So what you're about to talk to us about now is building an inclusive workplace, and supporting those people with ADHD and also improving on the recruitment process. Yeah? That's correct.

It's it's really about, just understanding the potential because I think that we're we're we're we're got a high risk of talking about the deficits and and talking about what what we can't do and what we struggle with. So I really do want to talk about it from from the what's the potential here and also for people to think about flipping it on its head, I think we do need to start changing the narrative here. I don't think that that neurodiverse.

People, particularly ADHD people, are at fault for all the challenges that they have in the workplace. I think that we've got to also remember that the way that the workplace and the way the world has been built is is based around a neurotypical thought process. And I think if we start to flip that narrative and actually start to acknowledge that the reason why some things don't work for us is because they weren't designed for us.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the way diversity is important, diversity of thought is just as important, and they have such an important place in the workforce.

That's right. So I'm going to try and pull up my presentation now, hopefully, and I can hopefully play it from I will see the team on the other side. Yes. Thank you. And it's here. So I can just click, I think, or can I click from this slide? Press presenter mode. Is it gonna let me click? Yes. Thank you for that. Well, welcome, everyone. And, again, I'm going to start with acknowledging the traditional owners of the oh, I've got a bit of a delay on my side. I'm going to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which we meet today. That's the people of the Wurundjeri nation. I am coming from Melbourne.

And so I just think it's important, and this is a picture that I actually took at the last Aurora or my friend took at the last Aurora. And I think it's important to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land. And I pay my respect to any elders here today and all elders past, present, and emerging. So I'm going to I'm going to start by talking a bit about my own journey in terms of ADHD and employment and what it's like in terms of navigating your career and work when you need ADHD. Sometimes I think back to the jobs that I tried or some of the places that I attempted to work in and think to myself, why wasn't I successful or why didn't I stay there very long? Why didn't that work for me so much? And and the reason for that is.

The the ADHD brain is built to have dopamine fade in. It it craves that passion, the excitement, and the energy that that the neurotypical brain gets enough of on its own. So you you are highly driven by stuff that is either of great interest to you or that gives you that dopamine release. And that's why a lot of the time when you see the changeable careers or the changeability in your early roles or early career, it's not just because you have impulsivity. It's because a lot of the time you pick something that doesn't fit or you try to fit into something because you think that that's a good career. But in terms of what happens in that job or what is expected of that job, it doesn't cover enough of your interests or your motivations. So.

Like Andrew in the last session, when I originally went to university, I was going to start a career in law. And I only picked law because I knew that I was good with words. I knew I was good at writing. I knew that I was good at talking, and I knew that I was good at debate. But did it hold my passion? It probably didn't. And when I actually came out to Australia on a year's working visa, I was introduced to a young guy who was same age as me. My sister had told me that this person was a a local guy that she knew his mom from from from our work, and they introduced me to him. And when I went and met him, he was a classically autistic young man. He didn't have any language. And I discovered at that point in time that my interest.

Was really peaked. I was fascinated by how different people could be, how people's behaviors, and how people's journeys could be different. And I think that's what started the journey for me. And I'm so grateful for it today. I know for the fact that it's been that journey and those, like, key moments. And when you can feel that drive and when you can feel that passion or that energy when something grabs you, that's a good start or a good, instigator. If you had any ADHD around that, look, this is something that's resonating with me. This is something that I can't let go of. We had Mel Webster in the last session talk about her work and her passion for disability and disability advancement and inclusion being her key driver. So if you do.

Work in a job where it feels as if you're doing the grave graveyard shift all the time and if you're not getting that satisfaction or that energy out of it, then chances are you might want to look at something different. So I think it's important to look at what ADHD is. Now I feel as if it's going through this slide in this audience might be unnecessary, but I think it's still important to talk through definitions and to talk about this a little bit. So just a quick one zero one of what ADHD is. ADHD can be explained as a neuro I'll stop and start again. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition that's characterized in three buckets. So it's inattentive, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. The common traits that exist around ADHD are.

Things like difficulty in focus and organization, difficulty with short term memory, impulsivity, which can lead to risk taking behaviors, emotional dysregulation, hyperfocus or particular hyperfixations or focuses on particular areas of interest or tasks. Now that's how it's sort of listed under this DSM. There are also well, there's common traits that are also significant areas of difference because, like, many neurodevelopmental conditions, there is a spectrum of of of how you sit in terms of the the different presentations. So people do present.

