When the Elephant Finally Moves

Why Neurodiversity Must Shape How We Understand Risk at Work

In my article “Psychosocial Risk and Neurodiversity: The Elephant in the Room” published on LinkedIn on 7 November, I explained why neurodiversity must be at the heart of every employer’s psychosocial risk management strategy. I expected it to resonate, but I didn’t anticipate just how strongly it would land.

The response was extraordinary. Over seventeen thousand impressions, dozens of reposts, and a flood of comments and connections both on and off LinkedIn from workers, leaders, and industry colleagues who said the same thing in different ways:

“It deepens the urgency of psychosocial risk management and reinforces the need for inclusive, trauma-informed approaches that protect all workers, especially those most at risk.”

Two things became clear. First, employers in the main are genuinely trying to do the right thing. Second, there is still a large, unspoken gap in how organisations understand psychological risk.

That gap isn’t due to a lack of care or a lack of policy, it’s because most systems still assume everyone experiences risk in roughly the same way, that risk perception and exposure are universal.

That might be true for physical, chemical, biological, electrical, and ergonomic risks.

Exposure to noise at greater than 85 dB (A) for 10 hours, four days a week without hearing protection will result in noise-induced hearing loss, and regular exposure to Q-Fever contaminated aerosols or dust will almost always result in Q-Fever in unvaccinated farming or abattoir workers.

There is nothing subjective about that.

But when it comes to psychosocial health and safety, risk perception and risk exposure are deeply individual. This is where neurodiversity becomes impossible to ignore.

Risk perception isn’t universal

To illustrate the point, I’ll use an example given to me by one of my students on the Neurodiverse Safe Work Foundations Course.

He told me that he is afraid of heights. His job does not require him to work at heights normally, but he said that if for any reason his employer required him to go up on the roof of the building or work in a crane, it would not matter how many controls the employer put in place to reduce the risk of a fall from the height, nothing would make him feel safe and performing the task would terrify him.

The employer cannot see or measure the worker’s fear and may not be able to understand or believe it, because he does not have the same fear. They may assume the worker is just being difficult or trying to get out of performing that particular task. And the worker cannot prove that their fear is genuine or even explain why they feel the way they do.

In these circumstances, would it be reasonable for the employer to require the worker to perform the work, knowing the distress the height causes him?

Even if there is no risk of physical harm, the risk of psychological harm is very real.

This is exactly how neurodivergent workers experience seemingly “ordinary” tasks or environments.  Seemingly benign environmental or work design features such as noise, lights, smells, interruptions, unplanned or unstructured meetings, open-plan offices, ambiguous instructions, unclear reporting relationships or roles and responsibilities and rapid task-switching, may motivate some workers. But not all. Neurodivergent workers will typically struggle in such conditions.

That doesn’t mean they won’t try though. They do try, really hard, to fit in and work within their environment. But the pressure to socially perform and “mask” is exhausting and overwhelming and it takes its toll.

Differences in sensory processing, executive functioning and emotional regulation change the worker’s risk landscape entirely. When organisations view psychosocial hazards and risks only through a neurotypical lens, they see an incomplete picture. An incomplete risk assessment is an inaccurate risk assessment.

Noelene –  A real-world example of unmet needs hiding in plain sight

Meet Noelene (not her real name). A highly skilled senior payroll officer, for a large health care provider, valued for her encyclopaedic knowledge of complex industrial instruments, she worked for years without any problems, until she didn’t.

A new colleague, “Jane” interpreted Noelene’s direct communication style and lack of social interaction as rudeness and her fastidious attention to detail as micromanaging.

It escalated into a public argument with both parties yelling and shouting at each other.   Noelene became non-verbal, shaking, and crying and hitting her head with her fists. It looked to others like a panic attack or temper tantrum. Noelene was taken home from work and when she came back the next day she wouldn’t speak to Jane.

So, Jane lodged a formal bullying complaint against her which was followed by a typical organisational response in which HR initiated an investigation and informed her of this.

Noelene went on sick leave and provided a general medical certificate. She asked her employer not to contact her and so the communication broke down and so the workplace investigation into Jane’s allegation of bullying was paused.

When met with Noelene on behalf of her employer to discuss what had happened and how to support her return to work, the full picture finally came into focus.

Noelene is autistic and believes she had ADHD too, and both of these were being amplified by her experience of menopause. She experienced an autistic meltdown at work and was carrying deep embarrassment and shame about it. By the time I met her, she was also in burnout. On top of that, she was dealing with significant personal stressors that her employer didn’t know about, and she was terrified of being seen as “difficult” or losing her job. At the same time, she was bored and isolated at home and genuinely missed the structure and purpose of her work.

None of these factors were visible to her employer, yet they influenced absolutely everything about her psychological safety and her ability to function at work. And the truth is, Noelene’s situation isn’t unusual, it’s common, and one of four case study examples we examine in our Neurodiverse Safe Work Foundations Course. More importantly, it’s preventable when organisations apply the right WHS lens.

What Neurodivergent Workers Tell Me Again and Again

Across hundreds of coaching sessions with neurodivergent clients, diagnosed, undiagnosed, late identified, or self-identified the same themes surface with striking consistency. The first is the ongoing struggle to access reasonable adjustments.

Many clients describe being denied basic support, often based on misinformation. One was told ADHD “doesn’t count as a disability” because it isn’t listed as a primary NDIS category. Another lost long-standing work-from-home arrangements that were essential for managing sensory and executive-function load, simply because a new manager preferred everyone onsite.

