(By Aron Mercer and Georgie Chinchen) 2020 was supposed to be a year of growth for Xceptional. We had funding thanks to Google.Org, Westpac and AMP, a growing team and diverse customers. In March of 2020, we were busy organising a neurodiversity at work breakfast in Sydney, a sold out event which was to be...
What’s it like being an autistic person in the workplace, and how can managers and colleagues help this group thrive? How can we make the most of the unique super powers of this under-employed cohort – especially in the midst of a labour shortage. We connect at work through humour – but for autistic people...
The image that often comes to mind with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a disruptive, naughty, fidgety boy. A living version of Bart Simpson. This blog seeks to separate the myth from reality and provide a first person account of the benefits of this often misunderstood condition. For my fellow ADHD’ers, I have kept...
18 October 2022 – Today neurodiversity specialist Xceptional has unveiled its updated website incorporating it’s newly developed tools of inclusive skills assessments and on demand inclusion training. The website refresh was necessary to reflect Xceptional’s maturing position as a leader in neurodivergent inclusion. It has been more than five years since Xceptional first opened our doors...
Dyslexia is a condition that most of us think we understand, but few of us actually do. It can be defined as a difference that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling. But there is much more to dyslexia than that. It is a neurodivergent condition, meaning that dyslexic brains...
ADHD is what makes some children unable to settle for more than 30 seconds and run around in a hyperactive frenzy the whole time, right? Well, no. That’s not right at all. What is ADHD? ADHD Australia provides a useful definition, ADHD refers to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a complex neuro-developmental disorder which affects a...
Neurodiversity = Neurology + Diversity The Australian sociologist, Judy Singer, coined the term Neurodiversity in the late ’90s. Singer described an inherent range in how the human mind functions regarding the functional processing of information, emotions and thoughts (Honeybourne 2020, p. 13). The term “neurodiversity” refers to the various mental models that persist in a population as...
Leadership, you need to know this. If you don’t believe you have hidden neurodiverse employees on staff, the chances are that you do. Neurodiversity and tapping into this resource is a hot topic. According to research, neurodiversity in the general population is between 30% to 40%. With the amount of literature online about autism and neurodiversity specifically...
Around one in a hundred people are autistic, perhaps even more. Yet many people have a very limited understanding of autism, and that may be based on incorrect beliefs. So here are 7 important things that autistic people wish you knew about us! All autistic people are individuals If you have met one autistic person,...
Like them or loathe them, meetings are a fact of modern working life. When the first Covid lockdowns were imposed, it was meetings that many employers rushed to find solutions for, much to the benefit of companies like Zoom! But for some neurodivergent staff, meetings can be extremely difficult for several reasons. They may find...