Want to target an annual saving of $6 million per 500 employees? Prioritize inclusive leadership through neuro-inclusion
Published on 18 April 2024 • Written by Dr Lisa Colledge
A company with 500 employees which does not have employee engagement as one of its strategic priorities is throwing away almost $6 million a year due to lost productivity caused by disengagement and attrition. Regardless of their initial degree of disengagement, all employees want to contribute, and feel a strong connection, to your mission, and this is often more important than increases in compensation.
Wells Fargo has found that their program to attract and enable neurodivergent employees, aiming to build competitive advantage by tapping into a highly skilled and often neglected talent pool, has resulted in broader improvements in engagement and dependent business measures across the organization.
Key takeaways
If you have 500 employees, chances are that you are losing almost $6 million every year in lost productivity due to disengagement and attrition. Of course, a few of your employees are thriving stars who not only individually contribute incredible value to your mission but also enhance the performance of those around them; unfortunately, this performance bonus is outweighed almost three-fold by ‘productivity and energy vampires’ whose toxic behavior drags other team members’ performance down.
Launching a strategic priority to move employees up the scale of engagement will start to reduce your wasted millions from the outset. Contrary to what managers tend to believe, a feeling of being valued, involved and connected to your mission is often more important to employees than higher compensation. Consistently creating this feeling of engagement within your organization is a silver bullet to improve the performance of thriving stars, vampires and every category in between.
Designing and implementing a skills- and outcome-focused culture is a proven way to create this engagement, and is an approach inspired by the inclusion of neurodivergent employees such as autists, dyslexics, and those with ADHD. Wells Fargo launched such a program in 2020 to access highly skilled and largely untapped neurodivergent talent pools, using a scalable and sustainable method. Their hiring, onboarding and enabling approach has attracted tech employees who can learn a new coding language in 1 week instead of 6 months, and has also improved innovation, reduced skills gaps, and enhanced employee satisfaction across the organization.
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Employee disengagement and attrition come at a high cost
The costs of disengagement and attrition are $5.7 million a year in lost productivity for a company with 500 employees, and may even be as high as $8.9 million a year.
These figures are based on research conducted amongst the 500 large companies that trade on the American stock exchanges, and are listed in the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P) index (references are given at the end). They are perhaps not surprising, given that new data show that only 2 out of every 10 US employees say that they feel connected to their organization’s mission.
Surveys have revealed a significant mismatch between what managers assume their employees want, and what employees actually value. Managers assume that their team members yearn for higher compensation, whether from their current employer or another, and that poor health can explain disengagement. Employees, however, want different things: they want to feel a sense of belonging within their organization and team, to have the opportunity to grow, and to be valued. It is somewhat more important to employees to feel valued by their organization than by their manager, but both rate amongst the most important factors that employees consider. Luckily, there is some agreement, with both managers and employees rating work-life balance and interest in work equally.
Consciously forging stronger connections between their contributions and your mission is the silver bullet to increase engagement for all employees
In short, employees want to feel valued, involved, and connected to your mission. They want to be engaged in delivering your mission.
The same piece of research that shared the shocking cost of disengagement and attrition defines six different categories of employee engagement, ranging from the 4% ‘thriving stars’ who exemplify strong alignment with your mission and also have a positive impact on the performance of their people around them, to the 11% actively disengaged ‘productivity and energy vampires’ whose toxic behavior is contagious to team members. Between these engagement extremes, most people are getting on with their job either reliably and with a sense of commitment, or having quietly checked out; some, including your strongest performers who no longer feel valued and have been poached by your competitors, are on their way to another organization, and some are working at least one additional full-time role either to earn more money or to provide development opportunities for themselves that they lack in their role at your organization.
An effective strategy to increase engagement and productivity, and reduce the millions you’re throwing away each year on disengagement and attrition, is to move as many employees as possible further away from the ‘productivity and energy vampire’ end of the scale and towards the opposite ‘thriving star’ end. Simply migrating some of the vampires to become quietly disengaged, without even thinking about increasing the proportion of thriving stars, will increase productivity by reducing the negative spiral of a toxic team atmosphere.
