abstract UN070

SHL Celebrates Diversity on World Autism Awareness Day

As our teams commit to diversity and inclusion, SHL’s Neurodiversity Research Program has made progress towards several goals.

Last November, we announced the launch of SHL’s Neurodiversity Research Program as part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion. Today, SHL is taking time to acknowledge and educate our internal teams for World Autism Awareness Day. Since our teams are setting aside time to celebrate Autistic and Neurodiverse talent in the workplace, I felt it would be great to give you all an update on our research program’s progress.

To refresh your memory, the term Neurodiversity refers to the variation we see in human brain function and associated behavior and includes Autism, Dyslexia, and ADHD, amongst others.

One of the primary aims of the program was to investigate the experience and performance of candidates and participants who are neurodiverse with pre-hire or development assessments, especially in relation to behavioral assessments, where we have seen a great deal of interest in the media, from our clients and from candidates.

Neurodiversity refers to the variation we see in human brain function and associated behavior.

Since publishing that blog post, we were contacted from people both internal and external to the business, from all over the world, and it was encouraging that this topic was on a lot of peoples’ minds. We also started talking to existing clients who were interested to hear more about what SHL was doing in this space.

We are happy to report we have made progress in our program and are in talks with one of our clients to launch an exciting project examining some of our key behavioral assessments from a neurodiverse perspective.

SHL has also been keeping busy, making two commitments, as part of our membership of the Valuable 500:

  1. Conduct a formal accessibility audit of SHL assessments
  2. Formalize an accessibility review process as part of the SHL product development process

SHL is working internally to improve processes for SHL staff through our relationship with Purple, a UK based organization whose mission is to transform thinking and change the conversation to support businesses and disabled people. As part of this relationship, we will be working towards becoming a Disability Confident employer through the UK government’s Disability Confident employer scheme.

We will continue to make updates on our findings and progress on this important research program. In the meantime, we encourage every business, employee, and team to acknowledge World Autism Awareness Day and celebrate individuals who are Neurodiverse in their workplace!

Like to Know More?

If you are interested in finding out more about the Neurodiversity Research Program, please contact Rachel Owens or Kristin Allen.

If you would like to know more about SHL’s disability guidance, click here.

headshot rachel owens

Author

Rachel Owens

Rachel is a Senior Research Scientist and has been in the SHL R&D team for over six years. Her interests involve differences in diverse populations, and her main projects include SHL’s norming strategy and developing the Talent Analytics database. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Western Australia and is a graduate member of the British Psychological Society.

Explore SHL’s Wide Range of Solutions

With our platform of pre-configured talent acquisition and talent management solutions, maximize the potential of your company’s greatest asset—your people.

See Our Solutions