‘Suppressed talents’: How the workplace is still failing neurodivergent workers
Companies have spent the past few years making louder commitments to neurodiverse hiring, and there’s plenty to applaud.
Many of the major Fortune 500 employers have built programs to follow through on efforts toward neuroinclusivity, and some of those efforts are substantial.
Microsoft’s Neurodiversity Program uses a multiday interview process tailored to candidates’ needs; JPMorganChase says it’s hired more than 150 neurodivergent employees through tailored interviews; and Google Cloud has trained hundreds of managers to support autistic applicants and make onboarding more accessible and equitable.
Earlier this year, Palantir launched a fellowship for “exceptional neurodivergent talent.” The share of inclusive job postings mentioning neurodiversity in the U.S. has tripled from January 2018 to December 2024.
But research shows that even in the year 2026 there’s still a long way to go.New data from the nonprofit Next for Autism suggests that when it comes to employees with autism, hiring is just the tip of the iceberg: In a national survey of more than 400 autistic employees, nearly 80% said that masking (suppressing natural responses, scripting conversations, and managing sensory overload without showing it) is a challenge at work.
Many autistic employees mask, both on purpose and involuntarily, as a form of self-preservation in order to navigate workplace expectations. Doing so can take up as much mental energy as performing the actual job. Some 81% also said navigating workplace social dynamics is an obstacle, with only 41% saying they feel safe disclosing their autism in the workplace.
A 2025 EY survey of more than 2000 global workers paints a similarly strained picture. Only 25% of neurodivergent employees (those who live with conditions such autism, ADHD, or dyslexia) feel included at work; 39% plan to leave their jobs within the year.
Companies are getting better at opening the door. But many still haven’t cracked what happens when neurodivergent employees walk through it.
For early-career workers, “a lack of psychological safety”
At the sharp end of this equation are younger employees: Gen Z staff living with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) report lower rates of positive day-to-day experiences than older generations—78% compared with 98% for Gen Xers with ASD. It signifies a gap between signing on the dotted line and actually belonging that’s wider for workers at the start of their careers. And it’s not happening because they’re less capable or resilient.
“Earlier-career workers often have less autonomy, less control over their environment, and less power to shape how they work,” says Gillian Leek, CEO of Next for Autism, who has worked at the organization since 2010. “They might also be more willing to name and advocate around experiences that older generations learned to tolerate, minimize, or work around.”
In particular, younger folks don’t know what accommodations and resources are available to them at work. “So they turn to TikTok and Facebook groups to piece together their own support, which speaks to a lack of psychological safety and trust in their managers,” Leek explains.
Provisions that would make work more bearable are either nonexistent or hidden behind red tape that requires a disclosure to explore and utilize. More broadly, 7 out of 10 autistic employees rely on support outside the workplace—including therapists, mentors, family, and social media—to help them succeed.
Myles, who is in his mid-twenties and was diagnosed with ASD as a child (he’s using a pseudonym to protect his identity), secured an internship straight after college that he hoped would lead to a job in an enterprise-level company. Unfortunately, it was cut short after eight months.
What he imagined would be a brief stint in unemployment turned into a two-year slog. He completed endless applications, and always scored highly on technical exercises. But he kept hearing he wasn’t quite the “right fit.”
“It was very tough as I had to come to terms with the possibility that after years pursuing UX design, it might not work out,” he recalls.
As the months went on, the practical worries piled up: money, health insurance, and the sense that life was on hold. His career coach suggested he use some of the skills he’d gained studying animation in college and try motion design.
That pivot worked, and last June he began picking up contracts at startups, one of which became a permanent role in February. He likes the quiet and flexibility of the startup’s fully remote policy, though it does require grappling with Slack to communicate.
“I prefer face-to-face meetings to help me clarify what needs doing,” he says. “In a remote workroom, busy people aren’t always super communicative.”
In UX design, his previous field, he’d typically receive very analytical feedback. But motion design is more ambiguous and open-ended. This style of feedback hasn’t been easy to navigate, and he says it can fray his nerves.
“Most of the ASD-related anxiety is me thinking I have mountains to climb, and I catastrophize a lot,” Myles says. “But I’m always highly reviewed on my work, so it’s probably not clear to people I have ASD.” He’s never communicated to an employer that he’s on the spectrum, or explored possible accommodations.
