• Swindon & Wiltshire Governance
• Thursday November 14 2024
• Author Name: Peter Davison

Half of neurodivergent adults discriminated against when looking for a job, suggests shock poll

Insurance giant Zurich is offering neurodiversity assessments for all employees and has made changes to its recruitment process after it found that half of neurodivergent adults have been discriminated against when looking for a job.

Three in ten of the 1,000 neurodivergent job applicants polled by Zurich between October 18 and 25 said their application not being taken any further once they had disclosed their neurodiversity.

Others said they were rejected for subjective reasons such as communication style or team fit (28 per cent). A further 27 per cent had comments made about their abilities or were ‘ghosted’ by a recruiter after disclosing (25 per cent).

Shockingly, research conducted by the Swindon-headquartered firm also found that one in five laughed at, and one in six had job offers rescinded because of neurodiversity.

Nearly half (47 per cent) said they felt they can’t or shouldn’t disclose their neurodiversity to recruiters or hiring managers.

And more than half (54 per cent) said the recruitment processes are designed to ‘weed out’ neurodivergent people rather than assess abilities.

Zurich says around one in seven adults in the UK are neurodivergent, leaving a large talent pool employers could be missing out on.

Examples of neurodivergence include autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, Down syndrome, and Tourette’s syndrome.

Back in February, The Buckland Review of Autism Employment – written by former Swindon MP Sir Robert Buckland – found neurodivergent candidates face more barriers to employment due to the neurotypical design of job applications and interviews.

More than a third of neurodivergent job seekers have panicked in an interview because the question structure was overly complicated, while a quarter have struggled with long and elaborate applications, and a quarter struggled with vague job descriptions and timed tasks.

Group-setting assessments and pre-prepared presentation tasks were also flagged as considerable barriers to neurodivergent candidates.

In response, Zurich has removed group exercises from the early in careers application process, to allow individual skills and the best talent for the role to be considered when hiring, rather than performance in group scenario which some may find intimidating.

Since then, Zurich has introduced a range of measures to support neurodivergent employees, including:

• The roll-out of autism awareness training for hiring managers and employees in partnership with the charity Ambitious About Autism.
• Creating sensory maps of the UK workplaces to help neurodivergent employees find the best location to work depending on levels of temperature, noise, smells and traffic.
• Removing subjective language and unnecessary qualifications from job descriptions.
• Offering all roles on a part-time or job-share basis.
• Assessing its recruitment processes to ensure it is neuro-inclusive in partnership with GAIN (Group for Autism, Insurance, Investment and Neurodiversity).

And from January 2025, Zurich UK will enhance its employee healthcare offering which will offer all Zurich employees the opportunity to be assessed for neurodiversity.

Steve Collinson, chief HR officer at Zurich said: “With over half of neurodivergent adults experiencing discrimination and two thirds saying employers see their neurodiversity as a ‘red flag’, it’s clear there is still a way to go when it comes to creating neuro-inclusive workplaces.

“Our research shows that traditional recruitment processes are creating unnecessary barriers for these candidates and could be excluding as much as 15 per cent of the job market, which is why it’s so important that employers adopt inclusive practices at hiring level – not just to already onboarded employees.

“At Zurich we aim to create a workplace that gives the widest representation of our customers – to run a business effectively you need the widest range of diversity in your teams, and this includes neurodiversity.”