Top tips for a ‘neurospicy’-friendly workplace

Creating a workplace that can accommodate the needs of neurodivergent employees can result in a happier workforce for all staff, which in turn can spell success for businesses to retain talent in the channel.

This is according to the self-proclaimed “neurospicy” group of Pax8 executive coach Diana Drury, ethiSEC administrator Nel Fulloon, Reef IT founder and CEO Aaron Jervis, who spoke together on the panel Working Better Together: Neurodiversity and Psychological Safety at the SMBiT Professionals National Conference 2025.

The discussion, which was moderated by Colton Computer Technologies managing director Mitch Colton, touched on personal experiences involved in managing IT businesses in the channel and working with their own neurodivergence and their colleagues’.

Normalise being safe and vulnerable

One of the clear messages from the panellists was to create a workplace that allows staff members to feel like they can be safe and vulnerable, whether they’re neurotypical or neurodiverse.

To do this, it’s important to make sure mental health wellbeing is taken seriously and as a separate issue from physical ailments.

“I’m fine with you having a mental health day, but I want to know that you’re having a mental health day,” Colton said. “If you’re crook, you’re crook, and you’ve got the flu. If you’re not feeling great, and you just need some headspace, I want to know about it.”

In response, Fulloon said that it’s okay “to be a little weird, little odd, own your needs and ask for them to be met”.

She also said that neurodivergent employees can act as “the canary in the mines”, as they can be attuned to slight changes in the workplace environment.

“They’re the ones who are the most sensitive to the stressors when they’re small, so when your neurodivergent staff are starting to go sideways, it’s a really good indicator that there’s things in your business you need to look at,” she said.

Respect neurodivergence as a spectrum

It’s also vital to realise that not all neurodivergent diagnoses are alike, and even the same diagnosis can present differently amongst numerous people.

As such, neurodiversity should be treated like a spectrum, with different individuals having diverse needs.

“I was very lucky to be mentored to just own who I was, identify my needs and then be okay with doing whatever I had to do to have them met,” Fulloon said. “So, for me, I love that you’re normalising whoever you are, whatever you need. Figure that out, and then let’s make it work.

Drury said in some cases, social interactions can feel like a tax on a person’s energy – doubly so if an individual in question hasn’t been diagnosed and isn’t aware of their own neurodivergent traits.

Using the panellists as an example, she said they were potentially paying a “huge tax” just by being on stage, including herself.

As such, a hypothetical thought she said she could have is that “I have to do this. This is a today thing, and it’s important that it gets done today. I have to push through,’ but I know I’m done. I’m cooked. Don’t talk to me after this”.

“You don’t always know until you realise, get diagnosed, or someone goes, ‘Hey, by the way, you are paying that tax’,” Drury said, “So, you spend your life, for the video gamers out here, playing on legendary difficulty when you thought it was just normal. That’s a big difficulty curve that you didn’t know you were doing.”

For others, tensions can be heightened from what may appear at first to be the mildest interactions, so it’s key to be considerate of all kinds of moods.

“You might need to come and say, ‘Are you okay?’ three times to get them to know that they can say they’re not okay and they need something,” Jervis said. “By the same respect you’ll get other staff who you’ll come and say, ‘Hey, everything all right?’ or they’ll come to you and say, ‘I’m having an issue with this,’ or ‘I’m feeling really stressed out.’

“The idea is to be just open for everybody but be aware that some people might need a little bit of extra coaxing to deal with what’s going on. “

Colton also said that middle-aged and older men might have difficulty sharing the fact they’re neurodivergent, especially if they’re not big on sharing their mental health journey, so support should be provided.

“There is a lot of anxiety—and I know it happens for women as well—but certainly there are a lot of 30- to 60-year-old men that are spectrum-y and are undiagnosed,” he said. “They grew up, they’re getting through life, but we don’t talk to anyone about it, and then we will basically we see depression, and unfortunately, a lot of the time, alcohol goes along with that to self-medicate.

“If people don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, but I certainly know in our business, we’ve made a lot of effort in our staff training to have the ‘big chat’, and it’s still hard.”

Lead confidently

No-one likes to be anxious at the best of times, so being upfront about how a business is performing and what an employee’s expectations are is always appreciated.

As such, business leaders need to step up and be able to communicate effectively to staff in a confident manner, so they know what’s going on.

