Podcast: How manufacturing leaders can build safer workplaces for neurodiverse employees
Key takeaways
- Neurodiversity exists on every factory floor—design safety programs with proactive inclusion in mind, not reactive response.
- Standard sensory environments may overwhelm neurodivergent workers; flexible accommodations reduce risk and boost performance.
- Rethinking safety training and allowing schedule or PPE adjustments can benefit all workers, not just those with diagnoses.
- Inclusion isn’t a new initiative—it’s a practical lens to apply across current systems, improving culture and reducing safety incidents.
In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Nicole Stempak, managing editor of EHS Today, and John Dony, CEO and co-founder of the What Works Institute, explore how manufacturing workplaces can better support neurodivergent employees through more inclusive safety practices. The conversation highlights the importance of proactive planning, awareness, and practical accommodations that improve conditions for all workers. Drawing on real-world examples, they discuss how sensory input, communication styles, and job design impact safety and performance. The episode encourages safety professionals to view neurodiversity as a valuable lens for enhancing workplace culture and reducing risk across the board.
Below is an edited excerpt from the podcast:
EHST: Statistically, about one in five workers is neurodiverse. As you know, statistics are usually lower than the actual. So you might work with someone who does not have a diagnosis, but whether they realize it or not might have symptoms that suggest that, if they were to be tested, someone would say they have autism or ADHD. So just because you don't know and maybe that colleague doesn't know, doesn't mean that it's not a concern—and that you don't have to plan or create or figure out ways to make your workplace safety program accommodating.
JD: Exactly right. I think just as if we waited for any other risk factor to activate in front of us—if that were the only time we were going to take action to do something about it or prevent it, then we’d be waiting for fires to happen before we, did anything. We'd never build a fire suppression system, right? So, similarly with something like this: identification, awareness, proactive action.
If you believe the statistics are remotely accurate, then every workforce has a fairly significant percentage of folks who have something going on. If you apply that lens to how you've written your programs and procedures, how you communicate, how you investigate and learn from incidents, you name it… Across the board, there's a refraction of that in your systems, in your programs, in your practices. In some cases, that's smaller or larger; it doesn't equally impact everywhere.
Not knowing the number of employees you have that are neurodiverse is not a reason to not do something. That’s where you have to start your action, is understanding what this looks like for you, where you are. What are you doing now? What could you do more easily in the short term? Start with things that anybody can do. You don't need to be highly scientific to start an employee resource group, right? You don't need to be highly scientific to bring together some people to start talking about it and learning what your employees and workers are experiencing. Those are those are things that anybody can do tomorrow.
EHST: Great! That segues into what I wanted to talk about next. Could you give some examples of what I'll consider standard behavior and how, for a neurotypical person, that could work, but why or how it might not work for someone who is neurodivergent? Just a couple really everyday, basic examples to highlight this?
JD: So, you're working on a factory floor or you're working at a construction site, it's active. You already got a lot of big yellow machinery moving around and you got a lot of people doing things with their head on a swivel.
For a neurotypical person, that sensory input level is not overstimulating or challenging. It's something that they're used to dealing with and that you sort of accrue a skillset for over time, right? Which is why you've got a really seasoned construction worker, and it's almost like they've got a six sense for what's coming next and where the risk is. That can bite you for sure, and this is not a conversation on human performance and behavior and other factors, but let's just say that for the average neurotypical person who becomes more seasoned, they get a better appreciation for that. They're able to take it on.
For someone who's neurodivergent, particularly for someone who has sensory sorts of issues either in the autism spectrum or maybe even in ADHD in terms of how they process information, the visual and auditory stimulus—the light, the number of sensory inputs—all can become overwhelming. They can be overcoming very quickly. They can also be withstood for a period of time and then suddenly reach a breaking point, depending on the individual.
You can have scenarios where the risk may be present from the start, but this is just a scenario that's not comfortable for this person and they're not going to operate well and therefore be at heightened risk. Or you might have someone who feels like they're OK. They're managing it. They're masking through it. They're appearing fine, but then a crisis point hits, the dam breaks and something happens.
These are negative examples, where the risk gets heightened or the behaviors overwhelming. On the other side of the coin, that also illustrates a really good difference is one of the things that is typical to many types of neurodiversity, particularly in autism spectrum disorder, is particular a deep interest in certain topics or certain types of behavior, structure repetition. In a work context, you find a lot of folks love doing the same task, the same way, over and over again. It gives them satisfaction. It doesn't feel a task to them. It feels like the thing they want to do, and you've got a neurotypical person who might sit there and say, ‘If I'm going to be filling out the same form every 15 minutes all day, that's just not something I want to do. I don't care about that.’