Differently. As we heard in the last session, some people need mind mapping and need clear focus and rundown of what they're doing and need to actually list absolutely everything to keep the mind and the brain, taking over. Whereas other individuals can be highly visual and hold that visual field in their head and actually use that visual field to then just use the one word prompt to go through the day. The statistics of ADHD are around about four percent of the population, but that's only based on those that have been diagnosed. So we have to assume that it is much higher than that. And we have to assume that that with the the change in presentations and what we now understand to be different.

Observations around how people, particularly women and late diagnosis ADHD people present that there is going to be continued left in that sort of prevalence. And that leads me to the point about is ADHD on the rise? Well, I don't think it's on the rise. I think it's always been there. I think that what we are seeing now is that improved awareness and understanding. We've got better diagnostic tools. We've got better understanding of how it shows up in other individuals. And I think that because there are better diagnostic tools for children and and young people, it means that people who have misdiagnosis.

In their own childhood or their their own early years are now actually getting that chance to utilize or understand the diagnostic model now. And because the work demands and mental health awareness has become more apparent in the last few years, that's another reason why I think ADHD has come more to the to the sort of center stage as being a focus of what could potentially have previously been seen as a mental health condition. So a bit about the stats in terms of employment. The unemployed the the reason why I'm having this conversation is because the stats aren't great. The stat the stats the stats just now are quite disappointing. So I think about thirty percent of individuals well.

About thirty percent of individuals are more likely to experience unemployment than their neurotypical peers. And that also may it mean insecurity in their employment. So if you look at job retention in ADHD, there is interesting research where we can see higher rates of turnover and more frequent job sort of churn for ADHD individuals. And that's around adapting to the workplace conditions or actually managing to maintain their their condition within the workplace. And I'm gonna go into that in a bit more detail, and that's what a lot of this session will focus on. Now, again, the reason why this session is really important is because we can hear again from the the sources from that are listed at the bottom of the page. I did source this.

That sixty to seventy percent of adults with ADHD report significant challenge in the workplace. Now that sound wary, it's sixty to seventy percent. That means that our workplaces are really either not well designed, not inclusive, or that sixty to seventy percent of people who had ADHD aren't working in the right job. And I don't believe that to be the case given some of the conversations that we've had that most people who had ADHD tend to lean towards something that suits their interests. So I would see there is a good chance if people are having some challenge in the workplace that a lot of that will be down to the actual conditions in the workplace and how they have to manage the time or manage their performance in the workplace.

With the ADHD. An interesting fact, and I think that it's a political comment and a statement as well. It's good for us to use when we're when we're leaning this conversation towards should the government get involved and should the government mandate for workplaces to be more inclusive. Well, at this point in time, from Deloitte's last report in 2019, it's estimated that it costs around about 20,000,000,000 per year on productivity lost inside businesses either with people taking time off, absenteeism, job loss and job churn, re recruitment, and just the the untreated costs of what it costs in society for people who are undiagnosed in ADHD.

That's a major cost. So that there is a definite argument around that we need to take a more proactive approach inside businesses to look at how we actually apply inclusive strategies for ADHD individuals at work. So I want us to look at this a bit differently to start with. And, yes, I'm being I'm being topical with with Trump. Trump's campaign so far and Trump's behaviors, are very strongly aligned with pointing out who isn't doing the job or that it was someone else, not him. And I think that that's an interesting angle to look at in terms of how we look at the common challenges for, people that are ADHD, in the workplace. If we look at the types of challenges that people can experience with the workplace.

Instead of us going with the lens of what is the the difficulty that the person's having, is it their organization skills, is it their impulsivity, Is it, their inability to concentrate or sit still or stay on task? I want us to to to look at the other the other part. So if we take distraction as the first item, if you think about someone who's ADHD being distracted, let's think about the workplace environment. So does the workplace environment create an optimum place for individuals to avoid distraction. I go back to the kind of post well, not post, actually, pre COVID world when people were back in the new fancy offices that had shared working spaces and idea spaces and places to play and stay or shower and go out or.

