Zurich Insurance is seeking to replicate success in recruiting neurodivergent individuals right across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, according to Shelley Ferris-Smith, its EMEA regional lead and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging manager.
Speaking at the Group for Autism, Insurance, Investment and Neurodiversity (GAIN), Ferris-Smith revealed there are more than seven million individuals across the region who identify as neurodivergent and of that total, just 10% are employed.
In order to better tap into this talent pool, the insurer has been working with organisations like GAIN, Ambitious About Autism, other social enterprises and with neurodiverse individuals to help the organisation understand what these individuals need, to myth bust and breakdown stereotypes.
This has included working with the firm’s first neurodivergent recruit who speaks to peers to dispel myths about being neurodivergent and a recruit in Germany whose onboarding was fully tailored to his needs so the whole recruitment process was conducted over Teams as he did not want to come to the office.
And Ferris-Smith added Zurich is seeking to replicate its success across the EMEA region.
“We’re looking at Spain now,” she said.
“Austria already works with specialists who only place neurodiverse talent into organisations making simple adjustments. We’ve done it with lighting in terms of how people like to be communicated with. Is it audio? Is it transcript? Do you prefer to wear headphones?
“It’s accepting that different is good and different is great. We should embrace this across the board.”
Ferris-Smith added that the organisation wanted to share its experience of not just how commercially productive the approach had been but how “incredibly powerful” it had been enriching the people and teams.
“What I’d like to see is people learning and sharing from the experiences, so they say, ‘this has been great and the impact within that environment has been significant’,” she continued.
“And from an organisational perspective, we’re looking to grow. We want to grow and not just in the UK, across those countries so we’re having conversations with Spain now and with France.”