According to ADDA, 1 in 3 people with ADHD find themselves jobless at some stage.
Individuals with ADHD (attention deficit disorder), can experience difficulties with timekeeping, organisation, and focus, often without recognising or understanding these issues. Many employers view these symptoms as red flags.
However, as awareness grows and more people successfully seek private ADHD assessments, many employers are also realising that ADHD traits like hyper-focus and creativity can make for fantastic work.
The difference between the two lies largely in an employer’s approach. According to the experts, the top ways to help an employee with ADHD thrive include –
# 1 – Engage Their Interests
Individuals with ADHD experience something called hyper-focus, which involves becoming fixated on everything there is to know about key topics and areas of interest. Engaging those interests within that person’s work projects can result in an unfounded dedication in which that employee will filter huge levels of energy into creating a high-quality result.
By comparison, asking that individual to continually work on projects that don’t engage their interests is likely to exacerbate issues with concentration and focus, and could quickly see them failing to deliver.
# 2 – Provide Creative Freedom
Many employers have set ways that they like their teams to approach projects but, according to the experts, creative freedom is a far better option for individuals with ADHD. This is because such individuals may struggle to connect with neurotypical approaches, and may fail to meet deadlines or produce quality work as a result.
ADHD psychotherapist Rebecca Champ states that ‘…the freedom to choose the way the activity is approached and completed…allows them to use strategies that may be unconventional but play to their strengths.’ This may include flexible working, using different tools or software, and even collecting their own research.
While these techniques may see an employee approaching a project a little differently, they can result in much better quality outcomes overall. They may even uncover alternative work approaches that could serve that individual far better moving forward.
# 3 – Consult on Timelines
Timekeeping difficulties like time blindness are common with ADHD, and they can result in individuals failing to meet tight deadlines or rushing to complete all of their work at the last minute. These can be frustrating things to deal with as an employer, but they’re easy issues to overcome by simply consulting in advance.
Talking things through ensures that you always set realistic timeframes that give an employee plenty of time to perform to their abilities. Employers may also have to adjust their expectations regarding things like time restraints on communication throughout a project, which could prove distracting and unhelpful to an employee with ADHD who would prefer to focus intently. Ask in advance if this is the case, and respect that preference to ensure a higher-quality project in the end.
Many people now state that ADHD is a superpower, and it certainly can be in the workplace if employers take the time to empower their employees in these crucial ways.
