Johanna Murphy: Employee shortage, Pittsburgh? Autistic, neurodiverse people ready to work.

For the past several months, op-eds and think pieces have meditated on the current national hiring crisis: Jobs all over the country are going unfilled. It’s a phenomenon we’re familiar with in Western Pennsylvania. For years, as our population has shifted, regional workforce development discussions have lamented the shortage of skilled workers.

As we consider solutions to worker shortages, we should take a minute to consider an amazing, untapped pool of talent: autistic and neurodiverse young people.

Did you know that 20% of the U.S. population is neurodiverse? This includes autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, sensory processing disorder and more. Twenty percent means that in Allegheny County alone, roughly 245,073 people are neurodiverse. Considering that the population of the city of Pittsburgh is 302,205, you can see the powerful impact this number could have on our region.

National figures indicate that unemployment for young neurodiverse adults is 30% to 40% while unemployment for autistic young people is even higher — as much as 85% for those with college degrees. That’s a lot of talent sitting on the bench!

How do we bridge the disconnect between a willing and able pool of talent and jobs that are going unfilled? By changing our thinking.

We’re starting to understand that much of what has been historically thought of as “communication deficits” in autism and neurodiversity aren’t defects, they are differences in wiring and represent a naturally occurring different style of brain. Among themselves, autistic and neurodiverse people get along marvelously and rarely misunderstand each other. It’s only in mixed company that things get dicey.

The Harvard Business Review published an article in December 2021 titled “Autism Doesn’t Hold People Back at Work. Discrimination Does.” The main take-away from the article is that it’s social and personality barriers that keep neurodiverse talent out of the workplace — from the lunch room to the application process: “The personality-focused job application process is a barrier for many people who may be better at performing the job than at talking about themselves — and it is just one example of the many workplace ‘norms’ which are not inclusive of neurodiversity.”

We all know that cultural fit on the job is important, but we also know that a flourishing business doesn’t require total uniformity; in fact, diverse points of view are an asset in decision-making and development. It’s time to operationalize the ideal of cognitive diversity.

How do you do that? You investigate your hiring practices.

Does your company make space for neurodivergent applicants to shine, or does your hiring process insist on the old formula of a firm handshake, eye contact and robust self-promotion? Investigate your mentoring practices beyond simple training. Are new hires assigned a more senior staffer as their “go-to” person as they learn the ropes the first year?

Investigate the culture of your workplace. How are personality clashes handled by management? Is there a culture of blame? Favoritism? Competition for credit for ideas? Has competition, in retrospect, really been used as an excuse for a culture that allows bullying in the workplace?

As an autistic adult who works for an autism services nonprofit, I find that the Harvard Business Review article holds water. We are all social creatures, and getting along is essential in the workplace. However, simple changes, like accepting that different brains communicate differently and have different priorities, and that both types of brains are valuable, would make a world of difference in everyone’s productivity.

For instance, autistics, in particular, are extremely task-oriented. Psychologists call it “monotropism.” We like to work, and we dislike having our work interrupted. We tend to skip out on water-cooler conversations because we’re eager to get back to our desks. We value efficiency to a high degree and tend to be very direct in conversation. Neurotypical co-workers often interpret these traits as proof that we don’t like our co-workers, when that’s not the case at all; we’re just neurologically focused on “being at work,” while neurotypicals are similarly focused on being “part of the group.”

The truth is that both sorts of brains are valuable in the workplace, and making conscious decisions to welcome both in the workplace is in our economy’s best interest.

Johanna Murphy is the development director of Pittsburgh-based Evolve Coaching.