Workplace Accommodations and ADHD with Inclusively

Workplace accommodations and ADHD - what do accommodations look like? Join me as I chat with Tiffany Meehan and Ross Barchacky from Inclusively about options for ADHDers and how they're helping to bridge the communication gap between companies and employees.

Guests:
Tiffany Meehan - VP of Marketing at Inclusively
Ross Barchacky -Director of Partnerships at Inclusively

Inclusively is a workforce inclusion platform that connects job seekers and their workplace accommodations with inclusive employers. Their platform empowers job seekers to find personalized and fulfilling employment opportunities, while also enabling companies to tap into a valuable pool of talent. Inclusively provides companies with accommodations insights, training, and support to help them create an inclusive and accessible hiring process and work environment for all employees.
Check out Inclusively for Job Seekers
Join the Inclusively Community and read Trina's post about Accommodations and ADHD on inclusively.com

Notes:
ADHD 2.0 Book by Ned Hallowell 

Transcript

Trina Haynes  0:00  
This is the My Lady ADHD podcast, a place to find common ground with other ADHDers. Where we learn all about our ADHD brains while laughing alongside amazing guests who really get it. My name is Trina Haynes, and I'm so grateful you're here. Let's do this thing together. Friends, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for coming back. It just means so much to me that you're here with me on this journey. And thank you if this is your first time listening, welcome. Welcome to the insanity You're in for it. Just wanted to go over a couple of like life happenings before we dive into today's episode. So this past weekend, I was really lucky enough to go to an ADHD conference in Virginia Beach, Virginia. And they're the keynote speaker was Dr. Ned Halliwell. And he is a like, expert in the ADHD field. And he's written over 20 books. His most recent book is ADHD 2.0, I have read it. I'm going to put it in the show notes for you. If it's one that you'd like to read, I think it's really, really important book, especially if you're just finding out you have ADHD. But that was just a really cool experience to be in a room with other ADHD years again, I know I talk a lot about the ADHD conference last year. This one wasn't near as big as that one. But it was awesome. So if you ever have a chance to go to an ADHD conference, I recommend it because it's literally a giant building full of other people just like you. And it's really rare to find that. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that. Another thing that's been going on in my life is I've been doing a lot of yoga, specifically hot yoga, I discovered hot yoga. About a week or two ago, I immediately signed up. And I've been doing a lot of hot yoga, it's basically yoga in the sauna. I love the sauna, and I love yoga. So I put them together. And now I'm just like, sweaty every day, basically. But yeah, a lot of people kind of, it's kind of like love or hate. I think with hot yoga, some people really love it, and some people just cannot. So I kind of fall into the category of love it. And it's just my new thing right now that I'm like hyper fixated on. So you might hear me mention that in the next few episodes, and then probably never get. Number three, I wanted to mention my blog, I've been working really hard on my blog, and my newsletter. And if you want to sign up for that, I will link it in the show notes. My newsletter is about 6000 people strong right now I'm really proud of that. Because writing is my first passion. And any support that I can get over there really helps my confidence. So if you would like to follow along, the blog is super helpful, has lots of great ADHD content. I talk about workplace accommodations, I talk about burnout, I talk about ADHD, and friendship. I mean, you name it, I've probably written a blog about it. And it's something that I really, really, really love doing. So if you want to hop on over there and check it out, I would just like I would love that so much so and very last. Another thing that I wanted to mention is I'm writing a book, because I just mentioned I really love writing. This is, you know, a dream of mine to write a book. So I'm writing a book with a friend of mine about ADHD and relationships. And I'm just ecstatic about that whole process. So yeah, so you might hear me talk about that a little bit more in some later episodes, but I just kind of want to drop that bomb right there that I am writing a book. And if you'd like to keep up with the progress of that, again, I'll be probably sharing updates about that in my newsletter. So yeah, that's all I think for today. 

Trina Haynes  3:55  
So I want to dive into today's episode, we're going to be talking with some friends of mine from a company called Inclusively. And they are going to be talking a lot about workplace accommodations for people with ADHD, what that looks like what they do, and it's just a really important episode. If you're struggling in the workplace. It's really important for anyone really because you actually never know when you're going to need accommodations. And they kind of walk you through what that looks like. So yeah, without further ado, here is my episode with Tiffany and Ross from Inclusively. 

