POSITION PAPER · NOVEMBER 2026
The Unrecorded Injury
Neuro-inclusion must be measured like Health & Safety.
Exclusion at work is an occupational hazard. It causes injury, sometimes fatal injury. It must be assessed, controlled and measured exactly as every other workplace hazard is.
By Neal Glendenning, founder of The Neuro Inclusion Project and former Fire, Health & Safety Officer
Content note: this paper discusses suicide. Support details are at the foot of this page.
95%
Rise in employment tribunal cases involving neurodivergent conditions, 2020 to 2025.
Irwin Mitchell, 2026
3 in 10
Autistic people of working age in any kind of work, the lowest rate of any disability group.
ONS: Autistica
£44,483
Mean disability discrimination award at employment tribunal, 2023/24.
Ministry of Justice
OPENING
The injury nobody records
When a worker falls from a ladder, the organisation records it. There is an accident report, an investigation, a root cause, and a review of the controls that failed. If it is serious enough, the regulator is told.
When a neurodivergent worker is worn down over months, nothing is recorded. The harm comes from an adjustment that never arrives, a manager who reads difference as poor performance, and a working environment they have to mask their way through every day. They go off sick. They are put on a capability plan. They resign, or they are managed out.
There is no accident book for that. No investigation, no root cause, no lessons learned. The injury happened at work, and the workplace never knew.
Exclusion at work is an occupational hazard. It must be assessed, controlled and measured exactly as every other workplace hazard is.
THE POSITION
One argument, in four parts
1
Exclusion is an occupational hazard.
2
It causes measurable harm to health, up to and including death.
3
Employers already have a legal duty to assess and control it.
4
It can be measured, so it must be.
THE STANDARD
Seven requirements any credible measure must meet.
The paper sets out what a neuro-inclusion measure must do to stand alongside a competent health and safety assessment.
1
Put the hazard on the register.
Exclusion belongs on the organisational risk register, with an owner, alongside every other risk to health.
2
Assess exposure, not individuals.
Measure the conditions the organisation creates: how work is organised, managed and adjusted.
3
Require no disclosure.
Nobody is asked to declare hearing loss before the noise is measured. The same applies here.
4
Test controls in pratice.
A policy is not a control. An adjustment process that takes six months to deliver is a failed control.
5
Be repeatable and comparable.
The same measure, applied the same way, so trends show over time and organisations can be benchmarked.
6
Be validated against harm and cost
Better scores must show up as lower absence, attrition, adjustment delays, grievances and claims.
7
Sit inside the existing safety system.
Risk assessment, audit, ISO 45001 and ISO 45003, governance reporting. Not a parallel HR exercise.
WHO SHOULD READ IT
Written for the people who own risk.
BOARDS
Who must put neuro-inclusion on the risk register.
HEALTH & SAFETY LEADS
Whose risk assessments must now consider neurodivergent exposure.
HR, OD & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH
Who handle the harm case by case, after it happens.
NHS COMMISSIONERS
Who can treat measurement as the cost improvement lever it is.
FREE DOWNLOAD
Read the full paper.
The evidence, the cost to organisations, the legal duty, the objections answered, and what must happen now. 11 pages, fully referenced.
Support
If anything in this paper has affected you, you do not have to deal with it alone. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans are available free, day or night, on 116 123. You can also text SHOUT to 85258. If you are in immediate danger, call 999.
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