How To Find Inclusive Employers

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Blog post updated on 17th February 2022

Do you have a form of neurodivergence, but want to know which employers would happily recruit you? Our tips should help you out.

Key accreditations for inclusive employers

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The Inclusive Employers website has a page about “six areas of inclusion and diversity” in the form of the six pillars. These six pillars are:

1. Engage

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This means that “organisations should engage staff at all levels to ensure they have a good understanding of the organisation’s vision for diversity and inclusion” as well as “an awareness of the diverse needs of their” colleagues and clients or service users.

2. Equip

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This means that “organisations should equip all staff, managers and leaders through policy and training to build equality, diversity and inclusion into the work they do.” This in turn helps the organisations to “design and deliver more effective and inclusive policies, processes” and services. The Equip pillar could also refer to organisations providing accessible equipment and software to neurodivergent employees.

3. Empower

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Organisations should do this “by involving staff through networks, team discussions, Trade Unions and/or other channels.” They should also empower by “providing support and encouragement to staff to develop their careers and increase their contributions to the organisation through the enhancement of their skills and abilities.”

4. Embed

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This means that “organisations should build shared responsibility and accountability for achieving improvements by explicitly embedding inclusion and diversity into everything they do.” Organisations should also embed “inclusion and diversity into the organisation’s corporate strategy and any processes and policies to improve their ability to attract and retain the best talent.” They should “seek to embed inclusion and diversity to build a positive reputation internally and externally and to provide the best services for success.”

5. Evaluate

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This implies that “organisations should evaluate inclusion and diversity progress to set relevant and achievable” interventions or targets.”

6. Evolve

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Organisations should devise innovative and creative interventions in order to evolve. They should also continuously learn and draw on best practice.

Other tips for finding inclusive employers

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Find inclusive employers that have signed up to the Disability Confident Scheme

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Disability Confident is an employment scheme that supports employers to make the most of the talents disabled and neurodivergent people can bring to their workplaces. The scheme has a list of neurodivergent inclusive employers including Exceptional Individuals that can be downloaded here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/disability-confident-employers-that-have-signed-up (Note: The document may open as an Apple Numbers spreadsheet, so it is best to open this document on a device that has Numbers installed on it).

Look for diversity and inclusion statements on company websites

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Some companies that Exceptional Individuals have worked with such as Universal Music Group, Ford and SSE have information on diversity in the workplace on their websites.