A single strategy, proven to increase engagement across each of these six categories, is to build meaning and purpose by forging a connection to your mission. You can recreate the conditions experienced by your thriving stars and reliably committed employees for everyone by designing and implementing a skills- and outcome-focused culture. When what people do is more highly valued than the way in which they do it, your employees will feel seen as they are and appreciated for the value they contribute.
Wells Fargo’s neurodiversity inclusion program exemplifies the skills-and outcome-focused culture that improves engagement and performance across the board
This kind of organizational culture is inspired by being inclusive of the needs of neurodivergent employees, such as autistics, dyslexics, and those with ADHD. Neuro-inclusive cultures are renowned for not only empowering neurodivergent employees, but everyone, regardless of where they currently sit in these engagement categories. I have written previously about business benefits enjoyed by neuro-inclusive cultures, and now want to share the experiences of a program designed and executed by Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo launched its enterprise neurodiversity program in 2020. It is led by Stephen DeStefani and while talking at the Neurodiversity in Business 2024 conference he told me that it was seen as “business imperative” to establish this program. Indeed, one of its stated goals is to “establish a strategic advantage for Wells Fargo through access to highly skilled and largely untapped talent pools”.
Neurodivergent individuals find the program personally transformative, and Stephen has shared that some learnt new coding languages in as little as one week, compared to the industry standard of six months. The program is also bringing significant benefit across the whole organization in stimulating ideas for new programs, and novel solutions to both customer-facing and internal business challenges. Skills gaps have closed, and employee satisfaction has increased overall.
The hiring approach that has been implemented is designed to provide the conditions under which neurodivergent candidates can demonstrate the skills that they would bring to a role. Candidates are assessed through interactive workshops and team-based problem-solving, instead of having to try to fit into a traditional, socially-oriented, high pressure interview. Successful candidates receive ongoing training, mentoring, and accommodations to help them to thrive in their roles.
Importantly, this program has been scaled step-wise, and implemented in a sustainable way. The program initially focused on hiring and enabling neurodivergent candidates to the technology division, and the success experienced has attracted an additional six divisions to roll in to the program. Hiring managers in participating divisions have been upskilled, and all employees in the organization now have access to education and training to build their knowledge and comfort of working with neurodivergent team members. 97% of the almost 300 neurodivergent hires made to Q1 2024 are still working at Wells Fargo, a situation which is ideal to continually spread knowledge and inclusive behavior from within so that it becomes firmly embedded in the organizational culture and is sustainable in the long-term.
Engagement should be a strategic priority for all organizations
Employee engagement deserves to be a strategic priority in every organization, whether as a newly launched initiative or in a maintenance mode. Engagement programs bring almost immediate improvements in business and people metrics, as I described in this article, and applying best practices ensures these trends continue for the long-term. The recipe for success already exists in your organization; we need to find out what makes the difference for your engaged thriving stars, and reliable and committed employees, so that this can be scaled to create similar conditions for your currently disengaged team members. But such cultural transformation doesn’t happen without focus and effort. After first establishing engagement as a strategic priority, seek help: people have done this before and can get you to your destination via a quicker and more direct route than you can alone.
References
Cost of disengagement and attrition: ‘Some employees are destroying value. Others are building it. Do you know the difference?’ Research from McKinsey, 2023, available here.
Only 2 in every 10 US employees feel connected to their organization’s mission: research from Gallup, 2024, available here.
What managers think employees want, and what employees really want, from their workplace: ‘‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours.’ Research from McKinsey, 2021, available here.
Wells Fargo neurodiversity program and goals: information is available here.
Wells Fargo benefits and description of the hiring program: ‘Disability Inclusion In The Workplace: Wells Fargo’s Stephen DeStefani On How Businesses Make Accommodations For Customers and Employees Who Have a Disability’, 2022, available here.
I'm Lisa, and I help leaders create inclusive cultures that embrace all neurostyles. By empowering every team member to contribute at their best, while fostering mental well-being, you will boost innovation, retention, and talent acquisition—leading to enhanced business performance.
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