Human Variation Is Normal. Design for It.

Why inclusive work design goes beyond treating everyone equally.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) Occupational Health & Safety Fall Conference in Milwaukee. Our conversation focused on designing better, safer work systems for a neurodiverse workforce.

One idea I kept coming back to was the difference between equality, equity, and inclusive design. Understanding that difference can change how we approach workplace safety.

Equality, Equity, and Inclusive Design: What's the Difference?

These three approaches are related, but they lead us to different solutions.

• Equality means giving everyone the same thing.

• Equity recognizes that people have different needs and may require different kinds of support.

• Inclusive design asks how we can build systems that support human variation from the beginning.

I think workplace safety provides a useful example of why these distinctions matter.

Putting Legs Under Our Safety Slogans

We've all heard the familiar safety slogan, "See something, say something."

It's a reasonable expectation. We want employees to recognize hazards and speak up when something isn't right.

But a slogan alone isn't much of a safeguard. We have to put legs under it.

Consider how our three approaches would work in practice.

Equality: We tell every employee, "See something, say something." Everyone receives the same message and is expected to respond in the same way.

Equity: We recognize that speaking up publicly may be difficult for some employees. We provide an alternative way to report concerns, such as a private conversation or written report.

Inclusive design: We build multiple ways to raise concerns into the work system from the beginning. Supervisors routinely ask employees for input. Reporting options are clear and accessible. Employees understand what happens after they raise a concern, and leaders respond constructively and close the loop.

The difference is important.

When we design a system this way, speaking up doesn't depend so heavily on someone's confidence, communication style, comfort with authority, or willingness to interrupt.

We've made it easier for more people to participate in keeping the workplace safe.

Designing for a Neurodiverse Workplace

People communicate, learn, process information, and regulate their attention and emotions differently.

Some employees are comfortable asking questions in a group. Others need time to process information before responding. Some prefer verbal instructions, while others benefit from written information they can refer to later.

These differences aren't unusual. They're part of human variation.

Yet many of our work systems are designed around assumptions about how a "typical" employee will think, communicate, learn, and behave.

When someone struggles with those expectations, we often respond by making an individual adjustment. Sometimes that's necessary, and individual accommodations will always have an important role.

But what if we examined the design itself? Often, when one person struggles, others may benefit from the solution.

What if we made instructions clearer, offered more than one way to communicate, reduced unnecessary distractions, or made expectations explicit instead of relying on unwritten rules?

Those changes could benefit far more people than the individual whose difficulty first brought the problem to our attention.

And that's one of the things I find most interesting about inclusive work design. Neurodivergent employees can help us recognize weaknesses in work systems that affect everyone.

Start With the System

As safety professionals, we're accustomed to examining how work systems influence human performance. We look at procedures, equipment, training, communication, and the conditions under which people work.

Designing for neurodiversity is a natural extension of that thinking.

Instead of assuming everyone will interact with a system the same way, we consider a wider range of human needs and abilities during design. That doesn't mean we can anticipate every possible need or that individual accommodations become unnecessary. But neurodiversity is a useful lens.

It means we can reduce some of the barriers before anyone encounters them.

And when we do, we're creating work systems that are more accessible, more reliable, and potentially safer for everyone.

Human variation is normal. Design for it.