“It’s a relatively new thing … but I would say it’s gaining momentum,” says Rob Austin, a business school professor at Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario, of the growing interest in recruiting neurodiverse employees. “One of the things that companies are discovering is that there are benefits that they did not anticipate.”

Austin explained that the push for neurodiversity in the workplace has Danish origins. Thorkil Sonne, a Danish telecom worker, was the instigator for bringing people with autism into the professional space. Sonne’s own son has autism and he founded the company Specialisterne in 2004 with the specific aim of employing people with autism and preparing them for the workforce. Employees at Specialisterne were high-functioning autistic people who were offered jobs in the IT and technology space.

“At some point, Thorkil wasn't making enough impact. He had 75 or so people employed, but he wanted to employ a million people with autism. So he changed his model, and started trying to convince big companies to do it,” says Austin. One of these companies was SAP, a huge software company, which hired people with autism to do software testing and analytics. The company now employs over 100 people on the autism spectrum, and that program served as a case study by Austin and his colleague Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School.

Two other companies that have been taking the lead on this are HP Enterprises (via an initiative called the Dandelion program in Australia) and Microsoft. In the SAP case study, the company found employees who had advanced degrees and patents in their names, but still weren’t able to land corporate jobs. Austin says that the talent is there, but often missed because of the over-reliance on the interview process or the lack of flexibility on the part of companies. And now, the interest in these workers, which began in the tech industry, seems to be spreading to other industries and job functions as well.

For example, Sam Briefer, an employee in EY’s neurodiversity program, was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD at the age of six. After graduating from Westchester University, he was worried about finding a job. “I began sending out 30 or so applications, and I was being called in almost every day for an interview,” says Briefer. “I turned down most of them because either the jobs were too stressful or not of my interest.” Briefer has been at EY’s Philadelphia office for over six months, and he’s optimistic about his future at the company. “I’m so happy with where I am right now … I feel like as long as I’m continuing to be a strong team player and someone who is always ready to step up and lead anything, that will be a great asset to my team.” Golden says that the program has had a strong reception from EY employees, and the company is planning on expanding the program to other offices next year.