Neurodiversity Celebration Week – Learning from the Sector

Mar 2026

This week was all about recognising and celebrating the incredible organisations creating more inclusive communities and opportunities for neurodivergent people and people with learning disabilities.

At Link UP, we’re passionate about connecting with small charities in this space – supporting their work and championing the diversity of thought that strengthens communities and organisations alike.

Our Head of Skilled Volunteering, Sophia Mobbs, joined sessions including Leading the way: Neuroinclusive leadership in action and From process to practice: Embedding neuroinclusion in the employee journey.

Below are some of the key takeaways for leaders and organisations.

Neuroinclusion tips for leaders

Susie Phillips-Baker chaired this session with panellists Sarah Colgan and Sophie Rowan, who shared their experiences and recommendation’s about neuroinclusive leadership. They opened by acknowledging that leaders have it tough these days and need to wear so many hats – including a neuroinclusive one! However, the good news is that being neuroinclusive should make getting things done quicker and easier – and that’s good business. Top things leaders can do to become more neuroinclusive are;

Lead by example

This entails leaders doing things in ways that suit them best, rather than sticking to the status quo where it doesn’t serve them. Panellist Sarah shared how she communicates now mainly over voice notes, finding them a much more intuitive way to communicate than traditional emails. Additionally, leaders can inspire their communities by sharing relevant stories about their experiences. By revealing a more human side, vulnerability shines through and cues a workforce that it’s okay to be human. This opens the door for neurodiverse employees asking for adjustments, a process which can feel very vulnerable and intimidating.

Expect variability

Being neuroinclusive won’t mean treating all neurodiverse employees the same; different people will need different adjustments. Panellist Sophie shared an example from her corporate experience where team meetings where held in dark, quiet rooms to reduce overstimulation for neurodiverse team members.

Empower your teams

Leaders should also encourage bottom-up change by empowering neurodiverse people to speak up if their needs are not being met. A coaching approach can be really helpful to this end – by coaching neurodiverse employees to know their worth, and right to ask for doing things differently as needed, more of these needs will be met. Of course, this only works in workplace cultures that welcome adapting the role around employee’s needs – a premise for any neuroinclusive organisation.

Communication

Clear, frequent communication is a key way for leaders to reduce ambiguity and stress for neurodivese employees. This can look like prefacing meeting requests with specific reasons – ‘I’d like to check in with you about new data we just received, I think it can help your current project’ – and asking direct questions, ‘How are you finding this working environment? Do you need anything different?’. This is particularly critical during periods of organisational change, where relationships and processes may be dynamic and especially unclear.

Neuroinclusive leadership starts with understanding, but it doesn’t stop there. Leaders’ actions speak louder than words, and when it comes to neuroinclusivity leaders have the chance to show from the top-down what an neuroinclusive workplace looks like.

Neuroinclusion tips for organisations

In this session chaired by Melanie Francis, panellists Rachel Dyer, Emma Montgomerie, Grace Humphrey, Jenny Clifford and Alexa Lloyd discussed how organisations can make practical changes to embed neuroinclusion in their organisations, from a prospective employee’s first interview to improving daily processes.

Key practical steps for an organisation to become more neuroinclusive are:

1. Organisational attitude shift. Understand that being neuroinclusive is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and will require listening without judgement to the needs of your team. Don’t be afraid to talk about it, and actively invite feedback to understand needs.
2. Education. The more your team knows about neuroinclusivity in the workplace the more able they’ll be to participate in a neuroinclusive culture. This needn’t ring budget alarm bells – panellists shared that they worked with local charities to deliver free training for the teams.
3. Communication. When an organisation is highly communicative, it saves neurodiverse people from the anxiety of ambiguity, and the labour of asking for clarification. In practice, this can look like sharing the general theme of interview questions in advance, providing videos and pictures depicting the office’s location and entry system for a stress-free first-day arrival, or adapting the way information is shared. For example, a NHS-panellist shared an example from a hospital ward hand-over. The traditional system of a piece of paper detailing handover instructions was proving challenging for a neurodiverse team member, so in response the team leader wrote the necessary information on a whiteboard. It helped the team member retain the information without worrying about a piece of paper, and in the process helped the whole team be on the same page!
4. Structural changes to working environments and patterns. For example, panellists from Specsavers shared how their org introduced Quiet Rooms in their support offices to reduce overstimulation, hired an organisation to ensure the material and design of their uniforms is sensorially acceptable to their staff, and offers flexible working hours to accommodate different working preferences.

The panel emphasised that these changes are often small, inexpensive, and ultimately benefit everyone – not just neurodivergent people!

As a result, people in these organisations feel heard, valued and safe – and unsurprisingly, when people feel this way, they are motivated and able to do their best work! In other words, a neuroinclusive culture is one of psychological safety, which is widely acknowledged to be a foundational pillar of high-performance. The burden of masking was also discussed, as neuroinclusive workplaces remove this additional, often invisible labour from neurodiverse employees and thereby reduce their burnout risk.

In parting, the panel offered some final practical steps to organisations considering improving their neuroinclusivity:

1. Don’t be afraid to start! Acknowledge your organisation has good intentions, but may make mistakes at times. Become neuroinclusive is a process.
2. Prioritise. Take one step towards neuroinclusivity that feels right and achievable for your org.
3. Measure. Only by measuring the impact of neuroinclusivity measures will you truly know what’s helping and what’s not.

As 15-20% of the population are estimated to be neurodiverse, the cumulative benefits of neuroinclusivity will impact a substantial proportion of any given workforce. And beyond this, it’s important to remember that neuroinclusivity benefits everyone by creating a workplace where differences are accepted, rather than minimised.