Perform and collaborate. Now while these these spaces might have had a time or might have had a purpose, Open plan offices are not always the best environment for individuals who are neurodivergent. And, actually, not just individuals that are neurodivergent. There is a growing amount of evidence to show that there is a change to the way that people want to work, especially post COVID because there is a higher incidence of people that have worked from home and have gotten used to working in more targeted or focused spaces. But when you do go back into the office and you work in open plan spaces, the noise, the movement.

And the lighting, and everything that happens in the office can actually be overwhelming and can make it really difficult for people to concentrate. So imagine that for people that had ADHD. Then think about what what offices often look like. And offices are often really brightly lit, have got lots of signage and branding, kind of plants, desks, filing cabinets, paper, printers, noise, microwave, kitchen smells. So the visual.

Clutter and the sensory stimulation that you can get from an office environment can actually cause increased distraction. So, again, I just want us to think about flipping that that we talk about a person being easily distracted and a person with ADHD not been able to focus at work, but let's look at it as an environmental factor. And, actually, the office doesn't lend its hand to allowing a clear space for someone to work in a focused way. I also think that the other piece that is a common area of practice inside the traditional neurotypical workplace environment, and I think Andrew Thompson, our panel member from our last set session, spoke to quite well that a lot of businesses, especially corporate businesses here in Australia.

Operate under rigid structures and hierarchical models that make it really hard to apply any type of creativity, any type of free thinking or change, or adapt adaptions to how you might want to work to get to the the end game or the end task. It's it's got to be done in a very, very specific linear way, and that doesn't work for the lateral brain or the lateral thinker. So a lot of these traditional nine to five working models inside of project plans and really locked down processes can actually make it really difficult for people, especially if there isn't flexibility around task management or how to do a task. It's not a one size fits all. So it's really, really important that we, again, think about that. The there's a clear.

Issue with communication in offices. And, again, I go back to the last session that you can either have an excessive amount of communication and you've got to keep across all channels. So you may be looking at things on email. You may be looking at things on your Slack channels. You may be looking at things on Teams. You'll be looking at things in your drives. And that is actually really overwhelming. And you actually need to learn rules just to understand, negotiate where or how you're going to think or where you're gonna put your time. So, again, flipping this all on its head and thinking about whether or not the office has been set up and the teams have been set up in a way that make it reasonable or friendly or inclusive.

These are things that we need to think about. I won't spend too much longer on this, but other areas that are challenging in the traditional or neurotypical workplace environment that don't lend themselves to being friendly or inclusive are the lack of task variety, the lack of autonomy that people can actually then set up, drive, and lead their own tasks and run and get things done. The lack of engaging performance metrics, things can usually be done pretty oh, it it they they can be done in a way that it just looks at qualitative, like, data contributors, and it doesn't look at the quantitative aspect of what someone's done. I also think that the it's been spoken about early on in the conference, but the piece around social dynamics.

Social dynamics and social expectations and pressures in the workplace can make it really, really difficult for ADHD individuals. So I think that there is something around creating workplace rules or creating a workplace mission that is really supportive of everyone, that that these are things that are missing definitely in the traditional or the neurotypical workplace environment, which leads to social misunderstandings or workplace misunderstandings and inevitably lead to people being either churned or removed from the environment or feeling like they don't fit in the workplace. Putting it in its traditional lens. So if we flip the coin and look at all all the things that we've just spoken about, the things that mainly come up as issues.

For people who are ADHD at work are disorganization, difficulty managing time and tasks, issues in communication styles, issues with staying focused, and sensitivity to criticism. Now you can see from what we've just been talking about that if you actually look at the things that have been set up in typical offices such as rigid structures for performance and communication, the the setup of the environment, and the actual rules or the ways that people meet and talk in the environment. These are things that are things that could be easily changed, and I'm not saying that for an ADHD person that the the world would be fixed if the office made all these changes.

But what I'm saying about ADHD inclusive inclusivity in the workplace is if we focus more on the things that we don't do well in environments that could make environments more inclusive, then it would be much easier for people who had ADHD or for people that do have support requirements in the workplace to get what they needed because they wouldn't have to actually ask to make the changes if we just set the environments up more inclusively. So what do we mean by inclusion? It's it seems like it's been a buzzword for so long now, and nearly everyone has it in their strategy. And most organizations know, to some degree, have a diversity and inclusion plan. So that means that if you are looking at inclusion, you are, as an organization.

