An independent expert panel told the UK government on Oct. 1 that support for neurodivergent employees should be built around individual need, not around a diagnosis. The Expert Academic Panel on Neurodiversity published its report and recommendations, and the government published a response alongside it.
The panel calls for strengthening existing disability employment policy, more research to close gaps in the evidence base, practical strategies for employers, and wider use of Universal Design principles so workplaces are built for everyone from the outset. In response, the government has launched a sixteen-week policy discovery exercise on where those principles could apply to workplaces. It also pointed to Disability Confident reforms, which remove the option for entry-level employers to renew at that level.
The numbers frame the stakes. In 2024/25 only 34 percent of disabled people with autism were in work, against 55 percent of disabled people overall. By the end of June, 1,000 people on the Connect to Work pathway for neurodivergent and learning-disabled people had moved into work, 470 of them young people.
For HR teams, the shift is from diagnosis-gated adjustments to defaults. An accommodation process that starts with a disclosed diagnosis only reaches employees who disclose. The panel’s Universal Design recommendation points to changes that do not depend on disclosure, such as how interviews are structured or how meeting expectations are written down. Those are examples of decisions that sit in HR process design and in the configuration of HR systems, such as whether an onboarding workflow asks about needs before it asks about a condition.
The discovery exercise is the part to watch. Employers that have already moved to need-based defaults will be better placed to respond to whatever it produces. See also our earlier coverage of the Acas flexible working consultation and three UK employment rights changes due before 2027.
Source: GOV.UK
