Employers are under more pressure than ever to show that inclusion is real, not just talked about during awareness weeks. For neurodiversity, that means checking whether your policies, processes and culture actually work for neurodivergent employees.
HR teams, inclusion leads and managers often tell us this feels hard to measure. It can be done, and it should be. Without data, well-meant changes go in without anyone knowing whether they made a difference.
Why measure neuroinclusive culture at all
Neurodivergent employees, including people with ADHD, autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia, bring different perspectives and ways of solving problems. In a workplace that isn’t set up for them, those strengths go unnoticed, people get frustrated, and eventually they leave. If you want a sense of scale, our piece on how many of your employees may be neurodivergent is a good starting point.
Good measurement does a few practical jobs. It shows barriers early, through exit interviews, anonymous surveys and adjustment data, long before they turn into resignations or tribunal claims. It tells you whether your reasonable adjustments policy is being used or just sits on the intranet. It closes the gap between what a policy says and what people experience day to day.
It also builds trust. When employees see results shared and acted on, inclusion stops looking like a box-ticking exercise. And it gives you evidence for senior leaders: linking retention, engagement and productivity to specific initiatives is how you keep the budget.
The CIPD’s Neuroinclusion at work report is worth reading alongside this if you want wider context on where UK employers are.
Six metrics worth tracking
Uptake of reasonable adjustments
Offering adjustments isn’t the same as people feeling safe to ask for them. Track the number of requests against the number granted, the time from request to implementation, and repeat requests, which can point to adjustments that never landed properly.
A simple example: if you buy licences for assistive software such as Grammarly, count how many people have asked for it and how long it took them to get access. If uptake is low, find out whether people don’t know about it or don’t trust the process. A workplace needs assessment can help individuals work out what they need in the first place.
Retention of neurodivergent staff
Retention is one of the clearest signs of cultural health. If neurodivergent employees leave at a higher rate than others, something in the environment is pushing them out, even if many never formally disclosed.
Compare average tenure of employees who have disclosed with the wider workforce, look for turnover spikes after policy or leadership changes, and watch for patterns in feedback.
Exit interviews are useful here even when you don’t know whether someone is neurodivergent. Ask questions such as “Did you feel supported to work in the way that suits you best?”, “Were there barriers that made your job harder?” and “Did you feel comfortable raising concerns or asking for support?” Patterns in the answers show whether inclusion played a part in people leaving.
Satisfaction and belonging
Add a few targeted questions to engagement and pulse surveys, and break down results by disclosed neurodivergence where numbers allow you to do it safely. Two statements we like: “I feel comfortable asking for the support I need to do my job well” and “My manager understands and supports different ways of working.”
Psychological safety
Many neurodivergent people have experienced stigma at work, so the belief that you can speak up without fear matters a great deal. Try “I can share ideas or concerns without worrying about negative consequences” and “I feel able to be myself at work.” Tracked over time, these tell you whether things are improving.
How well the adjustment process works
Beyond uptake, look at the process end to end: average time to fulfilment, how satisfied people are with what they received, and how often an adjustment failed or needed changing several times.
Training completion and what changed afterwards
Attendance is the easy number. More useful is the share of managers who have completed neurodiversity training, their confidence before and after, and any change in behaviour their teams report. If completion is high but satisfaction stays flat, the learning isn’t being applied. That is a common pattern, and we’ve written about why neurodiversity strategies often fail at manager level.
Pulse surveys for real-time insight
Pulse surveys are short, frequent check-ins. They pick up small shifts in sentiment before they become big problems, they can be anonymous, which encourages honesty, and they let you adjust initiatives quickly.
Keep them to five questions or fewer, write in plain language, repeat core questions so you can see trends, and always tell people what you’re doing with the results. Clear, plain wording also makes the survey itself more accessible.
Building a neuroinclusion dashboard
Pull the key numbers into one place: retention, adjustment uptake and turnaround, training completion, pulse scores and exit interview themes. Where possible, break the data down by department. If one team scores well and another poorly, you know exactly where to focus training or support.
Turning data into action
Collecting data is the easy part. Share results with leaders and employees so people can see what you found. Go after quick wins first, such as speeding up the adjustment process, so progress is visible. Plan the longer-term changes separately. Then measure again on a regular cycle so you can show what moved. For a wider view of what recent studies say, see what new research tells us about neurodiversity at work.
How Enna can help
If you don’t yet have a baseline, start with our free neuroinclusion maturity assessment. It takes a few minutes and shows how your organisation compares across policy, culture and practice.
For a deeper look, our neuroinclusion audits combine surveys, focus groups and policy review into a prioritised action plan, and we can help you design the dashboard and pulse questions to track progress afterwards. Where the data points to managers, neuroinclusive performance management training is often the right next step. Book a call to talk through what you want to measure.
