Rising awareness of ADHD in the workplace and neurodivergence is changing conversations at work. But the real challenge is not adapting the workplace to a new kind of employee. It is recognising how many workplace systems were built around one assumed way of thinking, communicating and performing.
A recent BBC article asked whether workplaces have caught up with the rise in ADHD diagnoses.
It is an important question.
But perhaps there is another one worth asking first:
Has ADHD really changed the workplace, or has greater recognition of neurodivergence simply made existing workplace barriers harder to ignore?
Because neurodivergent people are not new to our organisations. They have been leading teams, meeting deadlines, solving problems, interviewing for roles, sitting through performance reviews and navigating workplace politics for generations.
What has changed is our understanding.
And with that understanding comes a more uncomfortable question for employers: how much of what we have historically called poor attitude, weak communication, lack of organisation or underperformance was actually a mismatch between the person and the way work had been designed?
When difference is mistaken for difficulty
The BBC article discusses the case of former Lidl deputy store manager Ryan Toghill, who has ADHD.
The case involved a serious workplace safety issue. The tribunal found that Toghill understood rules around the use of powered pallet trucks and that those rules were clear. Neuroinclusion does not mean pretending that conduct, capability or health and safety requirements do not matter.
But the tribunal also found that his dismissal was unfair and wrongful, that his dismissal amounted to unfavourable treatment arising from disability, and that reasonable adjustments had not been made to the disciplinary hearing.
That distinction matters.
The lesson is not that neurodivergent employees should be exempt from workplace standards. It is that we need to be confident the environment and process allow someone a fair opportunity to meet those standards in the first place.
The tribunal heard evidence about difficulties Toghill experienced with processing questions, concentrating during longer conversations and expressing himself in high-pressure situations.
Those differences can easily become judgements:
Someone takes longer to answer, so we assume they are evasive.
An employee asks for instructions again, so we assume they were not listening.
A team member struggles to articulate themselves in a formal meeting, so we assume they have no explanation.
A manager communicates without the facial expression, tone or body language we expect, so we interpret their attitude rather than their words.
These judgements can feel objective.
Often, they are anything but.
The problem is bigger than individual managers
It would be easy to turn stories like this into a lesson about managers needing more neurodiversity awareness training.
Managers absolutely need knowledge and support. But training one manager at a time will not fix a system that still relies on employees encountering the right person at the right moment.
A February 2026 Acas survey, conducted by YouGov with 1,000 employees across Great Britain, found that just 32% believe their organisation effectively trains managers to identify and make reasonable adjustments for neurodivergent colleagues. More thought their employer was ineffective, and almost a third simply did not know.
That is a considerable gap.
Because a manager can be compassionate and still not know what to do. They might recognise that someone is struggling but not know what support is available. They might want to approve an adjustment but not know whether they have the authority. They may worry that allowing one person to work differently is unfair to everybody else. Or may simply never have been taught to question whether a workplace expectation is genuinely necessary.
The result is inconsistency.
One employee gets support immediately.
The second spends months trying to work out who to ask.
The third manages the barrier privately.
The fourth reaches a performance process before anybody asks whether the way they are working could be changed.
If neuroinclusion depends entirely on the quality of an individual manager, it is not yet embedded in the organisation.
Support should not begin at the point of failure
There is another pattern worth challenging.
Too often, the workplace support journey looks something like this:
- An employee struggles. Performance starts to drop.
- Their manager notices. The employee is asked what is wrong.
- Disclosure becomes necessary. A diagnosis might be discussed.
- HR gets involved. Adjustments are explored.
- Eventually, something changes.
Sometimes that sequence is unavoidable. But it should not be the default.
Acas now recommends organisations consider support that can be made available to everybody, allowing neurodivergent employees to access some forms of support without having to disclose their neurodivergence. It gives examples such as quiet working spaces and noise-cancelling headphones, while making clear that universal support does not replace an employer’s duty to make individual reasonable adjustments where required.
That principle can go much further:
- Clear written actions after meetings.
- Agendas in advance.
- Different ways to contribute to discussions.
- Focused working time.
- Specific rather than ambiguous instructions.
- Flexibility around communication methods.
- Better designed recruitment processes.
- The ability to privately identify adjustments that help you work.
None of these require an organisation to know somebody’s diagnosis before they become useful. And many improve work for everybody.
Neuroinclusion is not lowering the bar
One fear sits underneath a lot of these conversations.
If we adjust the workplace for different needs, do we risk lowering expectations?
No.
There will still be essential requirements of every role. There will still be conduct that is unacceptable. There will still be performance conversations, capability procedures and disciplinary processes.
Acas explicitly recognises that formal procedures may still be appropriate where conduct or capability concerns remain after support is in place, or where the issue is unrelated to someone’s neurodivergence.
Neuroinclusion is not about removing the bar. It is about asking whether we have placed unnecessary obstacles in front of it.
Imagine two employees being measured against the same outcome. One is given clear priorities, an environment in which they can concentrate and instructions in a format they can process effectively. The other is expected to extract priorities from an hour-long conversation, work in a distracting environment and navigate unwritten expectations.
Technically, the standard is the same.
The opportunity to meet it is not.
That is where better workplace design matters.
Awareness was only the beginning
For years, much of the workplace conversation around neurodiversity has focused on awareness.
What is ADHD? What is autism? What is dyslexia? What might someone experience?
That knowledge has value. It has helped change attitudes and given many people language for experiences they could not previously explain.
But organisations cannot stay in the awareness phase forever. Knowing that people think differently is not the same as building an organisation capable of supporting those differences.
The next generation of neuroinclusion has to move into the everyday infrastructure of work: recruitment, onboarding, management, workplace adjustments, performance, communication, career progression, policies, leadership, technology and measurement.
And critically, support needs more than one route. People should be able to identify what helps them, self-manage where appropriate, work with their manager, make a formal request when needed or access specialist support.
Not every difference needs to become a disclosure. Not every adjustment needs to become an HR case. And not every support journey should begin after something has already gone wrong.
The workplace is changing. That is a good thing.
ADHD has not suddenly introduced complexity into the workforce. People were always complex. What is disappearing is the assumption that everyone should succeed through exactly the same working conditions, communication styles and management practices.
That shift may feel uncomfortable. It means questioning processes that have existed for years. Giving managers different tools. Measuring employee experience rather than relying on policy alone. And sometimes it means accepting that something we considered a problem with an individual was actually a problem with the environment around them.
But workplaces have changed like this before. Practices once considered normal have been redesigned as our understanding of safety, equality, accessibility and human performance has improved.
Neuroinclusion is part of that progression.
So perhaps the question is not whether ADHD has rewired the workplace.
Perhaps the workplace is finally learning that it was never wired for only one kind of brain.
At NeuroBridge, this is the work: building neuroinclusion into the everyday infrastructure of an organisation, so support no longer depends on disclosure, luck or a single manager.
If you want to see where your organisation stands today, the Neuroinclusion Maturity Index gives you a clear read across six pillars in a few minutes. A benchmark for your progress, not a label on your people.