The mid-year neurodiversity check-in: is your adjustment process still working?
Most organisations put neurodiversity support in place at the start of the year and never revisit it. Six months on, adjustments drift. This guide tells you where to look and what to do about it.
Only 46% of employers feel their managers are confident supporting neurodivergent staff. That gap does not close on its own. Without a mid-year review, it typically widens as teams change and confidence fades. CIPD Neuroinclusion at Work, 2024
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The rest of the guide covers the three drift patterns in full, the five-point mid-year checklist, and the check-in conversation framework. One-off, you won’t need to do this again on this device.
Why neurodiversity support erodes without anyone deciding to let it
Most neurodiversity adjustments are not formally withdrawn. They simply stop happening. The conditions that made them work change, and nobody notices until the employee is struggling again.
What adjustment drift looks like
An employee was given written meeting summaries. Their manager who knew to do this left in March. Their new manager has never been briefed. The adjustment hasn’t been cancelled. It just hasn’t been transferred. The employee is now masking again, three months into the new relationship.
Why mid-year is the right moment
The start of a new year is when most adjustment conversations happen. Six months on, team structures have changed, some managers are new, and onboarding cohorts from January are now embedded. Mid-year is the natural audit moment before H2 begins and a new set of pressures arrives.
The three patterns that erode neurodiversity support over time
These are the patterns we see most consistently when organisations run a mid-year audit. None of them require bad intent to occur. They are structural problems that require structural fixes.
Onboarding decay
Adjustments agreed at the start of a role are rarely reviewed. They were set up for a job description, a team structure and a manager that may all have changed. The employee’s responsibilities have evolved. The tools that helped at month one may not be the tools that help at month six.
- Ask: have the employee’s responsibilities changed significantly since their adjustments were set up?
- Check whether any agreed tools or working arrangements have quietly been discontinued.
- Run a short conversation with the employee: “What’s working well? What isn’t?”
Team-move handover gaps
When an employee moves teams, joins a new project or gets a new line manager, their adjustment record often doesn’t travel with them. The incoming manager doesn’t know what was in place. They are starting from zero with an employee who is quietly assuming that the new manager already knows.
- Check: did any employees change line manager or team between January and June? Was their adjustment record passed on?
- Build adjustment handover into manager offboarding as a standard step, not an afterthought.
- Give incoming managers a brief record of what adjustments are in place before their first one-to-one.
New-manager knowledge gaps
A manager hired or promoted since January who has not received neurodiversity training is managing neurodivergent employees with no framework for understanding what they need. They are not wilfully ignoring adjustments. They simply don’t know what to look for or how to have the conversation.
- Identify any managers who joined or were promoted since January. Have they received neurodiversity training?
- Run a half-day session for new managers before H2 begins. The cost of the training is a fraction of the cost of a poorly managed neurodivergent employee leaving.
- Add neurodiversity training to new-manager onboarding as a standard item, not an optional extra.
The start of the second half is one of the most natural moments to run a training session for your manager cohort. It sits at a transition point, signals organisational intent and gives managers the tools they need before the autumn performance cycle begins.
A practical checklist for HR managers
Run this check now, before H2 begins. It takes less than an hour per manager cohort and surfaces the gaps before they become problems.
Adjustments on record vs. adjustments in practice
Are the adjustments documented in your HR system actually being followed? For each neurodivergent employee with a formal adjustment plan, check with their line manager whether those adjustments are still in place.
Team and manager changes since January
List any neurodivergent employees who have changed line manager or team since the start of the year. For each, confirm that the incoming manager was briefed on existing adjustments.
Managers hired or promoted since January
Identify managers who are new to the role since January. Flag those who have not yet received neurodiversity training and include them in the next scheduled session.
Employee check-in conversations
For employees with known adjustments, schedule a brief check-in conversation in the next four weeks. Ask open questions: “What’s working well? What isn’t?” and “Is there anything we set up that isn’t quite right any more?”
New starters since January
Have any neurodivergent employees joined since January who haven’t yet had an adjustment conversation? Early tenure is when the adjustment conversation is easiest to have and most impactful.
Equip your managers before H2 begins
Our Neurodiversity for Managers session gives your manager cohort the knowledge and confidence to have adjustment conversations and support neurodivergent employees effectively throughout the year.
Enquire about Neurodiversity for Managers