“Never have them sitting there thinking, ‘Where’s the business going? What’s my expectation of me?’” Jervis said. “By the same respect, just let them know that they can come and talk to you and not be judged. It’s like with kids; lead confidently, because the kids are going to pick up on you being nervous and get nervous.

“It’s the same with people with anxiety or overthinking. It’s like, ‘Oh my God! How are we doing business wise? Are we making a profit? Are we going to be out of business tomorrow?’ If that’s playing in their mind, that’s going to impact their work, that’s going to impact everything.”

Fulloon also said that employers need to look within themselves and consider their own mental health before they can begin to cater to the mental health needs of others.

“You can’t lead where you haven’t been. If you haven’t done your own identity reflection, if you haven’t looked at your own traumas, your own challenges, your own triggers, how on Earth can you possibly help someone else do that for themselves?” she said.

While many partners talk about the importance of culture to their workplace, that culture stems from its top leadership and goes all the way down; not only do business leaders need to talk the talk, but they need to walk the walk too.

“Your culture comes from your leadership in the first place. Even with a larger small business, even with a company–but it is harder when you get to those bigger sizes–it starts at the top,” Fulloon said.

If an employee acts outside of the accepted workplace norms, employers should be upfront about outlining the business’ values, she continued.

“’We don’t talk to people like that here in our company. This is who we are. We do this, we behave like that.’ Doing that ‘we’ is a great way to go,” Fulloon added. “This is who we are, and you’ve got to fit in with our values.”

Accommodate within the workplace

Regardless of whether someone is neurodiverse or neurotypical, any self-respecting workplace should accommodate the needs of all its employees, Fulloon said. However, one group shouldn’t be prioritised over the other.

“Everyone’s got needs, not just people who are neurodiverse,” she said. “This is happening more and more now; we all go, ‘Oh, that’s why I’m weird!’ It’s like, a diagnosis gives you permission to go, ‘Yes, I have needs.’

“What I think it’s so important to do is give permission to own those needs, because then you have permission to advocate for that as well. For me, it starts as an internal place going, ‘Yeah, I am just as important as everyone else in the room. I’ve come with my own needs. They’re different. They’re not less important.’”

Colton echoed Fulloon’s sentiments, noting that a quality business environment must be psychologically sound and that it doesn’t discriminate between neurodiverse and neurotypical.

“It’s just good; it shouldn’t be that there are two standards,” he said. “There is just one standard, and the standard is accommodating and fits everyone in it, and everyone is safe and comfortable to go and do what they need to do.”

Meanwhile, Drury said that a workplace environment—both physical and figurative—needs to have space for tense employees to sit down, calm down and focus on a specific task.

It’s also vital not to weaponise psychological safety, particularly in corporate environments. Drury said when she worked in a corporate workplace where psychological safety was weaponised, she felt like she had to speak up, which placed her in a position where she felt she always had to be vocal.

“That drove me further away. I still work in these environments. When I got diagnosed, I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve been through so much, I feel like I could take whatever they throw at me, so I will talk about it, so it’s easier for the next person,’” Drury recounted

“But I also know that potentially, my next employer might also be corporate, and I can’t put that back in the box now; I might accidentally reveal to someone, ‘I’ve had this really terrible experience. Oh shit, I can’t put that back. What if you’re going to weaponise that against me?’

“So, one of the really important things for everyone to know is that your business is not an isolated experience for your employees. If they’re older, especially if they’ve worked somewhere else, they may have had that really bad experience.”

As such, the trauma associated with that weaponisation can move with an employee and could, in one way or another, reveal itself down the line.

Even if an employer does their best to create a workplace that is accepting and safe, it won’t do much good if employees feel like they can’t step back when taking leave, so there needs to be an underlying foundation that can leave employees feeling like business can continue as usual when they’re away.

“It only works if they feel that they can be away from their job for a week,” Drury said. That might mean you’re shouldering that extra load for a week, but it only works if you’ve planned and you’re ready for that.”

In response, Colton said that business leaders need to establish structures and redundancy into their workplaces.

“You need systems and processes to support people, because if you’ve got a tech that is burning out, that is stressed because there’s 200 open tickets at the moment, that’s just going to trigger anxiety, and it all just deteriorates,” he added.