Trina Haynes  4:31  
Well, welcome back to the podcast, everybody. I'm so excited to be joined by my friends Ross Barchacky, I already told you I was gonna get it wrong, but I think I got it Ross and Tiffany Meehan. Yes. Nailed it. Tiffany. They are from Inclusively and we want to talk today about accommodations. This is kind of a buzzword in the ADHD community. Like what are accommodations? What do they look like? Like, why do we need them? And we're just kind of gonna dive right in. So I think we want to start there, like, what are workplace accommodations? And why do we need them? Ross? Yeah.

Ross Barchacky  5:16  
Yeah, workplace accommodations are really things that are set in place, by an employer to help facilitate an employee with a disability, to be able to really function at the level of everyone else. Right. So, you know, specifically talking about individuals with ADHD, you know, that might be something like flexible work hours, right? Individuals with ADHD, oftentimes, they might be more productive at certain times of the day, maybe they're more of a night person, maybe they're more of a 3am person or an early morning person. So having that flexibility to get the work done on their own schedule, can allow them to be as productive, and it would just really require small process changes on the part of the employer. So you know, in that instance, there would really be no cost to the employer or the employee. It's just a process change that they both agree on, for the betterment really of both parties.

Trina Haynes  6:08  
Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a really good definition. I know, Tiffany, and I were talking earlier about how in school, you know, you kind of grow up, a lot of kids grow up with an IEP, which is kind of similar. And then you get to college and kind of breaks down a little bit like, is that what you guys see? Tiffany?

Tiffany Meehan  6:28  
Yeah, we're seeing a lot of job seekers that are coming in, that are just used to having that personalization through their education experience. And then when they graduate and start looking for jobs, there is no formal process. And that's where it kind of depends on the employer, and just like a lot of personal outreach to see about accommodations if they're even comfortable talking about them. Because that's really the issue is that people feel that they can't even talk about needing an accommodation or needing extra time for something, because then it kind of puts them in that group of people who might be difficult or just not even getting the interview, or they're afraid they might not even get the accommodation. So a lot of the job seekers we work with are coming to us after experiencing like a really not great interview, or something that's happened to them. So they're kind of guarded with that. And that's what the process of Inclusively is is aiming to change is taking that kind of stigma or hesitation out, and just making it very straightforward that this is what I need to be successful. And these are the employers that are willing to provide that and really excited to provide it.

Trina Haynes  7:33  
Yeah, that's really interesting. I know, this is really common in my community. I recently did a poll and asked, Well, are you talking to your employer about accommodations? And I think it was 75% of the audience said they're not comfortable having those discussions with their employer. I think the number is probably much higher than that, I don't think I think there's still a big gap between the employer and the employee and the comfort level. And I don't think it's always an open door, you know, as open as we need it to be right. And that's why and I want to be super transparent here. Because the whole reason I have you guys on the podcast is I went looking for companies who were doing great work for ADHD peers in the workplace. Because I personally have struggled really, really badly in the workplace, I've had so many jobs, I've been fired, I've quit, I've cried a lot and been there. And I wanted to provide a resource for my audience, for people like me who are struggling in the workplace. So I went out and I went through LinkedIn. And I spent several weeks like researching companies. And you guys were the one company that I reached out to, and I said, Hey, I really want to work with you, because I really liked the work that you're doing for the ADHD, not only the ADHD community, but for people with disabilities all over the place. So first of all, thank you for the work that you're doing. It's super impactful. And I want to talk more about what you guys actually do. Because I think that it is a lot of people don't know that this is like a resource out there for them. So what exactly, does Inclusively do?

