ESG in Action: The curious workplace

Alex Holsgrove Jones (00:01)

Welcome to ESG in Action. I'm Alex Holscroft-Jones, Knowledge Partner and ESG Lead at TLT. And today I'm joined by Maisie Cass, Founder and Chief Curiosity Officer of Diversity Does. Maisie helps employers build workplaces that understand, encourage and support neurodivergent people. And we're going to be talking about neurodiversity, language, making mistakes and what compassion and curiosity has to do with it.

Maisie, thanks so much for joining me on the show.

Maisie Cass (00:32)

It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me today.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (00:36)

I'm really excited about our conversation because we've had little chats before and they're always so interesting. So to start with, Chief Curiosity Officer is such a great job title. What does it mean and what does curiosity have to do with neurodiversity?

Maisie Cass (00:52)

It's so funny. When I was putting my business together and I was looking at what sort of job title I might have if I were in an employed role, I sat there and I thought, what is it that I do within business to, you know, what is my job title? What are my skills? And over the years, I think all the roles that I have ever had, both employed and self-employed, have involved me being, to want of a better word, nosy.

So I get really inquisitive as to how I can support somebody else to have a happier, easier, less stressful life in that moment in time - whether that's been working throughout education, within social services, in the private sector, briefly when I was a wedding cake designer and a personal trainer. It's all come back, it's very eclectic isn't it? It's all come back to how can I help somebody else to have a happier, more enjoyable, easier way of doing life. And one of the things that my brain is really, really good at is spotting patterns.

Within my business now, I use this as much as possible to work with organisations to help spot patterns of friction and patterns of behaviour and to use that as data for how we can start to allow the business to evolve in a way that works for more people. So it kind of went from, I'm a little bit nosy, no, Maisie, you're not nosy, you're inquisitive, but actually I'm a really curious person. And so when I was looking at all those labels for my business and what my job titles could be, it just seemed a very natural fit to turn it into Chief Curiosity Officer.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (02:42)

I think it's a brilliant title and being curious about people is essential, isn't it, to finding out what makes them tick.

Maisie Cass (03:00)

I think it's the bit that businesses have lost a lot or adults as adults we lose being curious as children, children are really curious and we encourage that. But somewhere along the line that gets lost and we replace it with assumptions.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (03:14)

And how can businesses, you mentioned you think adults and businesses have maybe lost that and function more on assumptions, how can businesses feel supported to move towards a place of curiosity?

Maisie Cass (03:55)

I think there is an element of moving that mindset from firstly, if we make a mistake, then there are going to be real serious ramifications. Children, we tell them that making mistakes is a really good thing. It's how we learn. But as adults, again, in the same way that we seem to have lost that curiosity element to life, we also seem to have lost that approach of we learn by mistakes and instead there's this fear element that comes in that perhaps suggests that if we make a mistake, it's then going to be made very public, particularly in business, which is such a shame.  

So actually it's moving from that mindset of if we are looking at neurodiversity and neuroinclusion within organisations that there has to be that element of perfection. We have to be perfect in what we do and how we implement it. But actually what we're really looking for is a progress mindset. Where can we start? What can we do incrementally every day that's going to make a difference? And when we look back over 365 days, we can go, wow, that's 365 % worth of progress. And I think that's one of the places that businesses can really start to look at going forwards.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (05:15)

So for organisations just starting out on building these neuroinclusive practices and making those incremental changes can really feel quite daunting to start with, especially when they are concerned about getting it wrong. How do you move away from that fear of making mistakes?

Maisie Cass (05:36)

I think there has to be an element of courage. There really does because of the society that we live in. However, you can absolutely build confidence and courage around moving forwards with neuroinclusion through making sure that you have that knowledge and that education and understanding as to what neurodiversity actually is, how that is different from the terms neurodivergent and neurotypical and what a neuroinclusive organisation actually looks like, and how it functions where best practice is standard practice.  

And I think one of the biggest things to do is to start to normalise what that looks like. We normalise on Teams meetings and virtual meetings cameras being off, where our adjustments that we look at aren't just for one person. It's done by Universal Design. And I think one of the biggest advantages that can be used is every organisation has that manager, that lead, that employee who does things in a really fantastic way, a really human way, and they do it because they're a really nice person. But if we can look at the elements of how they are doing business, how they are supporting their teams, their colleagues, how they work themselves and we turn the way they do that into intention.  

