42. Making Neurodiversity Work at Work! Meet Organizational Psychologist Ludmila Praslova

Feb 14

Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP uses her extensive experience with global, cultural, demographic, and ability diversity to help create inclusive and equitable workplaces. She is a Professor of Psychology and the founding Director of Graduate Programs in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California. Prior to her academic career, she built and led successful intercultural relations programs in global organizations. Her current consulting is focused on supporting organizations in creating systemic inclusion informed by an understanding of neurodiversity. Her other areas of expertise include organizational culture assessment and change, workplace justice and civility, and training and training evaluation. She is a contributor to Fast Company, Harvard Business Review and SHRM blog, the editor of the upcoming book “Evidence-Based Organizational Practices for Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity” (Cambridge Scholars), and the editor of upcoming special issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research on Disability inclusion in the workplace: From “accommodation” to inclusive organizational design.

TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

Diversity at work includes different aspects such as race, gender but also neurodiversity.
Autism Autism Doesn’t Hold People Back at Work. Discrimination Does. (HRB)
The unemployment rate amongst college graduates with Autism in the US is 85 %! The discrimination might not be intentional but it is systemic!
If you met one Autistic person, you have met one Autistic person.
There is a misconception that autistic people are not empathic. However, autistic people might be so overwhelmed with empathy that they don’t have energy to express it or it might be too overwhelming to express.
Autistic people might develop trauma patterns due to the way people react to them over and over again.
Having an Autistic diagnosis can be empowering and helpful for self advocacy.
Moral injury can happen at work and we need to address it! This might be more prevalent in neurodivergent people. Sign up for the newsletter to be updated on the results on the study!
Even if you didn’t now things earlier, you know now and you can implement and change from this day forward! Your life experience is what it is and now you can move from this point forward!