Bruce Damonte
The Financial Upside of Workplaces that Support Neurodiversity
A new book by HOK’s Kay Sargent highlights benefits for everyone through inclusive design.
According to a 2024 study, one in five people is neurodivergent. If you ask Kay Sargent, that number is probably even higher.
“Eight years ago, the statistics were that one in eight people were considered to be neurodivergent,” she says. “Now… it's probably going to end up being much closer to one in three, if not even more.”
As a principal and director of thought leadership for interiors at HOK, she is keenly aware of how knowledge and understanding of neurodiversity has shaped the modern workplace. Both in concept and in practice. She literally wrote the book on it. Designing Neuroinclusive Workplaces represents eight years of work on the subject all spawned by an off-hand remark at the end of a client meeting.
“As we were getting ready to leave, they said, ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, how do you design space for someone that's ADHD?’” she says. “I had an OK answer 'cause I've designed all kinds of spaces throughout my career and I'm the mother of five kids, but I didn't have a great answer. So, I wanted to know more.”
Kay Sargent, director of thought leadership for interiors, HOK
Armed with that question and a curiosity fueled by having neurodiverse children of her own, she and her team at HOK set out to find an answer. Since that time, as understanding of neurodiversity has grown, so has awareness. Now its front and center in conversation making neurodiversity a buzzword in the field of workplace design.
Why Now?
Neurodiversity was a term first used in the 1996 by autistic activists as an indicator that everyone’s brain develops in different ways. Sociologist Judy Singer popularized it in 1988. While most people think it applies to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), that evolving statistic Sargent has been tracking since 2017, is that the term can be applied to a large swath of the population.
This realization was amplified in the wake of COVID in 2020. People got used to a highly customized work-from-home environment. Once restrictions were lifted, making the trip back into shared spaces came with an array of sensory challenges many hadn’t been aware of. As companies bring employees back to the office full time, a consideration of how neurodiversity plays into that becomes part of the design strategy. That’s part of what makes Sargent’s new book so timely.
“A lot of the book really talks about our research on workplace, the six modalities of work, and the science behind how we do that,” she says. “So, it's really the collision of everything we know from workplace and everything we know about neurodiversity - how those things come together, and what should we actually be actioning in the physical space.”
Designing Neuroinclusive Workplaces
Choice, variety, and control
“If I were to ask any designer, ‘What are the biggest challenges that people have in their workplace?’ (it’s) light, temperature, sound,” she says. “Those are the three that probably come to the top in every single post occupancy evaluation. All of those are sensory elements. So, the question is, what are we doing fundamentally differently to address those? And the answer is, probably, in many cases very little. And so that's a problem.”
To solve, it’s important to think about how we have used space in the past. Sargent remembers the private-office boom of the ‘80s and has no interest in going back. When open concept offices were the rage, it was good for collaboration and light transmission, but didn’t suit everyone’s work style. Sargent points out the commonality between both those design trends.
“We fundamentally have this notion that I'm designing you a space to sit and we've been trying to design the space that would accommodate the average person doing the average thing. But I think that's the problem,” she says. “Define who the average person is and what that average task is - I just don't think that exists anymore.”
Creating space that offers users a choice
IMAGE CREDIT: © Michael Robinson Photography LLC
Choice, variety, and control
She argues if we stop designing offices like people are potted plants, expected to sit in the same place every day, then people can gravitate towards the space they’re most comfortable in. According to HOK research, spaces that support the principals of choice, variety, and control can empower people do their best work.
01 Choice lets people select the workplace settings they need at any moment. -
02 Variety matches different ways of working and sensory preferences.
03 Control gives people power over their immediate environment.
How does what we know about the nature of work impact how we build it?
IMAGE CREDIT: Latitude Photography
Making a change
Creating spaces that allow people to accommodate for their sensory needs require a change in mindset. Depending on the building, that means reconsidering how to construct it in the early stages of design or adapting existing spaces to support the people using it. From glass walls to manage acoustics while still allowing natural light to penetrate the space, to single-serving focus rooms for heads-down work, there are a variety of elements to consider. And there will be more to consider as research and implementation continues to evolve.
“We need to be able to make adjustments. The model we have in North America is you're going to do it once every 10 years, we're going to spend a lot of money get it right then you know that's it, right?” says Sargent. “That's a broken model. People change. Technology changes. Everything is changing so rapidly. If the workspace is staying stagnant and isn't morphing or adjusting to stay current, then it's becoming the anchor that's holding everybody back.”
Space has to adapt to people that are using it
IMAGE CREDIT: Bruce Damonte
Financial benefits
The key to that sentiment is the word “everybody.” Designing workplace that supports neurodiversity is not just about being inclusive. It’s about the benefit that choice, variety, and control can bring to everyone, not just people on the spectrum. Sargent uses this example to illustrate.
“If I've set you in a spot where I know you're going to be uncomfortable or you can't control any of the stimulation, or you're overwhelmed, or you're just irritated all the time, your productivity is going to be negatively affected,” she says. “Those are the cost of poor design.”
As Sargent points out, it’s not just about the 20% of individuals who are neurodivergent. She can’t think of a single person not impacted to some degree by sound, temperature, and light. So, if you can design to support neurodiversity and everyone in the space benefits, why wouldn’t you?
“What is it costing you not to address these things right now? And there's a hidden cost to that because you're literally impacting everybody's well-being productivity, all of those things are negatively being addressed or impacted when we're not addressing those issues in the space.”
Designing to support neurodiversity brings choice, variety, and control to everyone
IMAGE CREDIT: Latitude Photography
Squishy metrics like hidden costs or how people feel often make it difficult to quantify the upside of this kind of work. But thanks to studies done by Sargent and the team at HOK, it’s clear that while there may be an investment to make spaces more inclusive, there are across-the-board benefits like better sleep, increased mobility, and improved satisfaction that translate directly to a better bottom line.
“It goes back to that return on investment,” says Sargent. “In this one case study, we had results like 38% increase in satisfaction of sound and 16% perceived increase in productivity, and 40% increase in pride of place. Those are staggering numbers when you start to look at what that actually means to the bottom line of a business.”
Increased satisfaction has an impact on the bottom line of a business.
IMAGE CREDIT: Latitude Photography
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