yeah. Well Andy, thanks ever so much for your time. Been lovely to catch up with you. And thank you for tuning in and listening to this episode of the Inclusive Growth Podcast with Andy and myself. If you would like to book a session with Andy in your organization, then please do contact us through our website, which is mildon.co.uk, and we can schedule a conversation and discuss how Andy and the rest of the team can support you on your EDI journey. So until next time, I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the podcast, which will be coming out very soon. Take care. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to The Inclusive Growth Show. For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to our website at mildon.co.uk.