Ross Barchacky  9:15  
Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll try and sum this up as best I can. But really, there's two sides of our organization to what we do. So first of all, we work with employers to really help them get where they want to be and help them to enter the world of disability inclusion, because for a lot of employers, it's scary. Right? It's scary for us as the individual and it has to disclose but we never think of what it's like for the employer. Right? They have legal and compliance screaming in both their ears not to do this. They're afraid of what could happen lawsuits, bad publicity, in at the end of the day, they just don't want to they don't want to do something that's going to hurt somebody else. So it's much easier to just grab the next qualified candidate on the list and move on from you. And so what we do is we help employers that want to take that at Next Step, by really meeting them where they are in their disability inclusion journey, identifying where they want to be, and then helping to move it down the line. And we do that through training, we have training specifically for different parts of the organization. So all the way from leadership, we have training specific to HR managers, and recruiters, you know, sort of who are gonna be the face of the company towards candidates, we have training for the organization as a whole, that's culture training, so that the people to the left and the right of you understand sort of how to support you at their level. So really, it's just restructuring the way getting rid of the biases getting in the way of the way that things have always been done, and showing them a different path, we take a look at their accommodations process, we take a look at their applicant tracking system, their tech stack, and really make a concerted effort to let them know that this is something that affects all the different aspects of their organization. So we'll generally work with an employer for an extended amount of time, usually three to six months, sort of laying this foundation or this groundwork, really building the inclusive environments that then we can focus on diversity, because I think a lot of times employers get it backwards, they tried to come inclusive by increasing their diversity. And we do it sort of the other way around. So once the employer and Inclusively are at a place where we say, hey, you know, let's do this thing. We connect them with candidates, and we get those from the second half of our organization. So actually the side that I had up here on partnerships, we work with organizations like universities, community college, vocational rehabilitation, nonprofit organizations, veteran's service organizations, essentially, if there's somebody out there who's offering services, or resources to individuals from this community, we want to partner with them. And we want to make their job a little bit easier by giving them sort of this curated list of employers that's actually doing the work. And so we match them up to our platform. And the platform is really unique. Because it focuses on the accommodations piece, like we were talking about, and puts that upfront. So it's not a discussion you have to worry about. Should I even mentioned this, when should I mention it? Am I going to lose my job, if I mentioned it too early? Am I not going to get the accommodations I need if I mentioned it too late. Instead, it's right there. And you're going to have that conversation with an employer who has been trained and empowered to have that conversation at the beginning of the process.

Trina Haynes  12:17  
So I've been on your site, and I've seen where you have a success enablers broken down by category, and you don't necessarily have to go in and say, I have ADHD and like wave your hand around, you can go in, and you can just, you know, select some accommodations or success enablers, which are things like and I know Ross, you mentioned them briefly before, but kind of if you have ADHD, the ones that I kind of suggest or accommodations are like, and you guys talk about a lot about interview accommodations, right. Let me stop here real quick. is most most of the accommodations on this site? Are they for interview purposes or overall job? Oh, yeah. Okay,

Ross Barchacky  12:56  
We have the ones that go to into your profile, there's two different sections. One is for to conduct your job. And one is specifically for interview. So if you require like an ASL interpreter or something like that, for the interview process, or a handicap parking space, or whatever it is for the interview, but maybe not for the work, those can be different separate.

Trina Haynes  13:15  
Okay, cool. Yeah. So that that is like, to me, this is like revolutionary, because when I was doing interviews like this did not exist. And in fact, the interview process was like, way difficult and very overwhelming. For me with ADHD, a lot of times you had to fill out lots and lots of forms. There was like a really long process, you never got the chance to like speak to someone or give them a note ahead of time about like, what accommodations you need. And I feel like this is like a gap. That was there was a gap here, right, and you guys are filling it. And I just love that. And I want to kind of dive in a little bit more about like, what some accommodations could look like, if you have ADHD, because I do get this question a lot of like, Yeah, I'm struggling at work. But I don't know what to ask for. I don't feel comfortable asking or I don't know what to ask for. And so some of the things that like I recommend, personally is like asking if you can wear noise cancelling headphones or asking to have a private workspace? Or can I take work home with me? Can I work different hours than everyone else that can I work late into the evenings? And can I have notes written out ahead of time or instructions written out ahead of time? Can I have meeting notes like I know these sound like maybe a lot, but they're very small and very simple for a lot of companies to provide and it's just getting that conversation started. And I think what Inclusively does so well is they get that conversation started for you so that you don't have to like have the anxiety and overwhelm of like, how they're going to react. And plus these are also companies that you guys have like hand picked that are working on being inclusive, right, like the companies that you work with, want to work with people like who have ADHD and who have disabilities so I think it's just a much easier conversation. 

Trina Haynes  15:05  
I really hope you're enjoying today's episode, I want to take just one second to tell you about my baby ADHD, social, ADHD. Social is the private community for ADHDers. It's a place where you can find support, body doubling, friendship, a book club, social hours, coaching, q&a, and much, much more. To learn more about how to join ADHD, social visit ADHDsocial.com. Again, that's ADHD social.com. And now back to today's episode.

