Neurodiversity Is Not New, and It Is Not a Crisis: Why We Need to Stop Acting Like It is
- An overfocus on deficits
- An emphasis on the individual rather than their broader context, and
- A narrowness of perspective that constrains what we can know about autism and how we are able to know it (Pellicano and den Houting, 2022).
This is not a fringe debate.
It is the mainstream of modern autism science, and it has directly influenced UK policy architecture, including the Buckland Review (2024).
Yet the gap between what research knows and what organisations do remains vast.
Vargas-Salas, Alcazar-Gonzales and Fernández-Fernández's (2025) systematic review of workplace neurodiversity literature - the most comprehensive of its kind - found that employment barriers are systemic, not individual: they cluster around recruitment processes, physical and social environments, and management practices, not around skill deficits in neurodivergent employees (Vargas-Salas et al., 2025).
The facilitators are equally clear: accommodation, flexibility, and manager understanding.
The research is unambiguous.
The problem is not a lack of knowledge. It is a lack of implementation.
This is where the "newness" narrative becomes particularly problematic.
When organisations frame neurodiversity as a new challenge, they grant themselves permission to move slowly, to pilot, to consult, to remain in perpetual preparation.
The CIPD's Neuro-Inclusion at Work Report 2024 found that while 60% of employers claim neuro-inclusion is a focus, only 33% have it embedded in their EDI strategy, and just 46% of managers feel capable supporting neurodivergent staff (CIPD, 2024).
The gap between stated commitment and actual practice is not a knowledge gap.
It is a courage gap.
Organisations are not waiting for more research.
They are waiting for permission to act on what research has already established.
The "crisis" framing is equally damaging.
It positions neurodivergent employees as risks to be mitigated rather than assets to be leveraged. But the evidence on neurodivergent strengths is robust and growing. Boot, Nevicka and Baas's (2017) research found that ADHD traits correlate positively with originality, idea generation, and flexible thinking -precisely the creative processes that organisations claim to value (Boot et al., 2017).
The double empathy problem, first articulated by Milton (2012), demonstrates that communication difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people are mutual, not one-sided: non-autistic people struggle to read autistic social signals just as autistic people struggle with non-autistic signals (Milton, 2012).
The deficit is not in the neurodivergent individual.
It is in the space between differently wired minds. Framing this as a crisis of neurodivergence rather than a failure of organisational design is not merely incorrect - it's indefensible.
Moreso, the costs of this framing are measurable and severe.
Cage and Troxell-Whitman's (2019) research on camouflaging (masking) - the effortful suppression of autistic traits to appear non-autistic - demonstrated that this behaviour is driven by social pressure, not autistic deficit, and produces measurable psychological harm including exhaustion, anxiety, and depression (Cage and Troxell-Whitman, 2019).
Hull, Mandy and Tchanturia's (2017) work established that camouflaging is effortful and exhausting, requiring continuous cognitive monitoring, and that those who cannot camouflage face "double jeopardy": visible difference without support (Hull, Mandy and Tchanturia, 2017).
The "crisis" is not neurodiversity in the workplace.
The crisis is workplaces that demand inauthentic performance and then pathologise the exhaustion that follows.
The Buckland Review of Autism Employment (2024) crystallised this into policy-grade recommendations. It found that the biggest barrier to autistic employment is not skill deficits but "lack of understanding and negative stereotypes" (Buckland, 2024).
Over 25% of employees who requested reasonable adjustments had their request refused; more than 10% found adjustments poorly implemented. The review explicitly called for a shift from "awareness" to "inclusion by design" - universal accommodations that do not require disclosure, Adjustment Passports that travel with the employee, and procurement standards that embed neuro-inclusion from the outset (Buckland, 2024).
This is not crisis management. This is mature organisational practice.
Quintero et al.'s (2025) survey of 880 employees revealed that awareness of ADHD and autism is near-universal (98.9% and 98.1% respectively), yet 60.6% of employees feel workplaces are inadequately adapted despite this awareness (Quintero et al., 2025).
This is the "knowing-doing gap" in action: organisations know enough to be dangerous but not enough to be effective.
Awareness without structural accommodation increases the masking burden without reducing the barriers.
It is performative inclusion, and the research is clear that it does more harm than good.
What is required is not more research, more pilots, or more awareness campaigns.
What is required is the recognition that neurodiversity has always been present in workplaces, and that the systems we have built were designed for a narrow neurological norm that was never representative of the human population.
The neurodiversity paradigm, as Sinclair (2010 [orig. 1998]) established and Pellicano and den Houting (2022) have since validated, demands that we stop trying to fix individuals and start redesigning systems.
This is the work that Willful Steps does.
We do not treat neurodiversity as a new challenge or a crisis to be managed. We treat it as a design parameter that has been ignored for too long.
Our training, policy audit, and structural redesign services are built on the evidence base outlined above - on the understanding that effective neuro-inclusion requires simultaneous intervention at individual, team, and organisational levels (Vargas-Salas, 2025).
We do not just offer awareness sessions that leave structures untouched.
We offer the architectural work of building workplaces where neurodivergent people can stop masking and start contributing.
The research is not new.
The paradigm is not new.
The only thing that is new is the growing impatience of neurodivergent people with organisations that continue to act surprised by our presence.
The question is no longer whether organisations can afford to become neuro-inclusive.
The evidence is clear that they cannot afford not to.
The question is whether they have the courage to stop pretending this is a new problem, and start doing the work of fixing old systems.
Because neurodiversity is not a development. It is not a challenge. It is a fact.
And the only crisis is the continued refusal to act on what we have known for decades.
References
Boot, N., Nevicka, B. and Baas, M. (2017) 'Subclinical Symptoms of ADHD Are Associated with Specific Creative Processes', Personality and Individual Differences, 114, pp. 73–81.
Buckland, R. (2024) The Buckland Review of Autism Employment. London: House of Commons Library / Department for Work and Pensions.
Cage, E. and Troxell-Whitman, Z. (2019) 'Understanding the Reasons, Contexts and Costs of Camouflaging for Autistic Adults', Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49, pp. 1899–1911.
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (2024) Neuro-Inclusion at Work Report 2024. London: CIPD.
Hull, L., Mandy, W. and Tchanturia, K. (2017) 'Putting on My Best Normal: Social Camouflaging in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions', Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47, pp. 2519–2534.
Milton, D.E.M. (2012) 'On the ontological status of autism: the 'double empathy problem'', Disability & Society, 27(6), pp. 883–887.
Pellicano, E. and den Houting, J. (2022) 'Annual Research Review: Shifting from 'normal science' to neurodiversity in autism science', Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 63(4), pp. 381–396.
Quintero, J. et al. (2025) 'A Survey of Knowledge and Perceptions of ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder in the Workplace', Scientific Reports, 15, 34424.
Sinclair, J. (2010 [orig. 1998]) 'Neurodiversity: An Insider's Perspective', in Kapp, S.K. (ed.) Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vargas-Salas, O., Alcazar-Gonzales, J.C. and Fernández-Fernández, F.A. (2025) 'Neurodivergence and the Workplace: A Systematic Review of the Literature', Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation. DOI: 10.3233/JVR-250017.
Vargas-Salas, S. (2025) 'Managing Workplace Neurodiversity for Positive Outcomes: A Mapping Review and Research Agenda', Employee Relations, 47(9). DOI: 10.1108/ER-09-2024-0637.