Aiming to provide equal access and opportunities and resources to people who otherwise would be marginalized, excluded, or disadvantaged. So think back to what I've just mentioned around the setup of traditional offices. And immediately when you think about inclusion, we can see that there is a fair bit of work to be done because offices aren't set up to be inclusive. Offices are set up to play a particular function and are set up as traditional work environments. That is more and more businesses that are starting to put more focus into universal design. And universally inclusive design is about creating workplaces that do lend themselves to different banking processes, different capabilities, and different styles. And.

That's where we're going to see really significant change in the workplace. So yesterday, I actually came on to the the call at around about, I think, 10:30 or 11:00 last night, and I heard the first presentation on, ADHD employment and recruitment and what was effective, within The UK for Tanya Martin working with. Tanya's gone on successfully to actually set up her own consultancy business to actually help create more inclusive workplaces for neurodivergent individuals. And I think to my experience of specialist, think that a first step to inclusion in the workplace is being intentional about it. I think it is important for businesses and workplaces to make an intentional effort to change what they're doing. And for example.

During my tenure and my time at specialist, the main focus of our work was to go inside businesses, and it was to work with businesses end to end through their recruitment and advertising process to look at how they could change and adapt their advertising processes to be more practical, to be easier to read, to take away jargon and language that wasn't needed through to how they would actually advertise the position and what they would ask people to do in terms of early applications so that they weren't making them hard to navigate or jump through too many hoops into the actual recruitment and assessment process itself because the again, the traditional interview process can often be quite exclusionary.

Of of people that are neurodivergent and particularly people that are ADHD and autistic. So these intentional programs to drive inclusivity are important. But what what we need to get to is we'll we'll we'll go past the point in time where we run specific programs like the neurodivergent programs, like the autism at work programs. And we will need to to mature beyond the point where there is a specific targeted program or practice put in place to create a pathway for ADHD individuals into work. I think we would act now. We need to move towards every single business in every single area of work, whether it's in care or professional industry or education. I think every single business needs to learn universal design inclusivity.

Because if we look at the generations that are coming through now, there are different thought processes. Children and students are interacting definitely with each other, and people do have different expectations of how we're going to work. And those environments that we've become very used to, those are fixed nine to five environments that are highly inflexible, that aren't creative, I don't think are going to suit the workforce of the future. So we we do need to rethink inclusion, inclusive spaces, and how we work collectively in the future. So what does what might that look like, actually? What what may what may an inclusive sort of model or approach to work look like? This goes back to my my Trump.

Style meme earlier on. But I think it's about looking at your environment differently and looking at cause and effect and and what is needed to create environments that nurture support and create people create opportunities for people to thrive. So the examples that I've given here are quite common examples that we've just talk talked about. One of the key issues that can happen in the workplace, for many people that challenge people to stay and maintain safety and retain the job is communication. If communication is indirect, if feedback doesn't work effectively, if comms aren't written in a way that supports a person, then it can have a negative effect. And that negative effect in ADHD might be misunderstanding task.

Increased levels of anxiety, feedback sensitivity, and actually loss of job. Because if you don't understand the messages or the instructions that have been shared with you, there's a good chance that you won't perform. And if you don't perform and you're not doing what's asked, then there's a good chance that you're out the door. So there are simple solutions to that, and that looks like giving concise factual and I actually feel embarrassed to talk about this because it all seems so easy to say, well, giving concise, factual, and specific information and clear expectations for communication will help that. Being balanced and constructive in feedback and focusing on behavior and items as opposed to a person's personality.

And offer follow-up support in trying to help somebody fix something. So what I noticed when we started looking at this and say what places when we actually started to look and say the culture of businesses and then say the workplace practices was the types of things that we were asking businesses to change when we looked at causational factors of why certain things might not work for people. The the effect or the issue was most likely going to affect every staff member in the workplace. So while we've put up communication, it's been a significant issue for someone who is ADHD or neurodivergent or who might have a sensory processing disorder or an intellectual disability. Anyone that doesn't get clear communication, neurodivergent or not.

