How benefit managers can help employees with executive dysfunction

If employees are falling behind on their work, it doesn't necessarily mean they're disengaged or wasting their time. It may be that their brains are wired differently. 

Executive dysfunction is defined as a behavioral symptom that disrupts a person's ability to manage their own thoughts, emotions and actions. It's most commonly associated with attention deficit disorders like ADHD, which affects approximately 6% of the adult population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This means that the majority of workplaces already have a population struggling through challenges that leadership should seek to understand and address. 

"Our executive functions allow us to plan, prioritize and move things in a linear direction — they make sure our to-do list gets done," says Regina Lark, ADHD specialist and productivity consultant. "To people with weak or compromised executive functions, their to-do list feels overwhelming. Managers who don't understand those challenges are going to expect all of their employees to work the same way, but they don't." 

Read more: What's a 'reset room'? How this company is physically supporting their neurodivergent employees

Unlike employees with a more neurotypical brain, those who suffer with executive function issues are more likely to get distracted during the transition in between tasks. For example, if an employee is writing an email and the phone rings, switching from one action to another causes them to lose their train of thought or forget to return to the original task altogether, Lark says. Executive dysfunction also affects an employee's organizational skills and their ability to manage their time, which could impact their work performance.

Missing deadlines, overlooking details and forgetting steps are behaviors commonly associated with employee laziness or lack of training, and they can often lead to someone being dismissed. However, that isn't always the case, and HR departments should be encouraging leaders to understand where some of the disconnect is coming from, says Lark.

"Leaders really should engage in learning about the brain," she says. "It may seem like a big undertaking, but if they have that kind of knowledge, if they can learn how to be aware of [executive dysfunction], then they'll be able to direct their employees in a much better way." 

Supporting neurodiverse talent the right way

Benefit leaders should first encourage communication and education on executive dysfunction and give employees the space to share their experiences so as to find the right resources. Many of their needs are an easy lift for HR and already exist in some capacity at many organizations as accommodations, Lark says. 

Read more: Your employees with ADHD are struggling. Here's how to help

"A lot of employees are embarrassed because they don't want HR to think there's something wrong with them," Lark says. "Leaders can not only attempt to understand these challenges, but also help employees understand what it looks like to finish a task even if it's not in the traditional way." 

Leaders with employees from this demographic can help them by extending deadlines, creating task masks, and providing checklists and templates. They can also help employees build schedules that don't revolve around multitasking, and instead batch things like phone calls and emails together so as to ease the transition between sets of tasks. 

Although it may take some reconfiguration, putting in the work to create alternate pathways — as long as the job or role permits it — is well worth the investment, according to Lark. Neurodivergent employees add creative and diverse solutions to the workplace that are valuable to organizations if they have the right policies and practices in place to support them. 

"There's always a deeper, underlying reason something isn't happening the way it's supposed to," Lark says. "You've just got to help leaders navigate that process by creating an awareness of executive functions at work and making people understand."