Four neurodiverse panellists shared their lived experiences and tips for travel businesses with moderator Lindsay Garvey-Jones, national sales manager, Holiday Extras and chair, AWTE at the event held at Google HQ in London.
Caroline Clark, product leader with start-ups and scale-ups across industries, was recently diagnosed with autism, prompted by her watching Christine McGuinness’ BBC documentary Unmasking my autism.
Clark said that respect and trust could be fostered between employees and organisations by embracing neurodiversity: “It’s the right thing to do,” she said. “Let’s see a world where we stop sticking labels on people and accept that we are all different, that we all have our strengths. We need to be more accepting of uniqueness and stop expecting people to do things in a certain way.”
She explained how people with dyslexia, dyspraxia and obsessive-compulsive disorder tend to be more creative and innovative. She referred to JP Morgan’s Autism at Work programme (2015-2018), which showed their autistic employees were more productive than neurotypicals. “When you see JP Morgan doing everything they can for neurodiverse employees to feel comfortable and excel in a really corporate environment, it’s huge,” she said.
Tiffany Casson, client relationship manager at Inntel and ambassador for the charity Neurodiversity in Business pointed out that some 100,000 people are waiting for an autism diagnosis.
She urged employers to bring some of the structure used to help autistic children in schools into the workplace, such as offering more breaks within an extended working day and addressing desk and eating environments. “I feel anxious because of these things,” she said.
The group’s openness to share their lived experiences was well-received and there was light-heart moment when Garvey-Jones coined a new word, commending the "neurospicy" panel, in place of using neurodiverse.
Helen Moon, chief executive at EventWell, said her diagnosis was “liberating”. “It was one of the most life-changing things that has happened to me, [to realise] I don’t need fixing, my brain is just wired differently,” she said.
Her company offers a quiet room service for events, which she says can be overwhelming for neurodiverse people, with their lights, smells, busyness and need for small talk.
“The place I used to end up was the toilet,” she explained. “I’d go there on an hourly basis to compose myself – where’s the dignity in that?”