And we make it a strategy so it's not just done because it's a nice to have, it's done because it's a strategic advantage.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (07:09)

Yeah, just looping back a little bit, Maisie, you talked about education and terminology, and that's one of the things that can seem quite daunting to somebody who maybe hasn't got neurodivergent family members, for example. Can you just give our listeners a really quick guide to some of the terminology that it might be useful to delve into.

Maisie Cass (07:41)

I think the very first thing that's really important for people to understand is that you do not have to be a neurodiversity specialist or expert to move forwards understanding this and having that courage and compassion. When we are looking at the terminology, there are three main terms that get used a lot at the moment, and that is neurodiversity, neurotypical, and neurodivergent. Now, if I go back...

10 years ago when I was working with organisations, I would be delivering say autism awareness training. It wouldn't have been neurodiversity training. So the term neurodiversity in the mainstream is actually really recent. But neurodiversity literally means everybody, every brain type, every neuro type, every way of thinking, because we are as, or our brains are as individual to us and as unique to us as our fingerprints are.

If people want to understand the other two terms which are used a lot within the world of neurodiversity, we have our neurotypical, which is where society deems that brain type, functioning, processing speed, size to be the typical.

Anything outside of that can be termed neurodivergent. So it is literally divergent of the norm. Now we have to be a little bit careful because that can offend people if they are diagnosed as autistic or dyslexic or dyspraxic or ADHD because to be told that your brain is divergent of the norm can make it sound that rather than just having a difference that there's something wrong. Yes. So what I like to do when I'm working with organisations is rather than being reliant on terminology, being reliant on disclosure or trying to diagnose what somebody might have or whether they are neurotypical or neurodivergent, it's how do we start to look at the person as an individual without needing to know what, if we do know, great, it's a brilliant starting point. But actually let's look at somebody and go, what do you need for your brain to work best for you?

Alex Holsgrove Jones (09:57)

I mean, it's also the case that a lot of people who may think they are neurotypical actually fit into the neurodivergent.

Maisie Cass (10:07)

That's really funny you should mention that. When I was delivering autism awareness training, so let's go back 2018, 2019, I would walk into a room. So my degrees in autism and intellectual disabilities, I have grown up in a very neurodivergent household. I'm raising neurodivergent children who are diagnosed. And I would walk into this room and I would offer a disclaimer and go, now I'm neurotypical.

So I'm offering this knowledge, a neurotypical person, because I've studied it, I've lived with it, I've researched it, but I'm neurotypical, I'm just a bit quirky. Until about two years after that, it transpired that maybe I wasn't neurotypical at all, and I was heavily masking. And once I realised that actually my brain did work in that neurodivergent way, life became a lot more fun.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (11:03)

Yeah, yeah. I think it's, I think hopefully society is moving away from the, I mean, I think I can say stigma that has been attached to neurodivergent individuals to actually seeing a lot of their skills as being brilliant. But, you know, it's, everybody's different, as you say, or as individual as your fingerprint. So, you know, even somebody who is, I don't know, dyslexic will be very different from another dyslexic. They're not all doing, you know, it's not the same for everybody. So I think you're just treating everybody as an individual, assessing what they need to make them fulfil, in a business sense, their career aspirations and work for the business is just going to be best for everybody.

Maisie Cass (11:59)

Just thinking about those three words, those terminologies as well, it's really important for organisations to understand that when we're talking about neurodiversity and neuroinclusive practices and approaches, what we're not doing is saying that we are trying to positively discriminate in favour of someone that's neurodivergent. Yes, we are absolutely trying to make sure that we can offer a more equitable way of working that works for the majority rather than the minority. But that's not saying that if you're neurotypical, you aren't creative or you aren't innovative. What we're saying is when it comes to neurodiversity as a whole is that we need every type of brain going and we need to create organisations and environments that bring the best out of everybody, allowing them to be individuals whilst working cohesively as a team.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (12:47)

Absolutely and you know there are going to be consequences for businesses that don't try to move in that direction. What are the repercussions you've seen in your experiences that business face by not engaging in this way?