Ross Barchacky  15:38  
There's really five that I would break down as far as accommodations for individuals with ADHD. And I think most of them could probably fall into these five categories. The first is I mentioned flexible work hours, right, essentially being able to take advantage of those spurts of motivation. And you know, be able to dive in and utilize that for the betterment of your role. The second one would be task organization and prioritization. So essentially, it can be overwhelming for people with ADHD, as I know, all of you out there know, when you see this task list of things that are due for the week or for the quarter, and you just don't even know where to start, so you don't start. But having the ability to say these are the things that are important in this order, this is the way you're gonna break this task down, can help break it into more manageable chunks. The third would be a quiet work environment, you know, so as you mentioned, Trina, you know, noise cancelling headphones can be great if you're in a place that maybe you're working in like a bullpen or something like that, where you're not able to have your own quiet office, if it's reasonable to have your own quiet space. Of course, that's even better. remote work can be very helpful for that as well. breaks and exercises would be number four, you can really do a lot by just going out in the middle of the day, you know, taking a quick walk, you know, clearing your head, listening to some music, and just sort of allowing your brain to reset so you can go back at it fully engaged. And then lastly would be clear communication and feedback. So you know, one of the things that can be really important for individuals from this community is to just have someone shoot it straight with them, tell them in words don't have to sit there get inside of their own head, and trying to select what the individual is saying just have it be clear, consistent communication and feedback so that they understand what is being asked of them. And then the other thing that I would want to mention that there's other accommodations that you can do, you know, that don't even require the employer small adjustments that you can make throughout your day. One of which I personally utilize is called time blocking, you know, where essentially, you take the tasks that you would normally do through the day and you put them on your calendar, so that it sort of holds you accountable, and also frees up space so that you don't end up too far away from the tasks that you had planned on doing for the day. So those are just a few different sort of things that we generally see with individuals from this community.

Trina Haynes  18:01  
Yeah, time blocking is interesting, because I have to time block to, you know, make my day flow easily. But it's funny because I want a time block I noticed, okay, you really can't get as much done as you thought you were gonna get done. Okay. You have 14 hours worth of work here. Woman like what are you doing? Like it Yeah, it helps you set realistic expectations, because you have like 20 things on your To Do lists. But if you break it down, and you add them to your calendar, and you like make room for them, you're like, This is insanity. I'm never gonna get these many things done. 

Ross Barchacky  18:35  
You're up at 11 o'clock at night already. And yeah, 

Trina Haynes  18:38  
I know there's and the cool thing is, is right now there's so many like cool resources coming out of the woodwork for people with ADHD. I hear of like a new app or a new tool every day. And we're really, really lucky to have all these really awesome resources. But I'm just a huge fan of what Inclusively does. And I want to talk a little bit more about the community that you guys just started because I personally, I just started a community. So like, I know what you guys are going through there. But I want to hear a little bit about the community and what is happening over there.

Ross Barchacky  19:13  
Yeah, so our community is really unique in the sense that it sort of generally communities are for one particular audience. And it's a place for them to sort of come and share ideas in ours is really meant to be sort of this this nexus or this hub for people that generally don't maybe talk together on a level. So we have three different user types that will utilize our community. One is job seekers, of course, that are looking to connect with employers. The other is the employers themselves. And then we also have advocate organizations. So those are those partner organizations, those university career counselors and those nonprofit, you know, employment developers and the individuals that all have sort of a vested interest in this end goal that we all want, which is disability inclusion in the workplace. And so it's a place where people can come together and sort of shed their biases, hear it from different people's point of views, as opposed to just having, you know, the group thing that might occur among employers, right, who are all just sort of feeding into their own narrative. And same with job seekers, right, because at the end of the day, everybody only knows what they know. And so having the ability to come in here and share information, we have free resources, we have, you know, list of services that some of our partner organizations offer. So it's really just a place that anyone who's interested in disability inclusion in the workplace can come find ideas, network, in really just learn from each other.

