In glossy recruitment campaigns and polished corporate statements, Human Resources is often portrayed as the champion of people. HR is “the voice of the employee,” the department that ensures fairness, inclusion, and support, as well as the intermediary that helps the business manage its workforce smoothly. But in practice—especially for disabled and neurodivergent employees—HR often plays a very different role: the protector of the organisation, not the advocate for its people.
HR’s True Role in the Workplace
When conflict arises, HR is not neutral. They are there to shield the business from risk. That means minimising legal exposure, managing reputational fallout, and smoothing over the concerns of managers who don’t want to deal with “difficult” staff. For neurodivergent employees, this usually translates into HR being the gatekeepers who block, delay, or quietly deny requests for reasonable adjustments.
Reasonable Adjustments Denied
A request for flexible working hours, noise-cancelling headphones, changes to communication styles, or even the option to work from home full-time should be straightforward under discrimination law. Yet HR will often hesitate, stall, or reject such accommodations. Why? Because granting them requires conversations with other staff, or admissions that existing systems don’t work for everyone. It is easier to label the neurodivergent employee as “not a cultural fit” than to confront ingrained ableism or management’s reluctance to adapt.
When HR Facilitates Exit Strategies
When relationships sour, HR steps in again—not as mediator, but as the architect of exit strategies. For neurodivergent staff, “performance management” and “mutual separation agreements” become the polite corporate euphemisms for being shown the door. The language is dressed up as supportive, but the reality is clear: HR’s priority is to move the employee out while protecting the company from legal claims or bad publicity.
The Illusion of Inclusion Policies
This dynamic leaves neurodivergent employees in a double bind. On paper, inclusion policies promise equity and understanding. In practice, the very department that should safeguard those values becomes the obstacle. HR is not trained or incentivised to challenge the business; it exists to serve it. That means the neurodivergent employee is left unprotected, isolated, and often forced out.
Why HR Must Evolve
Until we stop pretending HR is the advocate of the worker, we cannot have an honest conversation about neurodiversity in the workplace. Inclusion requires systemic change, and systemic change is uncomfortable. It demands that HR take on the role of confronting managers and dismantling the barriers that exclude disabled staff.
HR must evolve from being the business’s shield into being its conscience. Protecting the company from risk is not enough; protecting employees from discrimination must carry equal weight. Until HR learns to balance those roles, neurodivergent employees will continue to experience workplaces as hostile environments dressed up in the language of inclusion.