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Retention is earned at every stage of the journey.
Neurodivergent employee retention isn't a one-off decision. It's decided in the advert that lands, the interview that showcases potential, the promotion case that was read on its merits, and the hard conversation that was held well. Build an environment your talent wants to grow in, and you'll see the impact holding.
The Bridge · Recruitment Process Assessment
Assessment Results
Detailed results by section with priority actions and guidance.
Completed by Sarah Mitchell on 2025-01-28
Overall Recruitment Inclusivity
Good ProgressRepresentative view. The assessment scores the process, never a person.
The starting point
Resignation is the last word of an unheard story.
An agreeable exit interview told you nothing, but behind every resignation sits a long accumulation. Energy spent masking. Adjustments arriving too late. Output that came in bursts being read as inconsistency. Performance plans addressing style despite sound work. Every stage of the talent journey was built around one way of working; none of which consider how different minds would take the journey.
31% of neurodivergent employees reported waiting more than three months for adjustments, compared with 12% of neurotypical employees.
City & Guilds Neurodiversity Index 2026The solution
How the journey changes for neurodivergent talent
It starts accounting for how different minds actually work, and the three teams carrying it are equipped to get it right: recruitment, managers and HR.
Hiring highlights capability.
Job adverts speak clearly to neurodivergent candidates. Interview approaches evidence how someone works, not how fluently they talk about it. Adjustments are made easy to reach before day one. Recruitment teams are equipped with structured learning across the whole journey, from adverts to offers.
Progression reads work on its merits.
This discipline is carried forward. What was agreed in hiring accompanies new hires for onboarding. Managers learn about different working styles, so differences are understood rather than marked down, and review cycles weigh the work itself.
Hard conversations, held to new standards.
Disclosures met by people trained to receive them. Adjustments managed consistently wherever someone sits. Mediation and conflict handled with a working understanding of how different minds experience the same room, and performance conversations remain grounded in the work.
The Bridge · The Managers Playbook
The Managers Playbook
Scripts, templates, checklists and guides for every action recommended by the Inclusive Practice Assessment.
Start here
Chapter 1 · Clarity & Execution
How you set expectations, create clarity, and support accurate delivery.
Representative product view.
Who sees what
The process gets measured. People never do.
Every instrument points at practice: the advert, the interview, the review cycle, the conversation. Measuring the practice is what changes it. No person is ever the unit of measurement.
The candidate and the colleague
A clearer journey
- Adverts that say what the job is, interviews that let the work show, and support that is real where they are: recommendations are tailored to what the organisation can actually provide, wherever it operates, and never offer what it cannot honour.
No candidate is scored, and nothing follows a person from stage to stage.
Recruitment teams and managers
Their own practice
- A comprehensive recruitment process assessment that defines best practice across the whole talent process, from job descriptions to performance reviews. Repeatable by region and timeline. Set your direction of travel with confidence.
They see how the process is doing and what to change. They never see a person's data through any of it.
HR and leadership
The journey in aggregate
- The process score's movement combines with aggregated and anonymous audits across your entire workforce, giving a live view of culture and retention across your organisation.
Aggregate only. No individual's outcome, and nothing predictive about any person.
There are no flight-risk flags and no individual attrition predictions anywhere in the system. The early read we promise is a property of the process and the aggregate, and it is acted on by redesigning the journey, because an environment people trust is the one they choose to grow in.
What you can now do
Retention becomes something you can build upstream.
The same design that changes each stage returns instruments you can read: a process with a score, an area with a trend, and actions with evidence behind them.
A process with a score
Recruitment practice measured stage by stage, with guidance attached to every element and a re-assessment that shows the score moving where the changes landed. Improvement stops being a matter of opinion.
An early read, in aggregate
The talent area of your organisation's score, with its trend and the strategic actions attached, so retaining neurodivergent talent becomes something the organisation does on purpose, while patterns are still patterns rather than resignations.
Progression you can stand behind
Review and progression practice held to one standard across managers, with the evidence to show it, and equity questions answered in aggregate terms your wider reporting can carry.
A standard that holds everywhere
The people holding disclosures, adjustments, mediation and performance concerns trained to one standard, wherever someone sits, with understanding of what discrimination can look like built in. Measurable, defendable, easier.
The ATS stays and the agencies stay; this layer reshapes what flows through both.
The Bridge · Leadership view
Talent & Retention
Strategic actions
Review the interview accommodation process
Upskill managers on progression conversations
Representative view, figures illustrative. The journey appears as patterns; no individual's outcome ever appears here.
Around six in ten (61%) said that adjustments would directly help them perform better in their job, and when we include those who are unsure but think adjustments might help, roughly four in five neurodivergent staff see potential benefit.
City & Guilds Neurodiversity Index 2026Proof and appetite
Your people already know what would make them stay.
Asked directly, neurodivergent employees name the exact territory this work redesigns: adjustments that arrive, work read on its merits, conversations held well. The appetite is already inside the workforce.
‘I was going to resign and now I’m not.’ That’s just saved you agency fees. That’s just saved you training fees. That’s just saved you downtime.
Steve Warner
VP People & Culture, NTT DATA
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Is this a recruitment audit?+
It includes one: a structured assessment of recruitment practice, stage by stage, with guidance on why each element matters and what to change. And it keeps going past the offer, into onboarding, progression, reviews and the hardest conversations, because staying is decided across the whole journey. The changes are better hiring and better management for every candidate and colleague, whichever way they think.
Does the assessment score our recruiters, or our candidates?+
No. It scores the process: the adverts, the interviews, the tasks, the decisions, the onboarding handover. Each element carries guidance for the practice. No person carries a score, and nothing follows a candidate from stage to stage.
What about performance management and PIPs?+
They are part of the journey, so they are part of the scope. Managers and HR get equipped for the conversations that usually go hardest: disclosures, adjustments, mediation and performance concerns, with the practice anchored to the work itself. Conversations get held to a standard rather than to whoever happened to be in the room.
Can leadership see who is a retention risk?+
No. There are no individual attrition predictions and no flight-risk flags anywhere in the system. Leadership sees the process scores, the aggregate signal and its trend, and the actions the evidence recommends. People never appear in any of it.
How does this sit with our DEI and inclusive-hiring work?+
It is the complement. Your existing work on representation keeps every inch of its ground; this reaches the layer it was never scoped to hold, how people think and work at each stage of the journey, and returns evidence your wider strategy can use.
Start the conversation
See the environment your talent wants to grow in.
A short discovery call against your priorities, and a clear read on where the talent journey stands today.