Design workplaces that work for different minds
Neurodivergent employees — those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and related profiles — are disproportionately affected by workplace design choices that most organizations make without thinking. NEI gives you a structured way to identify and improve those choices.
Why this matters
The productivity and wellbeing of neurodivergent employees are directly shaped by organizational infrastructure — administrative processes, performance evaluation norms, role clarity, sensory environment, and more. These are not edge cases or accommodations: they are design decisions that affect everyone, and that systematically disadvantage neurodivergent workers when done poorly.
The cost of poor design is largely invisible until it isn't. It shows up in higher attrition among neurodivergent employees, in unrealized potential, in quiet exhaustion that never makes it to a performance review. Most organizations don't know they have a problem until they've already lost someone — or until a legal or regulatory matter forces the question.
What the indicators assess
NEI indicators span six organizational domains. Four are particularly relevant to most organizations starting out:
Administrative processes
Are routine tasks — expense reporting, leave requests, approvals — designed to minimize friction and cognitive load? High-friction administrative processes disproportionately burden neurodivergent employees.
Performance evaluation
Do evaluation criteria focus on outcomes and results, or on stylistic conformity? Evaluation frameworks that reward presentation over output systematically disadvantage many neurodivergent workers.
Role clarity
Are roles, boundaries, and expectations clearly and explicitly defined? Ambiguity that neurotypical employees navigate implicitly is a significant barrier for many neurodivergent workers.
Sensory environment
Is the physical work environment designed to minimize unnecessary noise and sensory disruption? Open-plan offices and noisy environments have measurable negative effects on focus and productivity for many neurodivergent employees.
How organisations use NEI
Self-assessment
Review your current practices against the indicator criteria. Identify where you're strong, where you have gaps, and where you lack enough information to make a judgment.
Policy review
Use indicators as a structured checklist when reviewing or updating HR policies, performance frameworks, and workplace design guidelines. The indicators give you specific, evidence-grounded criteria to evaluate against.
Third-party review
External assessors can evaluate organisations against declared or validated criteria. This enables credible, comparable reporting on neurodivergent workplace enablement.
Example indicator
Here is one Standard indicator as an illustration of how assessment works:
Performance evaluation is based on output rather than style
The organisation assesses employee performance based on the quality and outcomes of work rather than stylistic conformance — such as communication style, social presentation, or adherence to unwritten behavioural norms. Evaluation criteria are explicit, documented, and applied consistently.
Inferred criterion (example):
Job postings and performance review templates that describe evaluation in terms of output, deliverables, and impact — rather than communication style, presence, or presentation — are observable signals of this practice.
This indicator belongs to the Performance Evaluation domain. It can be assessed at the Inferred level (from public job descriptions and stated policies), the Declared level (from explicit policy commitments), or the Validated level (from third-party review of actual evaluation processes).
Each level of assessment gives a different degree of confidence. An organization can start with an inferred self-assessment and move toward validated evidence over time.
Using NEI in your organization
NEI is published under CC BY-NC 4.0. Organisations may use NEI internally — for self-assessment, policy review, or ESG reporting — without restriction beyond attribution. If you are using NEI in a workplace programme, we would appreciate a notification so we can track real-world implementations.