Success Enablers that Empower Neurodivergent Technology Professionals (SEEN Tech Professionals)

This project investigates how to more effectively enable the success and advancement of neurodivergent employees in the technology workplace. We do so by investigating specific success enablers grounded in an asset model of disability and considerate of the unique needs, interests, and strengths of neurodivergent individuals in the context of their work.

Success enablers are a broader set of practices and work designs that include accommodations but are not limited to them. Success enablers include both support and, more importantly, changes to the workplace environment. The goal of SEEN Tech Professionals is to 1) empower neurodivergent professionals in the technology sector to determine, identify, and use what they deem as appropriate success enablers based on their intersecting identities and 2) build the capacity of organizations to systemize and normalize the use of success enablers more readily.

The SEEN Tech Professionals project will improve technology workplace environments to advance equity for neurodivergent professionals by creating The Neuroinclusive Success Enablers Toolkit. The Toolkit compiles interventions designed to empower neurodivergent employees and build the capacity of their managers, HR professionals, and providers to leverage and normalize success enablers.

The Toolkit will be freely available in accessible formats on the project website and distributed widely through the University of Washington and the project Advisory Group.

The SEEN Tech Professionals research project investigates three central questions: 1) What are the most common success enablers neurodivergent individuals identify as critical in the workplace? 2) What role do managers play in identifying, normalizing, and systemizing success enablers to support their ND employees? 3) What are the organizational characteristics that support or limit the identification, implementation, and systemization of success enablers? Our work is based on Annabi and Locke’s Organizational Interventions Mitigating Individual Barriers (OIMIB) framework, grounded in the neurodiversity paradigm and critical disability studies and emphasizing intersectionality.

Findings from this research will advance our theoretical and practical understanding of how neurodivergent technology professionals leverage various success enablers to address barriers they face and the role organizational interventions (e.g., Neurodiversity Hiring Programs) and managers play in facilitating the use of success enablers. Our project will be carried out in three phases over three years.

The primary outcome of this study is to create high-impact interventions organized in a comprehensive Neuroinclusive Success Enablers Toolkit designed for technology employers and neurodivergent professionals.

This award has been made in response to the NSF solicitation “Workplace Equity for Persons with Disabilities in STEM and STEM Education” (NSF 23-593). The project is funded by the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM’s EDU Core Research program (ECR).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.