Finding the right talent for the job has always been a high priority for any business — perhaps now more than ever. A growing number of companies are designing and implementing affirmative hiring programs to recruit individuals who are neurodivergent, including those with autism. Susanne Bruyère, a professor of Disability Studies and academic director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability at the Cornell ILR School, shares the opportunities and challenges of these initiatives.
Susanne Bruyère, a professor of Disability Studies and academic director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Institute on Employment and Disability at the Cornell ILR School, traces the opportunities and challenges encountered across the employment process in designing and implementing neurodiversity-affirmative hiring initiatives. Bruyère addresses the importance of creating a workplace culture that embraces a diverse workforce, including those who are neurodivergent.
The Cornell Keynotes podcast is brought to you by eCornell, which offers more than 200 online certificate programs to help professionals advance their careers and organizations. Susanne Bruyère is an author of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Building a Diverse Workforce certificate program. Other relevant Cornell online courses include Workplace Disability Inclusion and Autism at Work.
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Chris Wofford: Here is a staggering statistic. One in five people in America are diagnosed as neurodivergent. And you may not know that this often overlooked segment of the population can actually bring lots of value and expertise to organizations who happen to be struggling in the war on talent. There is a large, untapped pool of perfectly capable employees who can get overlooked by HR screening processes or excluded by organizations that don't accommodate people with disabilities.
Chris Wofford: Big mistake, says Susanne Bruyère, who is a professor of Disability Studies and academic director at Cornell's Yang Tan Institute. Susanne makes a strong case for why we should all pursue neurodiversity affirmative hiring initiatives if we haven't done so already. Neurodiverse hiring programs have proven successful among the most visible champions of diverse hiring.
Chris Wofford: We'll look at how best in practice recruiters are handling screening, selection, orientation, on the job training, and preparatory [00:01:00] supervisor and workforce training for neurodiverse employees, and you can apply all of this to your own organization. So check out the episode notes for links to courses in Building a Diverse Workforce, Workplace Disability Inclusion, and Neurodiversity at Work courses.
Chris Wofford: Lots of useful resources for both employees and employers here. Here is my conversation with Susanne.
Chris Wofford: Susanne, let's level set the conversation a little bit with a striking statistic.
Chris Wofford: Okay. One in five people, are diagnosed or self identify as either autistic or neurodivergent. That's a pretty striking statistic. Tell us how we arrived at this figure.
Susanne Bruyère: Thanks for that very good baseline question, Chris. Those are U.S. statistics.
Susanne Bruyère: That's what we have right now. We do think that they're generalizable to other parts of the globe, for sure, in what, where we know those data is collected. But in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control does collect data, and we have data going back 20 years, so [00:02:00] we know in the broader group, if you talk beyond autism, including other people with what we call neurodiverse characteristics, it is approximately one in five.
Chris Wofford: Can we explain, and to further baseline and level set here, can we explain what we mean by autism versus neurodiversity? Where's the overlap? Does one, you know, fit into a subcategory of the other?
Susanne Bruyère: Yes, that's an excellent question. And right now we do use a broader umbrella, these terminology is always changing, but I think we recognize that we'll all be well served, individuals who identify in this category, family members, and the general population by thinking about neurodiversity as the umbrella term for a variety of different characteristics, people that have different conditions that we know, autism being one of them. And that group, the numbers have grown according to the CDC statistics significantly over the 20 years [00:03:00] since they've kept them. But also includes ADHD attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity disorder, dyscalculia, which is difficulty with numbers dyslexia, which is reading and writing comprehension, which most of us are familiar with dyspraxia, which can be motion impacted, and Tourette's syndrome.
Susanne Bruyère: So, there are others as well, but that I think helps. Those are terms that many people know that I think helps us to understand. We're talking about a broad umbrella. Although we have focused originally on autism, it's this bigger picture now that we're really talking about, which is approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population.
Chris Wofford: So language is important. I've asked you to help me and help our audience talk about this properly, right? There's ways of going about this as we discuss. And of course, we're all works in progress. We all learn. You know, how to, how to work better with each other, ideally, through age and experience.
Chris Wofford: Help me with the language a little bit, because [00:04:00] there's, there's some good ways and useful ways and instructive ways to talk about how we talk about neurodivergence and autism especially.
Susanne Bruyère: Yes, absolutely. You know, and, and really the self, the community itself of advocates, self advocates with autism and with neurodiversity more broadly are the ones who are educating us and, in lots and lots of ways.
Susanne Bruyère: The term neurodiversity was coined by a woman, Judy Singer, and we've embraced that because it's a nice way to think more broadly about differences that are naturally occurring in the human condition. You know, differences the way we are wired and the way that wiring is expressed through our social behaviors and other kind of conditions is a natural part of the human phenomenon.
