Neuro News
- Cassandra Nicholson
- Aug 18
- 3 min read
Neuro News
Week of 17 August 2026 | Neuroinclusion for workplaces and individuals
Happy Wednesday!
It feels like psychosocial hazards are more on the radar now than previously, or perhaps my algorithms have updated? There is a continued lack of clarity around what it means, especially when I talk about the intersection of neurodiversity and psychosocial hazards.
Psychosocial hazards cover 14 separate elements in Australia:
Job demands, low job control, poor support, lack of role clarity, poor organisational change management, inadequate reward and recognition, poor organisational justice, traumatic events or material, remote or isolated work, poor physical environment, violence and aggression, bullying, harassment, conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions.
Are you confident you’re regulator ready? Do you have staff turnover concerns? Or do you just want some clarity on the shifting environment? You can always book in a free exploration discussion or reply to this email.
Cass
Founder | The Neurodivergence Voice
0419 423 746
Neuro at Work
Your AI Tools Are a Psychosocial Hazard You Haven't Assessed
Most psychosocial risk registers still model AI as an IT or privacy issue. It isn't just that. A New Zealand Journal of Health and Safety Practice paper (Knobel, April 2026) argues AI systems calibrated to neurotypical behaviour — activity trackers, keystroke monitoring, "ideal candidate" screening algorithms, tone-analysis on calls — can intensify surveillance and encode cognitive bias against neurodivergent staff, while eroding the informal flexibility that made reasonable adjustments workable in practice. The ILO's April 2026 analysis reaches the same conclusion from a different angle: AI-driven monitoring and work intensification are reshaping recruitment through performance management in ways current WHS frameworks — built around physical hazards — aren't equipped to catch, because "mental and social aspects of work" sit outside what most safety audits check. Neither framework currently has binding, AI-specific psychosocial protections. That's a gap you can close before a regulator does it for you. The audit question: does your organisation know which of its AI tools — hiring screens, productivity trackers, sentiment analysis — were validated against neurodivergent working styles before deployment? If the answer is "we didn't check," that's the gap, and it sits squarely inside your psychosocial risk obligations, not beside them.
Neuro Hacks
Decide Once, Not Every Time
Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer's decades of research on "implementation intentions" found a simple if-then plan — "If X happens, I will do Y" — roughly doubles follow-through on a goal compared with just intending to do it, across a large meta-analysis spanning dozens of studies. The mechanism: deciding in advance removes the in-the-moment decision, which is exactly the step that's most expensive for an ADHD brain running on unreliable working memory and inconsistent motivation. Generic goals ("exercise more," "answer emails faster") don't benefit from this — there's no trigger to attach the plan to. Specific ones do: "If it's 9am and I've opened my laptop, I will spend the first 10 minutes on my three priority tasks before checking email." "If a meeting invite doesn't have an agenda, I will reply asking for one before accepting." Write the if-then as a single sentence, in that exact structure, for one recurring friction point this week. Not a vague intention — the specific cue and the specific action. The plan doesn't need willpower to execute. That's the point: the decision already happened, earlier, when your brain had more bandwidth to make it well.
Neuro and Cass
Dysgraphia: The Profile That Doesn't Match the Talk
Fourth in this series on profiles beyond autism and ADHD, after dyslexia (27 July), dyspraxia (3 August), and dyscalculia (10 August).
Dysgraphia is a specific difficulty with written expression — not messy handwriting from carelessness, and not a vocabulary problem. It sits in the gap between what someone can say fluently and what they can get onto a page: spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and organising thoughts into coherent written sequence all become disproportionately effortful, even when verbal reasoning is strong. Estimates suggest 5–20% of children show some writing deficit, and dysgraphia is common among children with ADHD — up to half of whom have a co-occurring learning disorder. Like dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia, it's chronically underdiagnosed in adults because it hides behind compensations: over-editing, over-preparing, relying on a colleague to "just tidy up" a document, or avoiding writing-heavy roles entirely. In the workplace it shows up as emails that take three times longer than they should, reports that get quietly reworked before circulation, and disproportionate dread around anything requiring written output. The accommodation isn't remedial writing training. It's voice-to-text software, extra drafting time, and permission to think out loud before committing anything to a page.
Cheers,
Cass Nicholson | Founder | The Neurodivergence Voice
Brisbane QLD, Australia +61 0419 423 746
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