Trina Haynes  20:38  
Yeah, that sounds so yeah, it sounds like such a great resource. And I want to talk about different ways that you can work with Inclusively, because a lot of my audience, I tend to forget that like, there's all kinds of people listening to this podcast, right? It's not just job seekers, it could be someone who owns a company that is trying to be more inclusive. Or it could be I mean, it could be anyone listening. And so I don't want to just speak to the job seeker. But how can people you know, in different different fields or different positions work with Inclusively? Like what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Ross Barchacky  21:15  
Yeah, so, you know, you can of course, you can go to the site and request a demo, myself, and Tiffany, you can definitely reach out to, you know, there's there's not just one way that you can really engage with some employers come on, because they have specific questions, some are ready to take the leap, you know, in terms of a full partnership with Inclusively, other ones are just coming in, they just, you know, that they might want some information, because they're trying to conduct an analysis or a course of action to try and figure out, you know, what the best route would be. So, really, you know, I'd say the best first step is just just, you know, reach out, pick up the phone, send an email, you know, and we can help you get to where you need to be, regardless of you know, what that looks like, for your specific organization.

Trina Haynes  22:00  
Yeah, and as far as for job seekers, you just go on there and you fill out like a little profile, you go through and you pick the accommodations, or the Success Enablers. And then you're kind of taken to like a job board. And there's not, there's all kinds of jobs like, and I, I have it in my mind, just from, what I've seen is that a lot of tech companies are hiring people with ADHD like this is very common, but you guys have more than just like tech positions, on there, and I just kind of wanted to throw that out there. Because I know a lot of companies, tech companies are embracing, like hiring ADHD employees. But I think other companies are definitely jumping on that bandwagon. And you guys have a lot of openings for all kinds of positions on your site.

Ross Barchacky  22:41  
Yeah, we do. You know, one of the difficult parts about this is everyone's at a different place in their journey. You know, and when you talk about ADHD, specifically, you know, the term late diagnosis comes to mind, right, some of us, you know, went through school and getting medication or an intervention center that since a young age and know what works best for us and what doesn't, but there's other people that are just realizing, Oh, this is what's been going on with me my entire life, in might not have experience on how to accommodate it or anything. So, you know, people are able to come to our platform, and really, you know, go through the community and the accommodation selection process, be able to really figure out how to tackle this thing. From an employment point of view.

Trina Haynes  23:26  
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I was diagnosed just a couple of years ago. And prior to that, I don't know if I would have known what to ask for just out of the blue. But now when you go to your site, you see them all listed, like, oh, yeah, this actually really would help me with my job, like they're kind of listed out. And I think that is just another barrier that is broken, because you can see, you know, what are the options like what are the choices for someone who might be struggling with time management, or all of these things. So it's just awesome. I just really love what you guys are doing. And I'm going to share how you can get in touch with Inclusively in the show notes, I'm going to share a link for their community. If you want to join that I definitely recommend you hop over there and just check it out. And then maybe set up a profile and kind of just see what that's about, because you never know when you'll be looking for a job. I hate to say that, but it's the truth. Right? So yeah, I just thank you guys for jumping on with me. Yeah, it's wonderful. Thanks for

Tiffany Meehan  24:26  
I wanted to mention too quickly is that I think the really unique thing with accommodations is they're always changing. So that's really what we push and tell job seekers and employers and everyone like, it's that universal design approach to this and that, you know, things can change tomorrow, you can hurt yourself, you can, you know, hurt your wrist and now you can't open doors and different things. So I feel like that's the big takeaway that we're really trying to get across to everyone is it's accommodations benefit everyone. Everyone can benefit from having noise cancelling headphones, other people, that's the tool that they need to be successful. So I feel like that's the big takeaway from Inclusively is, like you said, you might not be looking for a job right now. But we have the community space, we have like the hub for all of these resources for you. And it's just an ongoing conversation with your employer. You can have an accommodation request, one did not need it in two months, and just making that process much easier and more transparent.

Trina Haynes  25:24  
Yeah, that's so true. I know. We talked about that. Maybe a couple of weeks ago about how you know, accommodations are important for people with ADHD. But they're really important for everyone. Every single one of us has an accommodation. We maybe just don't know what it is. But if you're struggling at work, I'm guessing an accommodation would help you and Inclusively can like walk you through that which I just love. So thank you guys so much for being here. And again, everything will be in the show notes. And I hope you guys check them out. Thanks again for listening to My Lady ADHD podcast. You can find more ADHD content online at my lady adhd.com And make sure to give me a follow on Instagram or TikTok at My Lady ADHD. Bye!