Susanne Bruyère: They're different in these different conditions that we're talking about. For autism, for example, it might be social and communication ways people, other behavioral differences that people are experiencing. We hear from the autism community [00:05:00] that they like to, that many people in that group like to be, use what we call identity first language rather than person first language.
Susanne Bruyère: We have evolved in the disability community more broadly from thinking about what we thought was a more respectful way of talking about people, saying people with disabilities, and now self advocates in the disability community, and this has been embraced in the autism community, say no. I am proud of my disability identity.
Susanne Bruyère: I am a person with, I am not just a person with a disability, I'm a disabled person. The same kind of preference we're seeing in the autism community. I am an autistic individual, an autism, autistic with a capital A. So I think that's a wonderful thing for us to understand and when we're interacting with people who identify that way openly, ask them for their preference and how they'd like to characterize their identity.
Chris Wofford: So why are a growing number of companies designing [00:06:00] and implementing affirmative hiring practices to recruit individuals who are either neurodivergent or autistic? What's the driver here?
Susanne Bruyère: The driver is need for talent. I mean, it's, it has, it's always true that business is looking for the very best talent imaginable to meet their strategic imperative. And that was never, it's never been more true than now.
Susanne Bruyère: And we've seen over the past 10 years, in some cases longer there were early pioneers, early, even earlier pioneers in this area. But particularly the tech sector seemed to take an ardent interest about 10 years ago, there were leaders like SAP, Microsoft, finance industry, JPMorgan Chase and, and others that certainly said, you know, this seems to be an area, a discovering of certain characteristics in autistic people like ability to see patterns, in some cases beyond what many people were able to observe.
Susanne Bruyère: Great for data, great for cyber [00:07:00] security, great for accounting anomalies. Prolonged focus. Prolonged focus, absolutely. And what many of us might be, find tedious, not necessarily ability to really stay and hang in there in very detailed types of tasks. These are amazing characteristics for certain jobs, and it was identified.
Susanne Bruyère: And then an ardent search, for the talent that had these characteristics began in certain sectors, particularly starting with certain companies.
Chris Wofford: This seems to be an untapped talent pool. That's the case, right? And, you know, we mentioned the tech sector and maybe some others. But this, this kind of applies more broadly, doesn't it?
Susanne Bruyère: Absolutely. And I'm delighted to be able to say that we do see many, many more industries interested.
Susanne Bruyère: Those skill sets and others in this population of neurodiverse, neurodivergent, Autistic individuals can apply to many jobs in many sectors, and there is a growing number, [00:08:00] if people are interested in that there's an organization that is a collection of employers who are interested in workplace disability inclusion and a subset of that is a roundtable that is called the Neurodiversity at Work Roundtable sponsored by DisabilityIn, and we have that link for you. And that is a I think approximately now four to five dozen different companies from different sectors and different sizes. This started out in large sector, you know, large, large industries.
Susanne Bruyère: So there's a lot more variety of opportunity for people who are interested in promoting themselves as potential job candidates or supporting individuals who are interested in doing so.
Chris Wofford: So let's think about the hiring process itself. I'm thinking about employees, employers, potential candidates, I was curious, given current tech, I know that there's a lot of automation built into hiring processes, AI is figuring into some of this frontline screening kind of stuff.
Chris Wofford: How do we ensure that we're not excluding people with neurodivergence, autism, etc. How do we ensure [00:09:00] that we're not excluding anybody and making sure that it's an inclusive environment? Is there anything we could do about that in these frontline screening processes?
Susanne Bruyère: Yeah, I, we, that's one area where we have ardently focused. Our interest is the interview process. Cause we know from self report and from the report of employers, Many people with these neurodivergent characteristics can be lost in that process. So, there are several things we recommend. First of all, before people even get in your door in the interview process, is making sure you frame your website in a way that is attracting people, letting them know they're wanted, whether that's particular application portals that are just for our neurodivergent or autistic people, internships, you know, flagging the fact that you're neurodiversity inclusive as an employer, so people will even apply.
Susanne Bruyère: But we also encourage employers to not just use the AI process, but enter a human element in that process, particularly where you can identify applicants who might be neurodiverse or autistic. [00:10:00] And then once you get them in that pool, that pipeline, is look at your interview process because we may be needlessly there losing people because we have a protocol that's very high anxiety producing such as panel interviews, long days, ambiguous questions, all of that I think can be reframed and more neurodiversity friendly.
