Conference Matters 142

INTERVIEW

For many

neurodivergents,

an outing on a boat may not be the best idea

quo. This brings innovation and creativity while avoiding herd behaviour.”

meeting industry. Neurodiversity is rarely taken into consideration, while it often involves a few simple adjustments that make the lives of neuro divergents a lot more pleasant. Schepers has plenty of ideas on the matter.

If you’re autistic, highly sensitive or bipolar, attending a conference can be a daunting task. It can include much cacophony, vague pro grammes or directions, as well as many social challenges. Saskia Schepers, who wrote the bestseller ‘Als alle breinen werken’ (‘When all brains are functioning’) about neurodiversity, explains how to improve things. Schepers’ book was recently nominated as a Dutch Management Book of the Year, with a seventh edition soon to be published. It details how businesses and governments can better factor in neurodivergents, people whose brains work slightly differently than most. Neurodivergence includes autism, ADHD, giftedness, and dyslexia. Schepers, herself gifted and bipolar, is also the founder of the Dutch neurodiversity network Neurodiversiteits- netwerk Nederland and gives many lectures on this subject. This brings us right to the field of conferences, as there is still a lot to be done in this area of the By Bas Hakker

What do you need to organise at a company to extract that potential? “It’s important that HRM take neurodivergence into account for events and other business mat ters. And it’s also important to respond positively to the questions people ask, as they will often have been judged or excluded in their lives. The important question to ask as a manager is: What is it like to be you during this meeting? For example, it may come up that someone is disap pointed because there’s never an agenda.” Has it happened often that you went to a conference or lecture and thought that it wasn’t entirely tailored to neurodivergents? “Very often, there are large echoing spaces and uncertainty about how to get to the location, such as poor accessibility by public transport or not enough parking spaces. You get somewhere and then get confused as to where you need to go. I had to be at Rotterdam Ahoy once and had

Why is it important to emphasise neurodiversity?

“Because we’re not making the most of much talent and losing out on potential for businesses and governments. First, these people bring a different perspective because different things happen in neurodivergent brains than in the brains of most people. For example, dyslexics think much more in terms of images and can already see the solution to a problem in 3D. They are very innovative because they have creative, problem-solving brains. And almost all the great inventions were made by people who may have been autistic, such as Ein stein and Steve Jobs. Second, neurodivergents are a cure for group think. Since people want to belong to a group, you also need people who question the status

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