Neurodiversity: Creating a supportive culture of understanding

Martin Scragg is project technical leader at Stantec

Recognising, celebrating and harnessing neurodiversity is an important pillar of any progressive work culture. In the UK, it’s estimated that up to one in every five people is neurodivergent. This means their thinking and learning styles differ from what is broadly considered ‘typical’.

According to industry support organisation, Foothold, there are more than 820,000 neurodivergent engineers working in the UK, and up to a third of are thought to be dyslexic.

A need for change

Even in 2024, many professionals still choose to keep their diagnosed or self-diagnosed neurodivergence a secret at work. Unfortunately, in many cases, this can be down to fear.

Fear of not being understood or even believed by co-workers. Fear of having their careers limited, or of being thought of as ‘weird’ or ‘difficult’. As an industry facing an unpreceded demand for creative innovation, we need to completely remove discrimination from the equation and replace it with empowerment.

At Stantec, we know that by addressing these issues and concerns openly while promoting a culture of understanding which is backed by tangible support, we can make a positive difference for our colleagues. As well as supporting people in the workplace, it means we can better leverage their unique strengths, skills, abilities, and perspectives for world-changing design and engineering projects.

We are in no way finished in our culture-building journey. It’s not a road that will ever really come to an end. But, as someone who is neurodivergent, and a proud father of neurodivergent children, I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’re continuing to make.

Driving understanding

One of the driving forces behind our expedition towards greater inclusivity is our Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group (ERG). Here, people who are neurodivergent, families of people who are neurodivergent, as well as allies of the cause, are actively encouraged to come together to talk about their experiences in a safe space and influence positive change throughout Stantec.

The ERG meets regularly over a variety of platforms, including Teams, in-person events, internal social channels and private discussion groups. It gives our colleagues a chance to openly discuss barriers, challenges, and opportunities when considering neurodiversity.

They share ideas for accommodations that can make working life easier, listen to expert speakers, and gain direct support, advice and counsel from others going through similar or comparable experiences.

As a child of the 1970s, I know the conversations we’re seeing in this group simply wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago, or even five years ago! Yet, the feedback we receive suggests this safe, open space is incredibly valuable.

The group started three years ago in the UK and we’re now seeing chapters form around the world with thousands of colleagues coming together to bond and create an inclusive and safe culture.

The most important element of our ERG is that it’s an initiative driven by leadership with senior executive sponsorship. This has helped us drive progress through financial backing. Many of the accommodations, training, and support we provide will require investment of different scales, and because of the top-down approach we take, we’re able to get it where needed.

Meaningful support

The accommodations we provide vary from person to person. Often, it can be a case of providing access to assistive technology platforms like Grammarly, which can help employees who may struggle with certain elements of reading or writing. Or it could involve the provision of noise cancelling headphones to help those who find it difficult to work in noisy environments.

In many instances, accommodations in the workplace can simply require an additional layer of consideration from colleagues. Asking questions or interacting in a certain way, or just being mindful and understanding of individual working preferences. Our accommodations process is supported by our HR team, but also with external providers, ToHealth to provide expert guidance around neurodiversity related accommodations, as well as the Access to Work scheme when appropriate.

We’re also proud to have completed Lexxic’s new Neurodiversity Smart® assessment and Stantec is now accredited as ‘Neurodiversity Smart®: Committed’. This accreditation is fully audited, assessing where we are across eight key stages of the employee life cycle and customer experience. For us, making sure we have a recruitment and onboarding process that accepts and supports individuals regardless of their neurotype is now a key focus for our talent acquisition teams.

I'm excited to see how far our business has come over the last few years, but it can’t be stressed enough that the journey is never over. As we learn more about how we can make the most of neurodiversity, working cultures in our sector must continue to evolve progressively to support the next generation of design and engineering professionals.

• Martin Scragg is project technical leader at Stantec

For more information about Stantec and its career options available in the UK and Ireland, visit www.stantec.com/uk

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