Chris Wofford: I suspect that we have a lot of, and I'm speaking generally, that companies have a lot of work to do in this space. I don't, you, you live in this world. From where you sit, you have a pretty good view. Are we doing okay? Do we have a long way to go? It's an ideal that we may never reach. But how are we doing so far?
Susanne Bruyère: Well, I would say, you know, in the, I can't I can't speak to the many thousands of companies we have in the U.S., of course. But I can tell you, and it's been wonderful to observe, that in the companies who have been leaders in this area, we know this because they have iterated over ten [00:11:00] years and tried a variety of different things to look for success in getting applicants, qualified applicants through that pipeline and into their interview process and then into the hiring process. And some of the things I've shared with you is because we've observed that in these more progressive companies, a lot of them have moved toward demonstration of skills rather than having to verbally describe your skill set.
Susanne Bruyère: And that has proved very, very true. Very useful in identifying people who really are good matches for these jobs and longer term success In staying in the jobs once they get hired.
Chris Wofford: What are some challenges in the employment process? And this is, this goes beyond that frontline thing that we were just talking about, but how can we better design and implement neurodiversity, affirmative hiring initiatives, bigger picture kind of stuff. Not just, not necessarily the tactical, how do we get people in the door, but how do you make this part of the workplace culture?
Susanne Bruyère: That's a terrific question because it has to start even before what [00:12:00] I just described to you as getting people in the front door.
Susanne Bruyère: And that is letting your workplace know that this is a business imperative. So the first thing we say is, set that culture, you used the right word when you talked about that. It's having top management say, Here's what we're going to be doing. This is a part of the strategic business imperative for talent. We want neurodiverse people, neurodivergent people, autistic people in our workplace.
Susanne Bruyère: We are going to have an affirmative hiring program. To make this a success, we need your help. We need your help as a workforce. We need your help as parents and, and family members of people. Send them to us if they're qualified for our jobs. But help us build a culture where people will be accepted and be able to thrive.
Susanne Bruyère: And hopefully have supervisors step forward who say, I have jobs, I'm willing to work with this talent to help them be the match we want them to be.
Chris Wofford: You had mentioned in some of the notes here in our conversation earlier that [00:13:00] establishing community partnerships is probably a good idea. What does that look like?
Chris Wofford: I need clarity on that.
Susanne Bruyère: It's very critical, Chris, because you may, say you're successful in sending this messaging, right? Then you need your talent pipeline to be built and you certainly can promote this on your career pages and portal, but people may not find you and know that you're ardently in search. Working with community service providers or national and regional and state networks of organizations that are actually supporting this talent and trying to make that bridge between colleges, high schools, vocational technical schools, and workplaces, that will significantly heighten the likelihood that you'll find that talent pool you're looking for.
Chris Wofford: Let's get into it a little bit more. I want to understand, and maybe this exists, maybe it doesn't, but what would be some KPIs, some key performance indicators, metrics, or analytics that, that you would use to measure [00:14:00] the efficacy of a program? It's success or failure, running an assessment. How are we doing with this?
Susanne Bruyère: Well, some of the things I really already mentioned to you is just saying, did we do it? And what first is, you know, do you have top leadership commitment and is it evident? I mean, it's fine for the president or CEO or chairman of the board to say, "Great idea," and it's another to have explicitly made a statement about that on your website.
Susanne Bruyère: It's a part of your messaging internally. It's a part of your messaging externally. Part of your brand. Is that being done? First metric. Secondly, do you have those community partnerships? Third, are they sourcing qualified candidates? Do you have the right partners? And if those candidates are in your pipeline, how many of them are getting through the interview process, how many of them are getting hired, and what proportion is that of your general hiring protocol and population?
Susanne Bruyère: And then looking at once in, is there [00:15:00] equity in terms of advancement in retention? If you're losing people who are a part of this neurodivergent pool, in higher proportion, that's a signal, right? We don't have the climate or culture we want for them to be valued and retained.
Chris Wofford: So I'm thinking that this is a callback to our original research stat, which is the one in five Americans identify as or are diagnosed as neurodivergent or autistic or what have you.
Chris Wofford: What about the people among our workforce currently, right? So I've been at my job a little bit. You have too. I haven't been assessed for this kind of thing, and I don't know if this should be part of business practice. My thinking is yes, because you had mentioned that you want to understand to what degree are we retaining people who are neurodivergent?
Susanne Bruyère: Well, I mean, I think that's a great question. We do want to know, and the reality of it is that neurodiversity isn't necessarily evident or visible, right? Yeah. So people have to feel comfortable. This is where the culture that you talked about or climate is really important. [00:16:00] If people don't feel that, that's a positive thing, that there are stereotypes or stigmas that are going to stamp them if they self disclose, they're not going to come forward. You know, that is, that's addressed differently if you have a pipeline where people have already self disclosed. But we have many people, if it's one in five of the American population, we know, they're among the workforce now, and many of them may not have felt historically comfortable coming forward.