Maisie Cass (13:04)

The biggest ones that are very current and cause a lot of challenges at the moment for organisations are high turnover of staff and talent loss. With all the employment laws that have changed recently and that have come into effect, organisations are under an awful lot of pressure to get the right candidate first time. And if they don't feel that they have for whatever reason gotten the right candidate, they need to know that in the onboarding process as quickly as possible.

So looking at, as I said, high turnover, talent loss, you have a real presenteeism within your workforce. You're looking at that negative employer brand as well. There is so much more awareness now, particularly from the younger generation coming through in the younger workforce, their expectations for what culture should look like. The one aspect that a lot of organisations don't necessarily factor in when I'm talking about neuroinclusion with them.  

They're very much looking at their workforce. They're very much considering their recruitment processes, but they don't necessarily extend it out into their partners, their investors, their customers, their clients. Because there is, when we look at the UK population, if 20 % of it is neurodivergent, and you're not allowing your businesses, practices, and processes, and brand perception attract that percentage of the population you're massively missing out which means that actually when you're looking at the sustainability of a business and you're looking at whether you have that competitive advantage against somebody else in your sector you aren't going to have it if you do not do business through a neuroinclusive lens. It really is that simple now.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (14:59)

What about organisations that are doing it well? What marks them out from their competitors and what advantages do they see for employees as well as the organisation at large? I mean, hopefully less of a staff turnover.

Maisie Cass (15:14)

Absolutely. And there are lots of businesses who really are doing it well. And one of the biggest identifiers of that is they're really proactive. They don't just wait for a problem to arise. They don't just wait to see that their staff turnover's gone up or their recruitment costs are going through the roof. They are already actively looking for where friction is showing up, where productivity is starting to dip, where staff wellbeing isn't where it should be on paper.  

And they are going out and getting really curious and they're asking people and they're not afraid of the feedback if it's negative.

Because when we can start to look at the behaviour of our workforces, when we can start to really feel the culture of our organisation, if it's not where we want it to be, rather than putting our heads in the sand and running away and hiding and go, no, it's great, it's lovely, let's just rebrand. We go, I can use this as data. And I can start to strategically work out what we could do differently. And it might start with just one person, you know, one workplace adjustment, one bit of friction that's showing up, but then if we start to consistently reduce or remove that bit of friction altogether, not just for that one person, but we try it for the whole team or the whole department or the whole building. And we start to see the results of that. And that's what organisations who are getting it right are doing. They are spotting the friction. They are getting really curious about who's in their workforce, what those neurotypes might be. They're getting really flexible and trusting in how their people work. So it's an output. It's an outcome process, regardless of how that employee gets there

Alex Holsgrove Jones (17:04)

Yeah.

Maisie Cass (17:05)

And that's making huge differences to those organisations who are getting really bold and confident in that way of allowing their organisation to run.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (17:17)

It all comes back to curiosity, doesn't it? really does. What would you say to hiring managers or recruiters to make their organisation or perhaps the hiring process more appealing to neurodivergent candidates because, you know, it can be quite daunting, can't it?

Maisie Cass (17:55)

It can and there are some really key fundamentals to the recruitment process that I go through with organisations which don't have to cost a lot if anything to adapt. The first one which we always look at is how visible, how transparent is your recruitment process. When somebody comes and sees a job description, can they see how long, when the deadline is for applying, when they should expect to hear back when the interviews are going to take place, what the interview process looks like, where it might be held, who it might be done by. So we make everything really visual. Because if the one thing that visibility does, not just for neurodivergent people, but for anybody applying for a role, is it lowers anxiety. It makes things more familiar. Yes. And our bodies, our central nervous systems, they like familiar, they like knowing. It's that curious element, isn't it?  

I wonder who's going to be interviewing me, wonder what the room would look like, where would I park, what does public transport look like. There are two other elements that I always advise businesses on. The first one is job descriptions.

