Busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go can im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with­out sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal in­vest­ment by cre­at­ing more in­clu­sive work­places for neu­ro­di­ver­gent em­ploy­ees, ac­cord­ing to Je­re­my Fran­cis, a found­ing di­rec­tor of the Neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty Foun­da­tion of T&T.

Fran­cis said fos­ter­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion can un­lock per­for­mance gains, par­tic­u­lar­ly in en­vi­ron­ments where em­ploy­ees feel able to ex­press their needs with­out fear of reprisal.

The foun­da­tion, es­tab­lished in 2023, aims to raise aware­ness and ad­vo­cate on is­sues re­lat­ed to neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty.

Neu­ro­di­ver­gent—a term coined by Aus­tralian so­ci­ol­o­gist Judy Singer—refers to in­di­vid­u­als whose brains func­tion, learn and process in­for­ma­tion dif­fer­ent­ly from what is con­sid­ered typ­i­cal. It is of­ten de­scribed as the op­po­site of “neu­rotyp­i­cal”, or some­one whose brain func­tions as so­ci­ety ex­pects.

Fran­cis was among the pre­sen­ters at the Neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty Fo­rum: “Aware­ness to Ac­tion—De­sign­ing In­clu­sive Fu­tures”, host­ed by the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (COSTAATT) at the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port of Spain last Tues­day.

“It’s ac­tu­al­ly free. It doesn’t cost any­thing. It is termed psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty. It’s cre­at­ing a work en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple can feel free to share their con­cerns. Share opin­ions with­out the fear of be­ing faced with reprisal or feel­ing as though they will be pun­ished in some way,” Fran­cis said in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian ahead of his pre­sen­ta­tion, adding, “If or­gan­i­sa­tions can cre­ate that open, com­mu­nica­tive en­vi­ron­ment, it al­lows peo­ple who are neu­ro­di­verse to be able to say what they need, say what help they re­quire and have an open di­a­logue. And that is re­al­ly where every­thing starts.”

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, ti­tled Build­ing In­clu­sive Em­ploy­ment Cul­tures, Fran­cis said many neu­ro­di­ver­gent em­ploy­ees ex­pe­ri­ence burnout as they at­tempt to con­form to tra­di­tion­al work­place norms.

He ar­gued that so­ci­etal ex­pec­ta­tions of what is con­sid­ered “nor­mal” can cre­ate dis­com­fort, lead­ing neu­ro­di­ver­gent in­di­vid­u­als to adopt be­hav­iours that lim­it their po­ten­tial.

“My par­tic­u­lar fo­cus is on the work­place, and my pre­sen­ta­tion to­day fo­cus­es on that. So the idea is, again, neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty is nor­mal, hav­ing every­one think the same way, be the same way, dress the same way. It’s ac­tu­al­ly not nor­mal. But in our so­ci­ety, we tend to fo­cus on every­body fit­ting in, and that is a re­al prob­lem for peo­ple who are neu­ro­di­verse,” he said.

Fran­cis added, “We have to con­sid­er that if your needs are not met in the work­place, where you spend a lot of your time, things like burnout, stress, and anx­i­ety can spike. This can then af­fect your work per­for­mance. So it is re­al­ly im­por­tant that as or­gan­i­sa­tions, one, we make our en­vi­ron­ments more in­clu­sive and we are open to lis­ten­ing.”

Neu­ro­di­ver­gent in­di­vid­u­als in­clude those di­ag­nosed with AD­HD, Autism Spec­trum Con­di­tion (ASC), dyslex­ia, dys­prax­ia, dyscal­cu­lia and bipo­lar dis­or­der.

Fran­cis said that while some em­ploy­ers may as­sume that cre­at­ing in­clu­sive en­vi­ron­ments is cost­ly, this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case.

“In terms of the work­place, there are a num­ber of chal­lenges with re­gard to un­der­stand­ing the needs of neu­ro­di­verse em­ploy­ees. Neu­ro­di­verse em­ploy­ees are par­tic­u­lar­ly at risk in the work­place be­cause their needs are some­times not met or recog­nised, and a lot of the time, the em­ploy­er may see it as an ad­di­tion­al ex­pense if they have to do some­thing in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate an ir­reg­u­lar em­ploy­ee,” he said.

