POLONIUS: What do you learn, my lord? 

HAMLET: Phrases, phrases, phrases. 

(Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2) 

Neurodiversity Celebration Week happened between 21 and 27 March. The next week was Autism Acceptance Week, culminating in World Autism Consciousness Day on 2 April. This implies neurodiversity has featured closely on social media not too long ago.  

Throughout Neurodiversity Celebration Week, I spent a while reflecting on my observe as an employment lawyer. Had been there any areas of my work that weren’t notably neurodiversity-friendly? May I enhance issues for neurodiverse shoppers? Was it one thing to contemplate?  

On the time I had obtained a case file that included round 50 pages of insurance policies on disciplinary, grievance, and harassment at work. The dispute concerned a dyslexic member of workers. I perused the densely packed textual content. “Hardly dyslexia pleasant,” I mused to myself, observing the irony.  

I attempted to think about being dyslexic and receiving all that textual content to learn as a brand new worker. How would that make you’re feeling? How would it not have an effect on your notion of that employer? 

What’s neurodiversity? 

The time period “neurodiversity” (or ND for brief) was first coined by the social scientist Judy Singer within the Nineties. It refers to a distinction in mind processing that may have an effect on social interplay, studying, consideration, sensory processing, and different elements of interacting with the world and different folks.  

It has grow to be a collective time period for situations resembling autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia. The phrase was an try to reframe the narrative away from the unfavourable connotations that the situations had been pathological issues needing to be remedied. Think about it as simply one other side of variety. 

I obtained a prognosis of autism a few years in the past. It was a shock on the time. However that was because of my very own perceptions of what autism meant, little doubt influenced by the film Rain Man.

Visible considering 

The American scientist Temple Grandin has written extensively about how her autism is an asset in her specialist area of designing services for livestock. One in every of her theories is that autistic individuals are extra more likely to be visible thinkers. She has even written a guide entitled Visible Pondering, which describes the best way through which she thinks, fairly actually, in photos.  

This idea of visible considering has been commented on by quite a few specialists as being a standard expertise throughout the ND neighborhood. Sir Richard Branson, who’s dyslexic, has spoken about how he is ready to “see” improvements and enterprise alternatives. He has additionally written about the best way dyslexia formed his strategy to creating services and products at Virgin by specializing in quick, concise slogans that resonate instantly. Mainly, dyslexia helps him minimize out the waffle.

Written insurance policies within the office 

Some estimates recommend 15% of adults are ND. That interprets to 1 in seven workers. Doubtlessly, a sizeable chunk of your shopper’s workforce could possibly be alienated by the presence of a text-heavy workers handbook. And if these 15% usually tend to be visible thinkers, preferring diagrams and photos, how efficient is the normal workers handbook for making certain data is absorbed?  

As an employment lawyer, I realised that the majority office insurance policies are introduced as pages on pages of textual content. Often they’re typed as 10-point Arial or Instances New Roman. Every coverage specified by paragraphs. Blocks of textual content, damaged up solely by headings and titles. 

However is there any authorized or technical motive why a workers handbook should be formatted as pages of steady textual content? I can not consider any authorized requirement for the contents of a workers handbook to be introduced that method. So why do employment attorneys proceed churning them out when requested?  

Is it comfort (I imply the lawyer’s comfort, not the shopper’s)? In any case, what could possibly be simpler than accessing a precedent, changing the sq. brackets with the identify of the employer, and sending it to the shopper? And maybe the shopper feels reassured. In any case, if their lawyer has offered all these paperwork, it should be to fulfill a compliance obligation of some type. 

Considerably paradoxically, there may be one explicit part of the workers handbook that’s at all times laid-out clearly in bullet level format, with a number of house for the textual content to breathe: the non-exhaustive record offering examples of gross misconduct that might represent dismissal. Attorneys at all times get that bit proper. 

Options to textual content 

In 2018 I recall seeing a pattern topic entry request process within the type of an infographic. Two pages of containers, icons, and signpost textual content explaining how to answer an information request. It was incredible. It communicated the required data in a transparent and concise method. Absolutely that’s the goal of a office coverage: to convey important data that the employee must know. 

There is likely to be circumstances the place a text-heavy coverage is required, which is ok. But when not, do attorneys have a duty to contemplate alternate options, resembling utilizing flowcharts, graphics or course of maps? They’re more likely to be extra inclusive in direction of the 15% of your shopper’s workers who’re ND. Will we, as employment attorneys, ever point out this to a shopper? 

I is likely to be improper, however I believe there’s a worry that turning office procedures into infographics would seem unprofessional. Model over substance. A office coverage is a authorized matter which mustn’t contain a graphic designer.  

It might additionally make the coverage look infantile. There’s a counter to that: Steve Jobs (himself dyslexic) instructed his designers at Apple to make the iPad really easy to make use of {that a} small little one might decide it up and begin utilizing it instantly. 

Think about the final time to procure a gadget or piece of tech like a smart-TV. Often, it comes with some type of “fast begin information”. Is it ten pages of unbroken formatted textual content? Extra probably it’s a sequence of numbered graphics and textual content containers explaining the right way to set-up and use the system.  

There’s a motive why they’ve been designed in that format. They’re aiming to speak important data to a various vary of individuals. Does that remind you of something?