When you are having a candidate read through potential candidate read through a job description, it has to make sense to them. If you are unsure if your job description is accessible in terms of it being interpreted to the neurodivergent brain, make sure that there is somebody on your team who is neurodivergent, who can read it for you because they will quite quickly say to you, well, you say I need to have excellent communication skills, but in what? And all of us in the hiring manager go, well, what I really want is they need to be really good at speaking face-to-face to clients, or it's a customer service role, or whatever that looks like. So we get really specific on that. It's looking at removing any ambiguity from a job role. So the person applying for it can very quickly go, that is absolutely me.

But there's also getting really confident in how you are asking your candidate to showcase their skills. Because then the neurodivergent person, and I'm going to generalise and stereotype slightly here. So I always have to be mindful of that. But from the thousands of people I have spoken to who are neurodivergent over the past 20 years, this would go with all of those.

Standardized interview processes just do not suit the neurodivergent brain. That recall of information on the spot, the trying to showcase your value and your skills in the moment is really, really tricky. So I always suggest handing out interview questions prior.

I also suggest that interviews could be done on more of an assessment basis. Wherever practical, you know, they can come in for a couple of hours and actually work with somebody in the team and showcase their skills that way. If they have a project portfolio that they can bring along to showcase where their skills are and what they've already done. Because when you look at forms and filling in all this stuff that is required in an interview, if I take my ADHD brain, it takes one look, recruitment form and goes no I'm bored already I'm not doing it but then they're going to miss out on somebody like myself yeah purely because there's a barrier because my brain goes no that's too boring. You know, allow me to record a 60 second video telling you who I am and being flamboyant and using my hands too much and see what you think then yeah so when it comes to recruiters it's absolutely make sure you have someone neurodivergent looking over it someone that's autistic and would really like literal thinking, so the ambiguity goes.  

The ADHD brain where it needs to be really concise so that they don't get bored halfway through reading it. And from the dyslexia point of view as well, when you're looking at fonts, styles, sizes, colours, contrasts, really take that into consideration because if you can, the biggest advantage to this is you'll tap into an untapped pool of candidates, because other businesses can't reach them either. And if you can do that, all of a sudden it makes recruiting a lot easier and a lot more successful finding the right candidate first time.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (22:27)

Wow, that's such great advice, Maisie.  And for those candidates themselves, what advice would you give them both during the interview and recruitment process and then when they're within an organisation to help them feel understood?

Maisie Cass (22:55)

One of the disconnects I'm finding within organisations who really are proactively wanting to be neuroinclusive is there is a lot of emphasis placed on managers and team leads to understand what neurodiversity is, what it means to be neurodivergent, how traits might show up, how you might support, what adjustments there might be. But how many of those organisations offer the same information and education to the whole organisation, the whole workforce. Because as an employee, if you have somebody coming up to you, a manager, and saying, I can see something's not working, what might help? If you don't understand the way your brain works, and how and when friction shows up, it sits in your central nervous system and comes out as a behaviour. Anxiety, masking, being really blunt, only being able to feel like you can respond to emails at 3 a.m. So whether you are a candidate and going through the recruitment process, whether you've just been onboarded because you're successful in the recruitment process, or whether you're a longstanding employee, one of the best things you can do is get to know how your brain works, regardless of whether you are diagnosed, undiagnosed, self-diagnosed, on a journey, it doesn't matter if you do or don't know whether you're neurotypical or neurodivergent.  

Get really curious as to the days that work really well for you and why they were really good days, why you were really productive, what was it about, what were you wearing, what was the weather like, how were you communicated with? Start making notes about it. But then equally start to look at what causes resistance to your productivity levels and to your wellbeing. Go, that day didn't feel really very good did it? Why was that? And start writing it down because if you can start to recognise patterns in your own day, whether that's working day or at home, and then you can start taking that information and going well actually I know that if I've got a really busy day, ideally I need my day to run like this. I need to be working from a cafe or I need to be in complete solitude. But then once you get really confident and comfortable with knowing that's how your brain works that's when you can advocate it for yourself.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (25:21)

So it's all about self-awareness, isn't it?

I know we've talked a little bit about the language that we use to talk about neurodiversity and it is central to a lot of the concerns people have, but it does also make people feel more understood.  

Where do you see the language of neurodiversity moving? You've already referred to the fact that when you did training several years ago, you would have been doing autism awareness training, and now that's changed. How would you like to see it evolve?