Might be at risk of misunderstanding. So it's in a workplace's best interest by universal design to create processes in their environment to make information clear, concise, not messy, not all over the place, to to create communication systems that people can easily understand, put their hand to, and utilize. I say the same about the open plan environment. It can cause distraction, and that's not something that works for lots of people. There are challenges within the the return to office that lots of people are having now. It's important that we actually create a flexible office environment, that we create opportunities for working space that can be quiet zones, clutter free, noise controlled.

And allow for work from from home arrangements. Because, again, when we look at the post COVID world and we look at more inclusive workplaces, there are a lot of people now post COVID who actually do want to have a work life balance, do feel that they can work well from home, and do have other responsibilities of parenting duties and juggles and to be able to keep people in the workplace. Again, it's important that we get workplaces to think more about how they actually create workspaces that can help people. I don't know if I've forgot to put this slide in for tips for individuals. No. I have got it in. That's good. But I'm gonna drill down more on tips for individuals who had ADHD to tackle. Let me have a look.

This is actually one of my favorite memes at the moment. So and I actually really relate to this one, the amounts of times that in my career and not just early career, but even now, the amounts of times as a as an ADHD person in the workplace where I still struggle with the rules of engagement in the office and the conversations that are in the particular meetings that I'm having. And I know that my brain is going off on one when I think to myself, I've got an idea or I've got a burning question or something's there, and I need to see it. And how do I have this conversation? Do I just jump in? Do I just put my hand up? Do I just interrupt? Do I trip over my words? Do I see it do I see it wrong? Do I zone out?

The the these are these are things that happen frequently for individuals who had ADHD in the workplace. And I think that the more we talk about these things and actually look at how we can fix these things or work through solutions to how we better navigate and there are solutions. They don't work all the time, but there are different tools or different strategies that you can use to work through the workplace. So here's my list of some different things that you can do as an ADHD person in the workplace. I will start with time management. So we have heard in our last session and and some of the other sessions, what do people do to actually be effective in support managing their time at work? Well, the use of planners is.

A balance because it works for some people, and it doesn't work for others. But, certainly, some degree of structure is something that we do all need. And you have to work yourself to to paint to identify what type of planner works for you. So it might well be that it's drilled down into detail and that you time block specific tasks and activities so that you can chunk task downs a task down. Or it might well be that you just work to you have a deadline and you have to finish or complete one whole task and you time block yourself out that time. And as long as you've got that task finished by the end of that time, you might not have to stipulate or break the task down. The the use of.

Timers and alarms is also useful and the use of color coding and flags. And I know that every day in my calendar when I'm working, I definitely use or make use of prioritization colors. So that's that's useful as well. Other things that we want to use or look at are things like managing communication. So like I spoke about at the start, one of the key things that you can be challenged by are when to question, how to talk, or how to work through things. And for me, some of that is about self control and actually making myself notes or finding other ways in which we can manage information. I'm going to I'm running out of time because I know that we ran slightly over.

So I'm going to move to next slide, and I'll share these slides after I've finished. But there's a whole heap of tips of what you can do in the workplace. The next item is tips for employers. So tips for employers are things like like I've said, really think about your work environment, really think about the individual and the individual that's working with you in the workplace. Every single staff member, whether they've got a disclosed disability or a condition or not, you should actually really set up a a process at the start of someone's employment and then getting to know what helps them to work best, what they need to thrive in the workplace, whether they like quiet conditions, whether they like focused places to work.

Whether or not they prefer different types of or certain types of communication tools, whether they're an auditory learner or a visual learner or a bit of both. These are all things that as an employer, if you get to know your staff individually, you'll get the best out of them. I think encouraging flexibility in tasks and encouraging a strengths based approach to how how you actually use people at work, so know what people are good at and use the strengths is highly valuable. And I also think don't be around the bush. Be specific and direct. Be clear and factual and concise and give feedback constructively. And if you have got anything critical or constructive to say to someone, please do it in private. Don't do it publicly.

But always please in public. I think that any employer can do well to educate themselves. I think that that's really, really important. And I think, like I said earlier, that's the next step. It's about thinking about an inclusive design plan and actually doing your best to educate yourselves and actually find out a bit about the demographic of your workforce. So just a bit about if you are an ADHD person and you are thinking about where where might be a good place for me to work or where might be a good place for me to start, the answer is that ADHD people could work anywhere if you really think about it, whether it's creative fields, entrepreneurship, fast paced or high performance rules, technology, consultancy.

