Just a thought…..

A sobering thought just struck me for businesses looking to restructure…

In 2025, the Office for National Statistics reported that 75% of the UK adult population is employed. The House of Commons Library equates that to 34.2 million people.

If we accept that 15–20% of adults are neurodivergent, then at 20% that means approximately 6,840,000 working adults in the UK are neurodivergent — diagnosed or undiagnosed.

Statistically, neurodivergence is in every organisation – whether they know it or not.

The question is:

🤔 Is this factored into restructuring decisions?

Restructuring is often seen as a numbers exercise — reduce headcount, cut costs, streamline operations, increase margin.

Surely the logical commercial question is:

‘Are we increasing risk when reducing our headcount?’

Neurodivergent professionals — including those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette’s and other cognitive differences — are frequently high performers because of how their brains are wired.

They often bring a wealth of unique skills including:

• Exceptional pattern recognition
• Deep focus and technical specialism
• Systems thinking
• Creative problem-solving
• Risk sensitivity and anomaly detection

👀 Many are masking, trying to fit in with the behaviours and actions of their colleagues – which is exhausting!

👀 Many are unsupported with managers and teams misinterpreting symptoms as attitude.

👀 Many are invisible when it comes to talent mapping because they find it difficult to self promote and remember their achievements during appraisals etc.

Without organisation-wide neurodivergent awareness training, restructuring can unintentionally:

– Remove critical expertise
– Score down employees who don’t self-promote
– Disrupt structured knowledge systems
– Increase burnout among those who rely on predictability
– Create legal and compliance exposure

Headcount reduction does not automatically equal risk reduction. In some cases, it amplifies it.

Who is left behind? What support do they have?

Rolling out neurodivergent awareness training for all staff supports

✔ Improving the quality of decisions made
✔ Protecting critical cognitive capital
✔ Increasing team cohesion pre, during and post-change
✔ Strengthening psychological safety (which directly impacts performance)
✔ Reducing attrition risk among remaining teams

If your organisation is restructuring this year, perhaps the real question is:

Are we reducing cost — or are we redesigning risk?

What do you think?

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