Maisie Cass (26:52)

It is evolving already and it's wonderful to see, as you rightly said, the fact that we've gone from autism awareness training through to neurodiversity training. If we look 10, 15, 20 years ago, organisation society was very reliant on having that diagnosis in place to then offer autistic support or ADHD support. But actually it was always from a place of where are you being challenged?

Where are you struggling? Where are your deficits? Whereas now what we're really looking at is natural difference rather than it being wrong. The strengths based approach, which is much more holistic and wonderful. But it's also that element of we're not looking at labels. We're not asking managers to diagnose or to make assumptions about somebody that whether it's a client, customer,

it doesn't matter, we're not asking that out of anybody anymore. We are looking at shifting everything from a place of equality, which was great, to a place of equity. So it's no longer enough to just say, we offer everyone the same. We have to go a step further and go, but we have to offer individuals what they need for them to be able to achieve the same outcome as their colleague, even if how they're doing it and the support they're receiving to do it looks different and that's okay. And if we can move to that place of a more equitable way of working, that's when we can really start to, as you mentioned earlier, we can start to reduce that stigma. We normalise the fact that everybody needs something slightly different to perform at their optimum. And it's a very collaborative approach between the employer and the employee. It has to be. It can't just sit on one person's shoulders.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (28:50)

And when do you think we'll get there, Maisie?

Maisie Cass (28:52)

I think that we are already getting there. I think there's a lot more awareness and a lot more action being taken now. There was some research done a little while ago and it suggested that by 2040 as much as 40 % of the global workforce will self-identify as neurodivergent. So if that is the case, by 2040 and that's not that long away now, what 13 years really? That's nearly half of every boardroom, every staff room, every workforce, every customer base is going to be neurodivergent. So we are going to very quickly start to see a difference in those businesses that are really proactive in building neuroinclusion into their business strategy and those who aren't yet.

So I think that we're already seeing things evolve. I think there's a lot of work still to be done. I think that the media has a real responsibility in how it frames neurodivergence.

I can see there is light at the end of the tunnel. And apart from anything, both my children will be entering the world of work within the next 10 years. So I am on an absolute mission for global domination to make sure that when they get there, everything that they bring with them, their quirks, their oddities, their creative thinking, their different way of doing things is seen as a real strength as an employee or if they set up their own business. And I want the world to welcome them with open arms as with any other student child coming through. So that's my mission at the moment.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (30:42)

So Maisie, I'm conscious that we've spent a long time. We could we could carry on I'm sure but talking about the moving forwards to 2040. We always like to give our listeners one practical action they can take away, do in the next month or so to drive real change. On this, what would you like to see people do?

Maisie Cass (31:22)

I could give you at least a dozen. But I promise I'll...

Alex Holsgrove Jones (31:24)

You can have up to three!

Maisie Cass (31:26)

I will stick with one and we'll see how we do for time. If organisations could just do one thing, it is look for friction that's showing up. Take their sphere of influence, just what they can control, nothing more than that, otherwise it gets overwhelming. Start to get really curious, either for themselves as an individual, or they can do it in their family home, if friction is showing up there, or if they've got a team and they can see that things could run better, smoother, could be more productivity there. Get really curious as to what's one bit of friction that might be showing up. It could be something as simple as putting in a shared agenda before a meeting, but making it so intentional that every single meeting that happens under your watch, everybody knows that the agenda will go out 48 hours beforehand without fail. And they have 48 hours to comment on it, amend it if needed, whatever that looks like. But it becomes standard practice. They will always get that agenda. So just get curious, look for one thing that's showing up that could potentially be done differently for one employee, say.

And then see what might happen if you consistently use that approach every single day and then look back over a month or a 90 day stretch and see what difference, what impact reducing or removing that one bit of friction has made not just to that individual but to the whole of your department and go from there.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (33:05)

Wow, that's a really manageable thing to do, isn't it? But it could have a huge impact.

Maisie, thank you so much for joining me today. I've really loved our chat.

Maisie Cass (34:11)

It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Alex Holsgrove Jones (34:13)

You're very welcome and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode don't forget to subscribe and share and until next time keep driving positive change and putting ESG into action.

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