And for those with working-memory challenges, even simple assistive technology such as note-taking and voice-to-text software is often rejected over a single person’s discomfort with meetings being recorded, leaving the neurodivergent worker to navigate tasks their brain processes differently.

The second theme is retaliation. Far too often, disclosure of neurodivergence or a formal complaint triggers punitive responses. Clients describe being threatened with performance management, labelled as “difficult,” removed from their roles, or even monitored more closely, right down to the timing of bathroom breaks. Instead of support, they receive scrutiny.

Communication is another major pressure point. Neurodivergent workers routinely tell me they feel misunderstood or judged for not communicating in neurotypical ways. The unspoken expectation is that they must change, rather than the workplace adapting to diverse communication needs.

Finally, many report systemic failures in HR and WHS processes. Complaints of bullying are dismissed as oversensitivity. Psychological harm is minimised. And instead of listening to the neurodivergent worker’s account of their own experience, the system defaults to assumptions that reinforce stigma.

It would be a mistake to assume that these workers are in low level operational or administrative roles. They’re not. They are doctors, lawyers, scientists, psychologists, teachers, investment bankers, academics, musicians and nurses. Brilliant minds make extraordinary contributions to their employer, yet they are marginalized and labelled as troublemakers, and often, by the time I work with them, they’re on the brink of burnout or about to lose their job.

Together, these experiences aren’t just “challenges”. They are indicators of unaddressed psychosocial hazards and a clear sign that current workplace systems aren’t built for all minds.

The negative actions and systemic failures by the employers have resulted in significant professional, emotional, and physical consequences for the clients. They’ve told me:

• “I’m exhausted from constantly masking.”

• “I twist myself into a pretzel everyday trying to fit in, but it’s never good enough.”

• “My brain is overloaded, and I can’t say it without sounding difficult.”

• “I’m being punished for things I can’t control.”

• “I feel like I’m always on the edge of burnout.”

• “I don’t want to tell anyone I have ADHD because I’ve seen what happens here when people do.”

These are not individual problems. They are indicator lights for psychosocial hazards that remain unseen and unmanaged. And when systems ignore differences in neurocognitive functioning, they unintentionally create conditions where these hazards escalate.

When the elephant starts to move – consequences for employers

When organisations finally understand that neurodivergent workers experience psychosocial hazards differently, the ripple effects become impossible to ignore. Brownout is often mistaken for a performance issue. Meltdowns are misinterpreted as misconduct. Sensory overload gets dismissed as “overreacting,” while direct communication is unfairly labelled as rudeness. Executive functioning differences are perceived as incompetence, and workplace investigations are routinely carried out without considering critical factors like communication style, cognitive load, or sensory stress.

Under Australia’s WHS laws, none of this is optional. Employers have a primary duty of care to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers, and that includes recognising individual variability when identifying and controlling psychosocial hazards. Ignoring neurodiversity isn’t just a missed inclusion opportunity; it’s a systemic failure with real legal, operational and human consequences.

The WHS opportunity hiding in plain sight

When organisations finally shift their focus and embed neurodiversity into psychosocial risk management, the entire landscape changes. Brownout is recognised earlier, long before it spirals into full burnout. Communication and supervision become more thoughtful and tailored. Work design naturally becomes safer, clearer, and more accessible. Sensory stressors are identified and controlled rather than ignored. Teams develop greater understanding, and workers feel far safer speaking up without fear of consequences. Over time, the risk of psychological injury drops dramatically.

Tools like the Neurodiversity Workplace Profiler make this person-centred approach easier to implement, while the Neurodiverse Safe Work Self-Assessment Checklist helps organisations embed neuroinclusion across every stage of employment.

And once employers start working this way, the elephant in the room stops being a risk and becomes one of the organisation’s greatest sources of strength.

Neurodivergent workers bring exceptional capability

Neurodivergent workers consistently bring remarkable strengths to the workplace, and these aren’t abstract “nice-to-haves” ; they’re qualities that genuinely lift performance. I see it all the time – exceptional pattern recognition, deep analytical thinking, creative problem-solving, accuracy, innovation, ethical reasoning, and a level of persistence that carries teams through complex challenges.

These strengths are real, measurable, and incredibly valuable. But here’s the truth: we can’t ignore strengths only flourish in environments that don’t disable the person. When workplaces are designed with neurotypical norms as the default, even the most capable neurodivergent employee can become exhausted, misunderstood, or blocked from contributing what they do best.

In my opinion, the most important question employers should ask when undertaking a psychosocial risk assessment is “Are our systems safe and inclusive for people who don’t think like us?”. If the answer is no, that is a system design issue, not a worker issue.

Seeing the full risk landscape means seeing the elephant stay in the room and welcoming him to stay! We have to build workplaces that are capable of seeing and supporting the full spectrum of human thinking.

Neurodiversity is not a niche topic. It’s not a specialist add-on. It is not an optional extra. It’s a fundamental part of psychological health and safety, workplace performance, and organisational resilience. It exists in every workplace, whether it is named or not.

For psychosocial health and safety strategies to move beyond compliance and into genuine prevention, employers must stop designing processes around an imaginary “standard worker” and start designing systems that support the workforce they actually have.

That workforce is neurodiverse. It always has been. It always will be.