And the the reason being is because people who are ADHD can pretty much put put their mind to to lots of different things. If if you're in a creative field, people who are ADHD can be highly visual, so are really good at looking at visual concepts, conceptualizing, etcetera. Or if you work in a sales environment or a high demanding environment like a hospital or a health care sector. The these are high dopamine driving environments where you need to actually act fast. You actually have to turn things around, and you have to be hyper focused. So, again, people who had ADHD can work in lots of different environments.

There's there's always been this piece about but where can they really fit if you can't pay attention or if you you can't focus on things for long periods of time? Well, you can. You can absolutely do that if you're focused and you're passionate about it. And the slides I will provide slides notes after this so there is a bit more in-depth information about why there are particular areas that people should focus on. But you can see here, I put it as number 10, that thinking about places where you can actually work with high autonomy, you can see what you're doing, and you've get low clarity is really, really useful for a person who's ADHD. Tips for recruiters. Now this is this is an important sort of before I finish up.

This is one that I'm I'm deeply passionate about, and I think there needs to be a major change to how we think about recruitment anyway. I think that quite often when we go into any type of interview, it's highly stressful environment for everyone, not just for a neurodivergent person, but even more so with a neurodivergent person, particularly ADHDers who are already thinking about that failure or that apprehension that they're gonna mark up at the start. But things like creating a clear, line of sight about what is gonna be involved in the interview, Asking for interview information to be given out in advance, like walk through the process, tell people what the journey is going to look like.

What how how the process is gonna be stepped out. Ideally, if you can give questions in advance to people, and that's it's not cheating. It's not like a like, given given the game away. I think if most interviews now are asking scenario based questions and you're putting people in a panel full of strangers and you're asking people to comment on the spot, then there is a good chance that an ADHD person is gonna be able to answer that. We're we're not shy on being able to have conversation. But will you get our best answer? No. Probably not. If you actually give people time to look at scenarios and give people time to think about the responses, you're gonna get the most out of people. I think make the interview structured.

So that means, like, what we had on the panel, if you have got seven questions in forty five minutes, let the person know that you want a bit of a start, middle, and end, one or two scenarios, and if they can answer the question in five minutes because there is a tendency to go down a rabbit warden, so it is good to put time parameters and structures during questions. I think flexibility in assessments by allowing people to test a task or do a task or go off and create something for you is extremely useful. And I think being mindful of the environment that you choose to do interviews in. Remember that visual clutter and distractions. So think about a space that is quite calming.

And actually helps the person to stay focused and be in the moment. Like, any neurodivergent or graduate or intern program, I would see that if a person hasn't worked before or has got a broken career history, don't don't just go to judge if they've got good skill sets, good technical skill sets, and can answer questions. Well, think about a work trial and always use the probationary period. I think that that's something that you really need to to think about. And a person who has got a high level of passion and motivation for a particular type of work is actually a really valuable candidate. So if they don't have a lot of, career experience, but they have the skills and the passion, that that could be a really valuable commodity.

And and actually allow the person to draw attention to their skill sets. Like, allow the person to actually tell you what their skills and strengths are. And I know we do that in interviews, but get get them to give you examples of where they've used it. That's really, really useful. Again, I'll share these tools and tips in rating Westlade's out of session. So I have run out of time, and I know that Rose is coming on after me, and I know that everyone will be waiting to see her. So just finally, I think it's really important to to make sure that when you are an ADHD person or a supporter or a hiring manager or a line manager of a person with ADHD, that you make sure.

That the person or yourself that you're completely engaged and focused on your work. You have to be driven to be there. It's very hard to get up in the morning and to come into work, so you have to look at a topic or a subject that keeps you busy, that keeps you motivated, and makes you want to get up in the morning. That's that's what feeds us our dopamine and what makes it important. And I can certainly say that if it wasn't for my passion for neurodivergence and making sure that we've got an inclusive practice in the workplace or working towards more inclusive.

And general inclusive practices in the workplace, I probably wouldn't get up in the morning. I get up because I want to make a difference. It's my driver. And once we find our driver, we can be better at what we do. Thanks for your time and attention. I know it's been.

Marathon effort. Thank you so much. It's absolutely fascinating. So appreciate your your presentation.

Thanks a lot for that.

Take care.