Susanne Bruyère: That means we can't do as good a job as we perhaps could in accommodating people, in helping them to thrive, in helping them to be comfortable and feel proud of who they are. So, we have a long way to go in that regard, but it does start with people feeling like they can say who they are and get what they need to be fully embraced by the organization and be productive to the extent they are able to be.
Chris Wofford: Self disclosure has been a huge issue in my work with people who work in the disability space within Cornell and, you know, out in industry, [00:17:00] but that's a whole topic. We could probably get into that maybe at a later date, but within the disability community and employers, self disclosure is like a huge challenge.
Susanne Bruyère: It's a significant challenge, particularly for those employers who have to do that as a part of their regulatory requirements.
Chris Wofford: Yeah. So let's break down some best, best in practices how recruiters are handling screening, selection, orientation, onboarding kind of stuff, on job training. What does this look like when it's working at a highly functional organization that has implemented a disability hiring strategy, affirmative strategy like we've been kind of idealizing through this conversation?
Susanne Bruyère: Yes. Well, we certainly talked about some of the good practices, these community partnerships, you know, that articulating as a part of the business strategy training for supervisors and hiring managers, training for recruiters and then support systems built in.
Susanne Bruyère: And certainly we've seen many companies try different things. They may have job coaches from these community [00:18:00] organizations. Many of them are establishing mentoring programs, which is very helpful, or buddy systems. There is so much in workplaces that are, is sort of an informal network and socialization.
Susanne Bruyère: So it's cuing people into where do you go, who do you talk to if you want advancement, if you want stretch assignments, if you want you know, to broaden how you view the company that takes mentoring, that takes and maybe just natural socialization that sometimes we see these social buddies assigned to people to help them know where's the cafeteria and where are your, where do your teammates go on Friday at 5 o'clock for a TGIF and how do you insert yourself and get, join, joining into that?
Susanne Bruyère: So we see those climates being built, also more formal systems around employee assistance program supports. It might be, you know, workstation supports that your health and safety unit [00:19:00] does. There's a lot of naturally occurring internal organizational supports that can be used, captured to support, but you have to educate them, you have to bring them on board.
Susanne Bruyère: It's part of that messaging again.
Chris Wofford: In the notes we also have that affinity, sorry, employee driven affinity organizational kind of things that happen organically. First of all, there has to be a culture that allows, not allows for that, but you know, encourages, encourages. I find that really interesting too, right?
Chris Wofford: Because that, that comes, that comes with the sort of self disclosure kind of thing in its own way.
Susanne Bruyère: Absolutely. You know, and we've seen it historically been, more often used for race, ethnicity, gender supports, building those alliances up with people with like interests. No different for people who are neurodivergent.
Susanne Bruyère: One of the things as we've seen successful, it heightens the likelihood of success, since self identification is, can be an issue, is designing these with the idea that it's not just [00:20:00] people who self identify it is also for allies. We see that in, in other groups as well, but this is certainly true here.
Susanne Bruyère: Family members, you may have a child, you may have a sibling, you may have a spouse who has these characteristics, and being in the conversation can be very supportive.
Chris Wofford: So what about our viewers who want to take action, right? What are the next steps here? We're thinking about HR managers, people that are involved in HR, but also, you know, throughout the organization, especially the C suite, we've got a lot of work to do there also, what are some of the first steps that, that people can take?
Chris Wofford: Naturally we had talked about your certificate program, the autism at work course that you're working to update, or you've been shooting this week. Thanks for making time for this. What would be some good sensible logical next steps for people that want to take action based on what we've talked about here?
Susanne Bruyère: Yes, I think there's, I think there are a number. I think if you're a family member and you're concerned about getting resources for your child perhaps you know, or your teen, I think there are those resources in [00:21:00] the community. There are many national organizations. I think banding with other parents is very helpful.
Susanne Bruyère: I think as within the workplace. You know, we have originally targeted our courses for HR professionals. We see many broader interest areas of workplace professionals coming to us, DEI folks, EEO folks. Wherever you are situated, You have a contribution to make and so what I would encourage people to think about is, it's just raising awareness that this is a population that can be a talent source, that the community often has representation in it that you can align with, and also looking at how to establish some naturally occurring communities within your workforce to help understand who's interested and what place would they like to serve in raising visibility about this like these employee resource or affinity groups, great place to start that conversation.
