Managers making strides to building neurodiverse staff

Even as money managers have made strides toward diversifying their workforce, many are still figuring out best practices for recruiting and retaining neurodivergent individuals — those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia or other conditions that affect how the brain functions.

"There is a real hunger in corporations these days to really figure out how to attract, hire, retain and grow neurodivergent talent," said Jill Houghton, Washington-based president and CEO of Disability:IN, a global non-profit advocating for disability inclusion.

Disability:IN offers employers a Disability Equality index: a "benchmarking tool" that helps companies measure their "culture and leadership, employment practices, enterprisewide access, community engagement (and) supplier diversity" when it comes to disability inclusion, Ms. Houghton said.

If companies score over an 80 on the index, Disability:IN recognizes them as one of the "Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion," while if they score below an 80, their information is kept private.

"Financial services has been one of the largest participating sectors along with tech," Ms. Houghton said of the index, which has recognized companies such as Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Fidelity Investments, Voya Financial Inc., BlackRock Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association as best places to work.

According to Claire Borelli, Philadelphia-based chief diversity and talent officer at TIAA, the company partners with organizations like Disability:IN for inclusion training and career fairs, and it has its own disability inclusion council to help with employee accommodations.

TIAA is also developing a neurodiversity program this year "to truly attract an overlooked but very competent workforce," Ms. Borelli said.

Other money managers, such as Invesco Ltd., Capital Group Cos. Inc. and Schroders PLC, have made neurodiversity a priority by starting programs to help with the retention of neurodivergent employees.

In 2017, Disability:IN worked with a handful of employers to launch the Neurodiversity @ Work Employer Roundtable — a group of companies, now more than 50, with neurodiversity-focused hiring programs.

The companies meet regularly to share best practices, guide other employers starting similar programs and help neurodivergent talent find inclusive employers, said Neil Barnett, Redmond, Wash.-based director of inclusive hiring and accessibility at Microsoft Corp. and lead of the roundtable.

"To get into the roundtable, all we ask is that you have a program in place, so a proactive neurodivergent hiring effort, and you're public about it for about a year," Mr. Barnett said.

The roundtable produced a playbook in 2019 for companies looking to start a neurodiversity hiring program, and launched a Neurodiversity Career Connector in April, which serves as a career portal for neurodivergent individuals to help them connect with employers looking for neurodiverse talent.

Several financial services and investment management companies, including Fidelity and Prudential Financial, are a part of the roundtable, and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. was one of its founding members.

In order to benefit from the talents of neurodivergent individuals, managers need to ensure they offer a supportive, inclusive workplace.

"I would say most organizations don't realize that they've already got more neurodivergent individuals in their workplace, and that they are not getting the best out of them because they're not making their workplace as supportive as they could be," said Ian Iceton, London-based senior human resources practitioner for the Diversity Project's Neurodiversity chapter. The Diversity Project is an initiative to bring true diversity, equality and inclusion to the U.K. investment industry. "So, you could actually increase productivity and performance of your current workplace if you get better at thinking about it."

Progress is being made, with more attention being turned to neurodiversity in the investment industry, he said, but it still has not received the focus that other areas of diversity have received.

But that doesn't mean that money managers aren't making strides when it comes to recognizing and embracing neurodiversity.

Invesco, which has a neurodiversity network in place to increase awareness and make the firm more inclusive, provided neurodiversity training to 50 staff members across Europe, the Middle East and Africa in January 2022, with the aim of them becoming "neurodiversity champions," said Matthieu Grosclaude, chief operating officer for EMEA and senior sponsor for the network.

These champions have the knowledge and understanding to now educate their own teams on recognizing the benefits of different ways of working, for example.

Further, over the last year or so, Invesco launched paid neurodiversity internships — partnering with several non-profit organizations to find neurodivergent candidates and coach them through placements with the firm.

"It was really important for us to play a role from a societal perspective in terms of access to employment, as well as getting the next level of benefits for colleagues," seeing interns working well and progress, Mr. Grosclaude said.

The firm is also scaling up its neurodiversity efforts beyond the U.K. and continental Europe, to North America, where it has just launched a neurodiversity chapter.

"The talk is easy — the real actions are what's really impactful, and I believe we're now at a point where we've got a way more established set of efforts around this space," he added.

Invesco also runs a series of "storytelling," where either neurodivergent individuals or those with families or experience of people with relevant conditions share their personal stories, which are then published on the firm's intranet and made accessible to all employees in the organization, said Devvya Sharma, London-based diversity and inclusion manager for EMEA.

The firm has also hosted events where staff have shared their stories.

Invesco's efforts extend to a "demographic data capture campaign," launched in October 2020, where the firm is "trying to understand what the demographic makeup of our organization is. We do ask people if they identify as neurodiverse," Ms. Sharma said. The firm analyzed the data toward the end of last year, which was shared with staff, "and I think that kind of triggered the interest of our colleagues in North America as well, because we now have data to back any sort of resources or initiatives that we introduce to the organization," Ms. Sharma said.