How­ev­er, he added, “It’s not that you have to do every­thing or pro­vide every­thing, but you need to cre­ate an open, com­mu­nica­tive work­place that al­lows a neu­ro­di­verse per­son to be able to ex­press their needs and have an open dis­cus­sion about what ac­com­mo­da­tions they may need to as­sist them to per­form well at work.”

He not­ed that al­though many com­pa­nies have adopt­ed Di­ver­si­ty, Eq­ui­ty and In­clu­sion (DEI) poli­cies, neu­ro­di­ver­gent em­ploy­ees of­ten still feel pres­sure to con­form.

“So, it doesn’t re­al­ly make sense to have poli­cies and DEI and have all of these things in place if we don’t work on that. It’s nec­es­sary to have open com­mu­ni­ca­tion with our em­ploy­ees and un­der­stand­ing that a one-size-fits-all ap­proach does not fit all and that you have to be able to ac­com­mo­date a wide range of views, which will al­so im­pact pos­i­tive­ly on the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s bot­tom line,” Fran­cis said.

He al­so point­ed to lim­it­ed re­gion­al re­search on neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty but not­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies con­sis­tent­ly show ben­e­fits for both em­ploy­ees and busi­ness­es.

“There are sev­er­al stud­ies that say that a cog­ni­tive­ly di­verse work­force ac­tu­al­ly per­forms bet­ter. Bot­tom line (im­proves), as well as the health and well-be­ing of em­ploy­ees, and if you think about it. It makes sense if you have an or­gan­i­sa­tion where every­body or most peo­ple think in the same way that.

“And do the same things, things like in­no­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty are lack­ing,” Fran­cis ex­plained, adding, “So the point of in­clu­sive­ness and hav­ing a neu­ro­di­verse work­force, is that the more dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives you are able to in­cul­cate. And sup­port with­in the work­force the greater the in­no­va­tion. The greater the cre­ativ­i­ty, and those are the things that fu­el bet­ter bot­tom-line per­for­mances.”

Fran­cis said the foun­da­tion has spent the past three years fo­cus­ing on rais­ing aware­ness, with in­creas­ing en­gage­ment from cor­po­rate T&T.

“Per­son­al­ly, I have been do­ing lots of pre­sen­ta­tions for cor­po­rate T&T. I do it for free. Of course, as the foun­da­tion, we in­vite or­gan­i­sa­tions to con­tact us. I will go in, have con­ver­sa­tions with the ex­ec­u­tives, man­agers and staff. I’ve been do­ing that over the past few years, and it is pick­ing up steam over time that or­gan­i­sa­tions are recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty, and that shows in the num­ber of in­vi­ta­tions that we will get to come in­to com­pa­nies to have these types of con­ver­sa­tions. So, it is get­ting bet­ter,” he said.

Fran­cis al­so stressed the need for broad­er pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, not­ing that cul­tur­al per­cep­tions across the Caribbean con­tin­ue to shape how neu­ro­di­ver­gent in­di­vid­u­als are treat­ed.

“How it im­pacts the way peo­ple think and how they feel, and how the wider so­ci­ety can help them feel more in­te­grat­ed, be­cause there’s a very big prob­lem of in­clu­sion with peo­ple who are deemed as dif­fer­ent,” he said.

COSTAATT Chair of Ed­u­ca­tion Shinelle Smith said the fo­rum was host­ed to cre­ate spaces that sup­port neu­ro­di­ver­gence, “that are tan­gi­ble and ac­tion-ori­ent­ed.”

She stat­ed, “This in­au­gur­al fo­rum that was host­ed by the De­part­ment of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ences and the De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion at COSTAATT is the first in many such events, with a fo­cus on not just sen­si­ti­sa­tion, but in cre­at­ing net­works of rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, in­ter­est groups across dif­fer­ent sec­tors.”