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The 2026 Neurodiversity in Business Report, produced by Birkbeck, University of London, in partnership with Neurodiversity in Business, draws on survey data from 428 neurodivergent employees, 122 neurodivergent entrepreneurs, contractors and self-employed people, and 55 employer representatives.
Its central message is that neuroinclusion is no longer primarily an awareness challenge. It is a question of work design, management capability and talent retention. The findings also offer businesses an unusual opportunity to compare the experiences of neurodivergent employees with those who have left conventional employment and designed work around their own needs and strengths.
Here are five key takeaways for businesses seeking to enable neurodivergent career potential—and improve work for everyone.
1. Psychological Safety Is Performance Infrastructure
Psychological safety emerged as the strongest predictor of career satisfaction and the strongest protection against burnout, in lockstep with the findings from 2025 and 2024. It was twice as important to career satisfaction as the next most influential factors.
This is not about making work endlessly comfortable. It means creating conditions in which people can clarify expectations, disclose difficulties, challenge ineffective processes and learn from mistakes without fear of punishment.
2. Job Design Unlocks Strengths More Effectively Than “Support”
Neurodivergent entrepreneurs reported being better able than employees to use context-dependent strengths such as creativity and innovative thinking. They also experienced fewer difficulties with workplace politics, sensory overwhelm and managing emotions at work.
The lesson is not that neurodivergent people should become self-employed, but that autonomy, flexibility and job crafting can release capability that conventional work design suppresses.
3. Line Managers Cannot Carry Neuroinclusion Alone
Eighty-five per cent of employer representatives reported rising demand for neurodiversity support, but only 38% said they had sufficient resources to meet it. Managers’ lack of understanding was the most commonly reported obstacle to adjustments, ahead of cost.
Training matters, but businesses also need clear processes, central expertise, workable budgets and authority for managers to act. Neuroinclusion cannot depend on the goodwill or confidence of an individual manager.
4. Neurodiversity Gain Can Benefit Everyone
The report’s authors use “neurodiversity gain” to describe the benefits created for all stakeholders when organisations redesign work, systems and policies to enable neurodivergent people. A practical example is to create credible specialist-contributor career paths, rather than making line management the only route to progression.
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Separating professional expertise from people-management responsibility could benefit many employees, not only those who are neurodivergent.
5. Return-To-Office Mandates Are A Talent Risk, Not Merely A Property Decision
Among the employees surveyed, 38% had received a return-to-office mandate—and 53% of those employees said it made them reconsider their job. The analysis also associated return-to-office mandates with lower career satisfaction and engagement and higher burnout.
Businesses should therefore assess office policies against performance, retention and wellbeing, rather than treating attendance as a proxy for productivity.
Prior to the pandemic, remote working was rarely offered and was typically associated with an individual disability assessment rather than an organisation-wide policy. Since remote working became an international norm, return-to-office mandates have not landed well with many employees. For some neurodivergent and disabled employees, however, remote working can be make-or-break rather than simply nice to have.
6. But…. Flexibility Creates A Social-Connection Conundrum
The findings do not support a simple choice between office-based work and social connection on one side, and remote work and isolation on the other. Flexible working can be essential for managing sensory demands, cognitive load, health and caring responsibilities. At the same time, supportive relationships, identity and belonging repeatedly emerge as important features of sustainable work. The report also places this within a wider context in which the World Health Organization estimates that one in six people globally is affected by loneliness.
The practical question, therefore, is not simply, “How many days should people attend the office?” It is: “How do we provide autonomy and flexibility while deliberately creating connection, trust and shared purpose?”
Blanket policies are unlikely to resolve that tension. Businesses will need to experiment with purposeful in-person contact, inclusive hybrid practices, well-supported managers, peer networks and different forms of job crafting—and evaluate their effects rather than relying on assumptions. This is not easy by any means, but the current situation of ‘us-versus-them’ is not sustainable, we have to face the issue head on.
The larger lesson from the report is that neuroinclusion cannot be delivered through a tick-list of accommodations. It requires organisations to design work around human performance: providing clarity without rigidity, connection without enforced proximity, and flexibility without isolation.
That is the promise of neurodiversity gain—not simply helping neurodivergent employees cope with existing systems, but building better systems from which everyone can benefit.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