Chris Wofford: Perfect. I've got a really good question from a [00:22:00] viewer Susan who checks in and says to you, Susanne, what career advice do you have for an autistic person who doesn't display the pseudo savant characteristics, hyper focus, pattern recognition, etc.,
Chris Wofford: but whose primary divergence is just struggling with social cues? Tell us a little bit about that. I mean, we're getting specific here, but I'm, I was really interested in the employee side questions.
Susanne Bruyère: Oh, it's very, Susan, thank you for raising your question. It, it is not an uncommon question. It's a really great question.
Susanne Bruyère: And I would say it, you should, first of all, like all of us find out what your passion is really think about what it is you want to do and get the skill set that you want that, that you think you need, might need for that. That's the place to start, is not necessarily looking for the job that will accept you, but more, what is the type of job you want?
Susanne Bruyère: Because you want to speak from a position of being qualified for the job. And then, and I think like any of us in this interview [00:23:00] process, it, we need to practice skills to get through that interview experience. Look for the cues I talked about on the website of the companies that you're interested in or the jobs you're interested in.
Susanne Bruyère: Look for a more inclusive environment to start with. That's a good place to try your skills out and rehearse those skills for the interview process. And then when you get into the organization, hopefully you'll, in the right place, in the right climate, talk about what you need to get to the interface with your colleagues and perhaps with customers, where you can build your social skills with supports around you.
Susanne Bruyère: That's how I would say you can marry your interests, your talents, with a workplace that will embrace you and support you.
Chris Wofford: Good one. Susan. We have a question from Monty who asks, I've always heard that you should never divulge your neurodiversity. in the workplace because of the stigma and misconceptions that will hurt you more than help.
Chris Wofford: How do you demonstrate openness and [00:24:00] understanding in the workplace to combat this? No short answer.
Susanne Bruyère: No short, no short answer. You know, it's an, it's an ongoing issue for people of all kinds of differences, not just neurodiversity. Here we're focused on neurodiversity. I do think, it's testing the culture, it's watching and observing around you.
Susanne Bruyère: Certainly you want to be in an environment, we've talked about that culture. Look for cues of places and people you can begin to open up and share about yourself. I think, try to be an advocate for this inclusion in your own environment by building allies, not necessarily with disclosing, but eventually, I think it's important to find a network of people inside your workplace and external to your workplace where you can fully be yourself and then back that into that work environment because we need people to help us change what has historically been overly stigmatizing for not only neurodiverse people, but other people with differences in the workplace.
Chris Wofford: I've got a two part question where I'm going to combine what JT asks with what I'm going to ask. Here we go. So if it's one in five people with neurodivergence or autism, what was it ten years ago or more?
Chris Wofford: Has something changed? We had mentioned this at the beginning and I think it's worth kind of reiterating. It's the increase in diagnoses. It's the attention paid to it within the medical, medical community and, and without, right?
Susanne Bruyère: Well, we think so. We don't know for sure, Chris. Yes, I don't think I gave a specific statistic, but the CDC, I said it was collecting data over 20 years, we diagnosed at that time, the CDC diagnosed one in one fifty, 8 year old children were diagnosed with autism. This is specifically autism. And two years ago, that was the most recent statistic that came out in 2023, but it's 2020 data. 1 in 36, 8 year old children. So that's a significant increase in prevalence rates [00:26:00] over a 20 year period. We don't know if it is higher incidence, truly.
Susanne Bruyère: It's more awareness. It's better diagnosis. I think more parents are thinking about this and bringing their children to have assessments where we haven't historically. And we know many adults now, when they see these characteristics being diagnosed in their children, themselves realize that some of these.
Susanne Bruyère: These characteristics their terrific children have are in them as well. And so they may go and get diagnosed. So we're getting educated front and back here, up and down and I think that's certainly part of it. But we don't know entirely why that is changing.
Chris Wofford: I think I'm encouraged by the cultural de-stigmatization of this.
Chris Wofford: To begin with, more people identifying, more people seeing characteristics that are familiar to them and their co workers from within their families or whatever. I think, I think it's a, I'm encouraged by some of the developments that you've discussed today and some of the actionable steps that we can also take.
Chris Wofford: As employees, [00:27:00] employers, HR managers, etc.
Susanne Bruyère: Yes.
Chris Wofford: Yeah, so I appreciate you coming in today to the studio to get us set up on this. Susanne Bruyère, lovely to have you.
Susanne Bruyère: Great to be here. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Wofford: Thanks for listening to Cornell Keynotes. Check out the episode notes for information on our courses in building a diverse workforce, workplace disability inclusion, and neurodiversity at work. Thank you again, friends, for listening and subscribe to stay in touch.