Invesco has $1.48 trillion in assets under management.

Schroders' recent two-week "inclusion at Schroders" global learning initiative made neurodiversity "a key area of focus as we seek to increase awareness of diverse abilities," said Sonia Jenkins, London-based head of reward, well-being and inclusion. "This included neurodiversity 101 webinars, partnering with our training provider to develop a bespoke module on supporting autistic individuals and hosting an employee panel on neurodiversity to allow an honest and open conversation on how we can make workplaces more accessible for all. These proved to be some of our most popular events," she said. The firm had £752.4 billion ($822.4 billion) in assets under management as of Sept. 30.

Some managers have put specific committees in place to support neurodiverse individuals.

Octopus Investments Ltd. runs a neurodiversity committee, launched in 2022 and "designed as a safe space for neurodiverse individuals to get together," said Jennifer Ockwell, head of institutional in London.

The committee, which was originally made up of four people and now includes around 36 staff members, is also a networking opportunity for individuals, offering a chance to discuss challenges in work and personal lives, too.

The growth in participation came in part from more diagnoses among neurodiverse individuals and increased awareness, as well as an in-house campaign last year talking about taboo subjects including attention deficit disorder, Ms. Ockwell said.

"One of the biggest things you can do in an organization is break down taboos that exist, and create role models. I've always been a great champion of talking about (various) conditions and identifying people at different levels of seniority," with junior management and executive committee members talking about their neurodiverse condition, how it affects them and how they manage their time. Openness also allows an individual's direct manager and team to provide support, Ms. Ockwell added.

The firm had £12.8 billion ($15.4 billion) in assets under management as of Dec. 31, run across renewable energy, venture capital, real estate and sustainable infrastructure strategies.

Supporting neurodivergent individuals in the office intersects with Octopus' day-to-day operations — the venture capital team increasingly invests across three main themes: empowering people, revitalizing health care and creating a sustainable planet. Through its empowering people theme, the team recently invested in an app to help people with ADHD, and has made the app free to all Octopus employees. There's also access to apps for individuals with dyslexia. "It's saying, what can we do to help you?" Ms. Ockwell said.

Capital Group formed a neurodiversity chapter in North America through its Capital Abilities Network — one of the firm's so-called Capital Communities, known externally as employee resource groups. The neurodiversity chapter was formed to give individuals the opportunity to connect and support one another, with other initiatives including bringing in external speakers, panel events with neurodivergent employees sharing their experiences and "coffee chat discussions," said Cristina Santos, head of diversity, equity, inclusion and engagement at Capital Group in New York.

Some money managers — including Capital Group and Invesco — said they have been awarded Disability Confident Employer status in the U.K. The status is one of three recognized by the U.K. government under its Disability Confident Scheme, which aims to support employers in making "the most of talents disabled people can bring to the workplace," the government's website said. The voluntary scheme runs across three levels: Disability Confident Committed, Disability Confident Employer and Disability Confident Leader. For each level, the government outlines a number of core statements that employers can use to check against their own business regarding employing disabled people.

As Capital Group was building its neurodiversity program, executives researched and studied enterprise application software company SAP SE's "groundbreaking" Autism at Work Program, Ms. Santos said. Capital Group also sponsored the first neurodivergent careers fairs at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Overall, Capital Group executives "take an inclusive approach and do not categorize or limit neurodiverse candidates to certain roles. Our neurodiverse associates are fully integrated into our workforce" — something that Ms. Santos said stands apart from other similar programs in the money management industry that take a targeted approach to earmark certain roles exclusively for neurodiverse individuals.

Capital Group had about $2.2 trillion in assets under management as of Dec. 31.

And at PGIM Inc., executives curated a six-month pilot program in partnership with Neurodiversity in the Workplace — a Philadelphia-based professional training and coaching company. PGIM's program launched in October and the firm aims to attract candidates "who have specific skills and ways of working to foster the innovation and creativity that will lead to better outcomes for our clients," said Roben Dunkin, Newark, N.J.-based chief operations and innovation officer. The first cohort — members of which meet weekly to share learnings, experiences and to engage with some of PGIM's senior leaders — is ongoing and the program runs through April.

The ultimate goal of the pilot program "is to convert participants to full-time hires," Ms. Dunkin said. "Participants in the pilot program were quick to showcase their expertise in tools such as Tableau, Snowflake, Python, Power BI and more. In their short time with PGIM, they have become valuable contributors to their teams," she added.

The new program is also PGIM's first step in building out a Neurodiverse Talent Center of Excellence, which will hire and develop neurodiverse talent at the firm, covering recruitment, interviewing, training and retention.

PGIM has $1.2 trillion in assets under management.