How One Company Turned Neurodiversity Into a Performance Advantage

Steve Hill is commercial director at Auticon UK, a multinational IT consultancy and social enterprise that exclusively employs autistic adults as IT consultants.

In our conversation, Steve talked about a career that has taken him through IBM, Samsung, and most recently McLaren, before landing at Auticon.

For those of you who are into Formula One, what prompted the change from Formula One racing and performance to Auticon and employing autistic adults? What drove that change?

"So I guess there's been a consistent thread and, yes, my career's been a little bit off piece at times, but I've always been in and around tech, whether it's been serving the tech industry from my own business perspective or being right in the middle of it.

Obviously with the names that you mentioned, but it's very much about being in the heart of cloud security data analytics, and from an Auticon perspective that thread runs through.

We've grown up as an IT consulting firm, so part of my role is to lift the lid on some of the projects that we get involved in and to understand the technicals. I wouldn't necessarily say I'm techy, but I know enough to understand and to make sure that we translate those technical requirements in a way that puts our best consultants into the right environment." – Steve Hill

That bridging of people and technology keeps coming up, particularly with all the AI and technology developments we're seeing right now.

What was it that prompted you to move into Auticon? What attracted you to the business and what was the compelling reason to shift?

"I could probably answer that with one word, Jimmy. Purpose. As you go through your career and work for different organisations, whether big or small, the things you're looking for change. For me it became about making sure that what I contributed created value around other people, the social aspect, and making a positive difference to the lives of others, which may sound a little bit cliché.

But when you're working in a social enterprise environment and doing the work that we do at Auticon, you see that on a daily basis. It's extremely humbling at times, but overridingly it's rewarding, for the people you're working with and for in the organisation, and for the clients we work with as well." – Steve Hill

I'm passionate about purpose and the idea of supporting people who need it. So let's dig into that a little bit more.

Tell us about the types of people that you work with and how you support clients using the teams that you create.

"We've been around for 11 years and the reason I mention that is that the company, quite unusually, was founded out of a parent's anxiety for their child. Everyone we employ from a technologist and consultant perspective is autistic. There is a huge chasm between the end of education and the start of the workplace, and that link is filled with anxiety.

We were founded on exactly that principle. What we try to do is provide a destination for autistic adults who have a STEM background, taking them on as full-time employees and finding the right consulting engagement so that we can augment client projects.

There is a commercial advantage to that because we specialise in data-related projects, whether data analysis, data engineering, visualisation, or more complex data science requirements, as well as security analysis and software design.

Those areas where we specialise are where there is a skills gap, not just in the UK but globally. That's one aspect of what we do. But this is also about creating a case study, a layer on top that is equally as important, because what we're doing is showing the organisation that working with someone with autism isn't a big scary thing. If it were straightforward, we wouldn't be required. It's also about making sure we can highlight the fact that there are unconscious biases baked into hiring practices which stop organisations unknowingly tapping into a rich seam of talent.

It's about showing, not telling, from our perspective, and helping organisations on the journey. This isn't a quick fix. Neurodiversity has gained tremendous momentum in the last couple of years, which is positive, but in the diversity and inclusion space it has always played runner-up to gender and ethnicity. We've been at this a long time comparatively, 11 years, and neurodiversity was a very unrecognised concept back then in terms of organisations.

For us it's about awareness, education, and lived experience, but our view is that we want to make ourselves redundant with that organisation as quickly as we can. Societal change only comes from enabling our clients to do what we do themselves. We don't want to be working with organisations for five or ten years because if we are, you could look at that as a failing on our part. We want to take them on the journey so they can attract, recruit, retain, and develop their own neurodiverse staff. There's a long way to go in lots of different areas, so hopefully we're not making ourselves redundant anytime soon, but that's ultimately our goal." – Steve Hill

One of the opportunities in onboarding new staff is getting them productive as quickly as possible and removing as many barriers as you can through the onboarding journey. Whether they're neurodiverse or not, that's clearly going to be commercially successful. And the other big advantage, I'm guessing you see with the job coaches, is your bounce-out rate or attrition rate of consultants not sticking in the business is presumably reduced, right?

"A hundred percent. That's one of the things we tend to start with from our clients' perspective. Over the last ten or eleven years, a lot of clients have said, can you help us attract our own neurodiverse talent? The short answer is yes, quickly followed by no, but not flippantly.

The point is that the first step for us is cultural transformation, because looking inside the organisation at the existing neurodiverse population has to be the starting point. It's about creating a culture where individuals feel they can disclose, and in parallel it's about providing managers, HR teams, diversity and inclusion leads, and senior leaders with the tools to support those individuals. Only when that stage has been recognised and undertaken can you start thinking about how to attract people into the organisation. It has to start with retention." – Steve Hill

So it sounds like Auticon is doing stealth diversity, inclusion, and leadership work by being inside clients, showing them the way, supporting them to find new ways of operating, and all of that contributes to the performance edge that leaders are searching for.

How can people work with Auticon, how can they connect with you, and how would that engagement look starting with perhaps the maturity assessments and working through that process?

"From a consultant perspective, we're always recruiting. It's very much aligned to our social mission to provide long-term career opportunities for autistic adults. The best way is to visit our careers page. We have rolling opportunities for data analysts, data engineers, and cybersecurity analysts.

We'd love to hear from you. We've tried to make the processes as easy, engaging, and neuro-inclusive as we possibly can. From a client's perspective, the best course is through our website, or feel free to contact me directly and we'll share my email in the show notes. There is never a bad time to start thinking about an organisation's pathway to inclusion, and we'd love to help in whatever form that might take." – Steve Hill

Something bigger than ourselves, contributing to a greater purpose. Steve and I are very aligned on that. Steve, thank you for coming on the podcast and for sharing so much around neurodiversity, the commercial impacts of employing neurodiverse people, the performance edge businesses can gain, and some practical tips on how to get started.

We appreciate any comments and feedback, and it helps us continue to deliver practical insights. If you've got any questions for Steve or myself, please reach out using the links in the show notes of this Podcast episode. Otherwise, find us on Instagram or LinkedIn.

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