“Adjustments” across the whole journey
Neuro differences such as ADHD, autism, and dyspraxia aren’t what’s holding Americans back at work. It’s the workplace itself, which is still built around narrow definitions of professionalism: the pace, communication style, meeting culture, and unspoken rules.
EY found that 18% of neurodivergent respondents qualified as “suppressed talents”: meaning they’re highly skilled, but unable to fulfill their potential because of structural workplace mismatches, not personal shortcomings. Employees hired into certain tech roles through JPMorgan Chase’s neurodiversity program are 90% to 140% more productive than employees who had been there for up to a decade.
For too long, the conversation has been focused on hiring, not retention or company culture, Leek says. Companies are making hiring and recruitment strategies more inclusive—for example, allowing for alternative (often AI-based) video interview formats, interview questions in advance, and additional processing time. Once past the onboarding stage, though, employees are expected to adapt.
“It’s a revolving door where, exhausted and burnt out from all the masking, autistic employees will leave,” Leek says.
At a workplace innovation conference last month, “proudly autistic” clinical psychologist, author, and workplace advocate Daniel Wendler used a metaphor for neurodiverse workers navigating a neurotypical workplace. Take a polar bear—an apex predator, unrivaled on Arctic ice—and drop it in Austin. The animal hasn’t lost its power. It’s just in the wrong environment. The same, he argued, is true for neurodivergent workers in conventional offices.
To instigate tangible change, leaders must look at the entire employee journey, from interview and onboarding to onward training and promotion on the job. Creating better, more neuroinclusive environments isn’t rocket science, and changes can be made at speed.
Isabel Field joined legacy publishing company Hearst as an environmental, social, and governance coordinator in 2024, and within six months had launched the Neurodiversity@Hearst hiring program, a 15-week apprenticeship for neurodivergent talent, including individuals with autism and ADHD. From day one, interns get noise-canceling headphones and earplugs, while HR and managers are trained in neurodivergent interviewing and management.
Managers know how each individual likes to receive feedback and which conditions support them to work best, such as quiet, heads-down mornings, and meetings only during afternoons. She calls these practical, low-lift ways to support adjustments rather than accommodations, as the latter term can be intimidating for some people.
“They’re simply different, holistic ways of working that make sure every person is set up to work best, which have been informed by my own experience of navigating the workplace with autism,” she explains.
Hearst also offers a job coach to employees and family members, which can be used as needed. “If you’re neurodivergent and struggle with management, you can use the coach, and the same applies if your kid is navigating an Individualized Education Program,” Field says. “It’s been a central part of reaching long-standing employees that are neurodivergent, but aren’t ‘out.’”
The benefits have been hard to miss: Teams are running more smoothly, productivity is up, and retention has improved.
Push past the fear and start small
If work happens mostly in person, there are plenty of free or low-cost ways to make the environment more inclusive by design.
“It might be visual cues, signage, QR codes that link to instruction videos, or using multiple communication methods like video, text, and voice,” says Patrick Bardsley, cofounder and CEO of Spectrum Designs, a print and decoration production company headquartered in Port Washington, New York. Of its 98 employees, 70% are neurodiverse or autistic, and Bardsley says those changes have helped boost productivity by 30%.
He credits the neurodiverse hiring movement with improving recruitment and onboarding, but retention is still “where the rubber meets the road.” To improve its own, Spectrum introduced stay interviews—annual employee conversations with HR about what’s working, what might make someone leave, and what they haven’t felt comfortable telling a manager.
“There are always things people don’t want to share because they fear repercussions or seem like a complainer,” he says.
Bardsley and Field both recognize the hesitation companies have in committing to durable neuroinclusive efforts and programs, for fear of getting it wrong, especially amid pushback against diversity, eequity, and inclusion. But if businesses can move past that unease, they will find “a tremendously successful, overlooked, and undervalued workforce,” Bardsley says.
The business case is there: Accenture found that companies leading on disability inclusion grow revenue and profits faster than peers, and are 25% more likely to outperform on productivity metrics.
“I learned to fit in at school, but a lot of people still think autism is something that ends in childhood,” Myles says. “The reality is, kids are growing up and entering the workforce—and companies need to be ready for that.”
