Neurodiversity in the Workforce: Will Yang of Instrumentl On Why It’s Important To Include Neurodiverse Employees & How To Make Your Workplace More Neuro-Inclusive
An Interview With Eric Pines
Identify how diverse your company is. Getting to know how diverse your workforce is essential in painting a bigger picture of how you can support employees.
Research suggests that up to 15–20% of the U.S. population is neurodivergent. There has been a slow but vitally important rise in companies embracing neurodiversity. How can companies support neurodiversity in the workplace? What are some benefits of including neurodiverse employees? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experience about “Neurodiversity in the Workforce: Companies Including Neurodiverse Employees”. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Will Yang.
Will Yang is the Head of Growth & Customer Success at Instrumentl an all-in-one grants platform that helps nonprofits find, track, and manage their grants in a single place. Their solution saves users three hours a week and helps them apply to 1.5X more grants within a year.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you ended up where you are?
My passion has always been in fostering growth and development in various endeavors. I started my career by co-founding an edtech company, Albert, with the goal of providing educational opportunities to many students. I oversaw leading and sales, customer success, and marketing teams and was able to help the company achieve significant revenue growth. After some time with Albert, I sought to assist another growing company and joined Instrumentl, a platform that assists non-profits and grant seekers in obtaining funding efficiently.
These experiences have given me a deep understanding of how to support the success of early-stage companies and promote growth on a global scale, always approaching my work with a focus on understanding the underlying “why” of each challenge.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Determination. If I gave up on my first attempt at trying something different, my career wouldn’t be as successful as it is today. I think that a lot of people tend to be too hard on themselves at trying to excel at everything they want to be good at, but these things take a lot of time, love, and effort for you to succeed. Just keep going at it and eventually, you’ll meet success.
Curiosity. Being inquisitive keeps my mind sharp, and my soul at ease. There’s a whole world of uncharted knowledge that we humans haven’t discovered yet, and staying curious keeps me on top of the new sets of skills and knowledge that I can use in the workplace or even my personal life.
Empathy. Staying empathetic allows me to be self-aware and to humble myself when listening to other people’s struggles to understand how I can help them in the best way possible. While this isn’t to say that you should overextend yourself to the point where your own needs are being compromised, but being empathetic definitely makes it easier to face hurdles as a team and gives room for a fresh perspective of things.
Can you share a story about one of your greatest work-related struggles? Can you share what you did to overcome it?
In the early days of my career, I found it difficult to stay focused on one specific task. I felt as if I had so much things that I wanted to achieve in such a short amount of time that I wanted to do a bit of everything. To overcome this, I realized that the best way to efficiently achieve my goals is to set clear and feasible expectations for each goal I wanted to achieve and from there, I achieved all of them without wasting any time.
Fantastic. Let’s now shift to our discussion about neurodiversity in the workforce. Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience working with initiatives to include neurodiverse employees? Can you share a story with us?
I’ve met plenty of neurodiverse people who stay silent about their struggles in fear of being judged or even simply shut out. Lots of companies would only hear them, but not actually listen to them, which leads to a neglect to what they truly need for them to work in a conducive environment. While there may be a gap of how everyone processes information, I believe that it’s important to raise awareness among neurotypicals how they can help voice out the needs of neurodiverse people in the workplace.
This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have an inclusive work culture?
No organization should be subject to only hearing out input from a certain group of people — may it be race, ethnicity, age, gender, and more. I believe that each person can add their own unique input to how the organization can grow and succeed. Failing to become open to new ideas given by people from different backgrounds simply just limits to company’s horizons to innovate and explore what’s out there.
Can you share a few examples of ideas that were implemented at your workplace to help include neurodiverse employees? Can you share with us how the work culture was affected as a result?
Feedback was a simple thing that became a game changer for us in helping employees. At our company, we always made it a point to ask employees how they are and if they need any support especially when things are running a bit slow. The simple act of asking made a huge difference in how we are as a community that aims to help each other out, especially when needs aren’t met.
What are some of the challenges or obstacles to including neurodivergent employees? What needs to be done to address those obstacles?
I’d say that the biggest obstacle that companies face when trying to make neurodivergent employees feel included is the lack of a tailored-fit environment that different individuals need in order to work at their best capacity. Companies often fail to consider the different needs of each employee and just settle for a one-size fits all approach in giving support. The key to solving this issue is to really be open to listening to employees on what they need in order to thrive.
How do you and your organization educate yourselves and your teams on the concept of neurodiversity and the needs of neurodivergent employees? Are there any resources, training, or workshops that you have found particularly helpful?
It’s generally helpful to just be open of all the possibilities that you could help accommodate the needs of neurodivergent employees. Everyone has their own needs and it wouldn’t make sense for you as an employer to just ignore these needs when you know that this is what your workforce needs in order to be equipped to work well. Having said that, I think it’s relevant for employers to seek understanding each request without judging their employees to give full support to them.
This is the main question of our interview. Can you please share five best practices that can make a business place feel more welcoming and inclusive of people who are neurodivergent? If you can, please share a few examples.
- Identify how diverse your company is. Getting to know how diverse your workforce is essential in painting a bigger picture of how you can support employees.
- Have regular check-ins with employees. I find that weekly check-ins are great in recognizing where your employees need support if the support you’re already providing is enough for them to work at their best.
- Offer flexibility. By making them choose how and when they want to work, they can have their needs better adjusted in the workplace.
- Be inclusive. Many neurodivergent employees would sometimes choose to blend in the background instead of giving their input. It’s your job as an employer to ensure that they are included in every conversation and that their input is valued.
- Be open to feedback. When implementing an initiative that you don’t know a lot of, it’s best to ask and be open for feedback and criticisms over the effectiveness of your efforts from the people who are supposed to benefit most from them to get back to the drawing board if needed.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
My favorite life quote is “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” By John Powell. It realigned how I look at my previous mistakes and see them as learning opportunities for me to grow and become a better person.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Having an open pantry in your community is an excellent way to help people who don’t have a roof over their heads. I believe that a lot of us have the privilege of having excess clothes, food, water, and other necessities that these people don’t have access to. When people come together as one community to give what we can so they can take what they need, the world can be an easier place for everyone to live in.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can connect with me on LinkedIn or follow Instrumentl’s work at @BeInstrumentl.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Mr. Pines has also served as a mediator for numerous federal agencies including serving a year as the Library of Congress’ in-house EEO Mediator. He has also served as an expert witness in federal court for federal employee matters. He has also worked as an EEO technical writer drafting hundreds of Final Agency Decisions for the federal sector.
Mr. Pines’ firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta, Georgia. His first passion is his wife and five children. He plays classical and rock guitar and enjoys playing ice hockey, running, and biking. Please visit his websites at www.pinesfederal.com and www.toughinjurylawyers.com. He can also be reached at eric@pinesfederal.com.
