Community leaders and thinkers gathered at the Pryor Center in Fayetteville yesterday to hear about how businesses can understand neurodiversity, break down barriers and utilize people's individual talents. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis reports:
A new study from Startup Junkie investigates what happens when a company makes concentrated efforts to accommodate its workforce's specific needs. "Neurodiversity in the Northwest Arkansas Workforce" explores the current understanding of neurological conditions, how companies support and utilize their neurodivergent employees, potential or current.
Claudia Scott is the director of entrepreneurial access for Startup Junkie and says the inspiration for this project came as a response to a pattern she noticed. In rapidly growing Northwest Arkansas, an adept workforce is beyond employers' reach.
"We kept seeing versions of the same problem. On one side, we have highly capable people that were still struggling to access, navigate or sustain employment, even though research suggests that 30 to 40% of neurodivergent adults remain underemployed or unemployed, and on the other side, we have employers who are talking constantly about talent shortages, retention pressures and the need to build stronger teams in an increasingly competitive labor market. 75% of employers right now are reporting difficulty filling a session, so those two realities should not be happening at the same time."
She says if a region is struggling to find talent while a significant share of people with valuable skills continue to encounter avoidable barriers, that is not an inclusion issue. It's a systemic issue, and in a high-growth region like Northwest Arkansas, it is also a competitiveness issue.
"So the question that motivated the study was very straightforward: are we fully capturing the potential of neurodivergent talent in Northwest Arkansas, or are structural gaps preventing that talent from translating into performance, retention and long-term regional strength? If those gaps do exist, where are they? What do they look like, and what can we actually do about them?"
Quickly, they decided to localize the study. Area nonprofit SLS Community is a service provider for neurodivergent adults and assisted in the design and distribution of surveys. Scott says that previously, there was very little regional data available to guide decision-making. Individual efforts sprang up: certain employers are trying different approaches, nonprofits are building programs, educators and workforce partners. However, much of that work was conducted without a shared evidence base or a clear picture of how the broader system was actually functioning.
"In other words, many people were acting in good faith, but often without the benefit of coordinated insight that matters, because without data, regions tend to make decisions based on assumptions. They relied on what feels true, what sounds progressive, or what appears to be working on the surface. But assumptions are not the same as understanding.
"We needed a way to more concretely assess questions like: How are employers currently thinking about neurodiversity in the workplace? What barriers are neurodivergent professionals actually reporting? Where do perception gaps exist between leadership and lived experience, and where are the strongest opportunities for improvements at the systems level? That was the gap that this study was designed to fill, not to create a perfect or a final answer, but to establish a meaningful regional baseline, a clearer picture of where we are, so that the future conversation can be actually grounded in evidence rather than guesswork."
Scott says there were many findings in the study, but chose to highlight a few for the crowd yesterday.
The first was that many of the challenges were structural and not personal. Many workplace barriers that neurodivergent professionals encounter are not about ability, motivation or work ethic. They are often about the fit between the individual and the structure, including communication norms, unclear expectations, management style, and sensory environment.
Often, someone can do the work, but the system around it was not designed with enough flexibility to support different cognitive styles.
"That distinction really matters, because when we misread a design mismatch as an individual deficit, we solve the wrong problem. We place the burden entirely on the employee to adapt, mask or endure. But when we recognize that friction may be coming from the system itself, we open the door to changes that are not only more effective, but often surprisingly achievable."
Next, she explains that there are meaningful perception gaps between leadership and lived experience. Scott says she found this to be one of the more important findings because many organizations' leaders believe they're doing well as far as accessibility.
"And to be fair, in many cases, that belief does come from good intentions. Leaders feel like they are supportive. They feel like their culture is welcoming. They feel that their organization would respond appropriately if someone needed help in that area. But the experiences reported by neurodivergent professionals do not always align with that confidence. That doesn't automatically mean that leaders are indifferent or failing in bad faith, but it does suggest that many organizations may be measuring inclusion through the wrong signals."
She says, for example, they may be relying on the absence of complaints or a general sense that work culture is positive, which are not sufficient indicators of whether systems are actually performing well for the people navigating them. The study also found that the support, when offered, was too informal to be dependable.
Even when support exists in organizations, she says they often find it to be personality-driven, dependent on an individual manager, rather than embedded into the system. So whether someone has a positive experience may depend very heavily on who supervises them or whether they happen to be in an environment where informal flexibility is available. But that's not enough.
"If success depends on luck, chemistry or exception making, then the system is not yet doing the job. Strong work systems should not require people to find the one manager who gets it. They should be designed in a way that makes success more replicable and less fragile."
The last two findings should excite business owners. They found that by increasing neurodivergent access, you might see a boost in economics, too.
"I want to be very clear about this point: this study is absolutely about inclusion, dignity and access, but it is also about performance. It's also about labor force participation. It's about retention, innovation and regional competitiveness. Many sectors that matter deeply to the future of Northwest Arkansas benefit from cognitive diversity, whether we're talking about technology, logistics, operations, design, entrepreneurship, healthcare, analysis or complex problem solving. A region that knows how to better support a wider range of thinkers gains an advantage. When we fail to design for cognitive diversity, we do not just create hardship for individuals. We leave talent on the table. We increase friction, we weaken retention, we leave dollars on the table, and we make it harder for organizations to fully benefit from the talent that they already have or could otherwise attract."
Finally, her recommendations for workplaces are practical.
"One of the very encouraging findings in the work is that improving outcomes for neurodivergent professionals does not necessarily require organizations to rebuild everything from scratch or completely overhaul their practices. In many cases, the most meaningful improvements come from refining already existing practices: clear communication, more predictable expectations, thoughtful reporting, greater flexibility on how the work gets done."
The study suggests implementing management training that builds awareness of cognitive differences, more intentional physical and sensory environments, better feedback systems and more structured pathways for support.
"These are not dramatic interventions, but they can have dramatic consequences. And again, these adjustments tend to help more than just the neurodivergent group. When organizations become clearer, more intentional and more adaptive, that usually benefits the broader community."
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
