Autistic graduates are more likely than graduates in any other disability group to be overqualified for the job they hold, according to the government-commissioned Buckland Review of Autism Employment. Autistic employees also face the largest pay gap of any disability group, earning on average a third less than non-disabled people, a gap the review says narrows significantly once you control for the type of job people do. Read those two findings together and the problem is clear. Getting neurodivergent talent through the door is only half the job. Too often, that talent stops moving once it is inside, and the stall tends to happen at the step into management.
The promotion ceiling facing neurodivergent talent
The employment picture is stark on its own. The Office for National Statistics found that just 29.0% of autistic disabled people aged 16 to 64 were in work in the year ending June 2021, and the Buckland Review puts the figure at around three in ten, compared with around five in ten for all disabled people and eight in ten for non-disabled people. It also notes that autistic graduates are twice as likely as non-disabled graduates to be unemployed 15 months after graduating.
Progression data is thinner, but it points the same way. In the City & Guilds 2025 Neurodiversity Index, 35% of neurodivergent respondents said promotion opportunities were not equally accessible to them. The Buckland Review heard that many autistic people feel overlooked for promotion, and that these opportunities often go to colleagues who are more comfortable with networking. Attitudes matter here too. A 2020 survey by the Institute of Leadership and Management found that half of leaders and managers would be uncomfortable employing or line-managing someone with one or more neurodivergent conditions. Those leaders are often the same people sitting on promotion panels.
How promotion processes filter people out
Few organisations set out to exclude anyone. The filtering happens through criteria that look neutral but reward a particular style of working.
Take “executive presence”. It is rarely defined, and in practice it often means speaking confidently in large meetings, making easy small talk with senior stakeholders and projecting certainty. Many excellent neurodivergent professionals communicate differently: they may be direct, prefer to think before speaking, avoid eye contact or find unstructured social settings draining. None of that predicts how well they will lead a team or deliver results, yet it can quietly sink a promotion case.
360-degree feedback has similar risks. It asks colleagues to rate behaviours that are easily coloured by how much they like someone’s style. An employee who challenges a flawed plan bluntly, or who skips the after-work drinks, can collect vague comments about “relationships” or “collaboration” that are hard to rebut and harder to act on.
Then there are informal routes to advancement: sponsorship that grows out of social familiarity, stretch projects allocated over coffee, and promotion conversations that happen before any formal process opens. Networking-heavy cultures give a structural advantage to people who find networking easy, whatever their ability to do the job.
Why management-only progression wastes talent
In many organisations there is only one way up: manage people. Pay, title and status all follow headcount. That forces specialists to choose between staying where they add most value and progressing their careers, and it pushes some people into roles that suit them poorly while blocking others who would do their best work in a deeper technical or expert track.
This affects everyone, but it lands hardest on neurodivergent employees whose strengths often lie in deep focus, pattern recognition, systems thinking or specialist expertise. Some will make outstanding people managers and should have a fair shot at it. Others would contribute far more as principal engineers, lead analysts or subject matter experts, if those roles carried equal seniority and reward.
The CIPD’s Neuroinclusion at work report found that just 28% of employers say line manager roles give adequate emphasis to good people management. If organisations are not clear on what good management looks like, it is little surprise that they promote on proxies such as visibility and confidence. Dual career ladders, with a specialist route that is valued as highly as the management route, address both problems: they let people progress on their strengths and make management a deliberate choice rather than the only door.
What fairer promotion looks like
Start by defining what each senior role requires in observable terms. If a team leader needs to “influence stakeholders”, say what that looks like: securing agreement on a plan, resolving a conflict, communicating a decision clearly in writing and in person. Then assess against that, not against general impressions.
Make the process transparent and structured. Publish criteria, open opportunities to everyone, use the same questions for every candidate and give people the questions or themes in advance. Allow evidence in more than one format, such as a written case or portfolio alongside an interview. Train panels to separate communication style from substance, and to challenge vague feedback about “presence” or “fit”.
Treat 360s with care. Ask raters for specific examples rather than ratings of personality traits, and never let them become the sole basis of a promotion decision. Give stretch assignments through an open process rather than informal selection, and look at sponsorship programmes to make sure they reach people who are not already in the inner circle.
The Buckland Review recommended promoting mentors and buddies to help autistic staff develop the skills to progress, and strengths-based training focused on progression. Both are worth adopting, as long as they sit alongside fairer processes rather than asking neurodivergent people to fix a system that is filtering them out.
Where to start this quarter
Pull your promotion data for the last two years and, where you have disclosure data, compare progression rates for disabled and neurodivergent employees with everyone else, keeping in mind that many people will not have disclosed. Review your competency frameworks and promotion templates for undefined terms like “presence”, “gravitas” and “visibility”, and replace them with observable behaviours. Map your career architecture and ask whether a specialist can reach your most senior grades without managing people. Then talk to neurodivergent employees and network members about where they feel stuck, and act on what you hear.
Fixing progression takes more than one workshop. If you are setting priorities for 2027, book a discovery call and we will map out what a year of neuroinclusion could look like for your organisation, from leadership and manager training to policy and measuring results.
