Workplace Coaching as an Accommodation
Approximately 15-20% of adults are neurodiverse, yet many HR teams feel ill-equipped to handle complex accommodation cases involving ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and related conditions.
This can lead to a poor employee experience, unnecessary leaves of absence and turnover, or even ADA compliance lawsuits.
We specialize in partnering with companies and organizations to offer Workplace Coaching as an effective accommodation for employees with complex disabilities.
Employee Referral Examples
Neurodiverse employees can face complex, multi-faceted challenges at work that lead to not meeting the expectations of their role, strained relationships with their manager and peers, and ultimately, burnout and turnover.
The How Skills’ Workplace Coaching program helps professionals learn effective executive function skills, remove or reduce barriers related to a disability, and implement evidence-based systems and strategies that help them excel at work.
Below are a few examples of clients we’ve helped.
A project manager with ADHD and depression who struggled with staying focused after returning to the office from remote work.
A software engineer with autism who experienced obstacles in adapting to change, navigating ambiguity, and conflict resolution with their team.
A sales executive with a traumatic brain injury who needed to learn new ways of managing a large amount of detailed information.
A recruiter with anxiety who had difficulties with perfectionism, time management, and effectively communicating in 1:1's with their manager.
An analyst with dyslexia who experienced significant challenges with taking notes and reading detailed documents.
A support specialist with a chronic illness struggled to manage their workload and stay organized due to their fatigue.
Our coaches are trained educators with master’s or doctorate level degrees and subject matter expertise in executive function, productivity, and organization. We’ve coached thousands of employees and understand what it takes to be successful in competitive work environments focused on productivity and profitability. We act as an extension of your team to effectively accommodate employees and give them the tools they need to thrive in the workplace.
How It Works
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Refer An Employee
We'll schedule an intake session to discuss challenges the employee is experiencing, answer any questions, and determine if coaching is a good fit.
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A coach will collaborate with the employee to set and prioritize goals during the first meeting, then create a coaching plan aligned with these objectives.
Coach Meeting & Goal Setting
3
Build A Customized Toolkit
Employees are introduced to new tools and guided on how to implement them to build sustainable habits and achieve goals in their role.
Testimonials
“Coaching delivered more value to me both personally and professionally than I had ever expected. Prior to our sessions, I was hopeful for a good outcome, but the reality has blown me away. I felt able to discuss any issue or barrier I was dealing with, free of judgement. I felt empowered to learn how to work with my own brain, and empowered by the strategies my coach suggested. We fine tuned these strategies to better fit my life, experience, and strengths, and I am in a much better position mentally and professionally because of it. Coaching has allowed me to actually show up as my authentic self at work, and I am finally able to really practice Microsoft’s mission to empower every person to achieve more, because now I am too.”
“The strategies we covered over the course of the coaching program not only provided me with science-backed techniques specifically designed to support my needs, but it gave me back the confidence that my condition had stripped me of. This program was invaluable.”
“Workplace coaching was recommended to me by multiple coworkers who had gone through it themselves. Now I’m the one recommending it to coworkers! The How Skills is a highly skilled organization, and I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to improve work skills that aren’t always explicitly taught. I especially recommend it to neurodivergent folks. As a neurodivergent individual, The How Skills’ coaches specifically helped me work with my brain rather than fight against it.”
“I finally had someone who understood and wanted to understand the divergent mind and how to help operate in the neurotypical world. It was the highlight of my career at Google working with The How Skills.”
“My experience with The How Skills was unique, in that they helped me during a sudden and unexpectedly difficult time in my personal life that cascaded into work. The How Skills helped me prioritize stress management, communication, and time management, and provided coaching, tools, and frameworks to address each. Ultimately, they helped me feel back in control of my life at work and like an even better version of my old self.”
“The How Skills has had an immeasurable impact on my work and home life. From email triage, task initiation, workload management to name a few. The weekly check-ins on action items with my coach were very helpful in keeping me accountable and motivated me to put the strategies to use. I honestly can say I feel a lot less stressed in my daily work life after completing The How Skills.”
FAQs
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We work with adults of all ages and students as young as 10 years old. We also commonly work directly with parents/guardians to provide them with tools to help their children.
We specialize in overcoming executive function challenges for folks with ADHD, autism, anxiety, dyslexia, blindness or low vision, braining injuries, learning disabilities, PTSD, chronic illness, and mental health conditions.
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All of our coaches are former educators with master's or doctorate degrees and backgrounds in fields specializing in neurodiversity and disability. Each coach goes through a intensive onboarding program during their first six months at The How Skills to learn our methodology and approach to coaching, as well as get experience co-coaching with a senior coach. We continue to invest in the development of all coaches through weekly training and professional development.
One of the biggest differences between The How Skills and other coaching providers is that all of our coaches are full-time employees. This ensures all of our coaches meet our rigorous coaching standards and allows us to provide a consistent client experience. The vast majority of other providers send clients to coaches who are contractors, so they're not able to enforce a consistent methodology and approach to coaching. This creates a disparity in the quality of coaching received for different clients with sub-optimal outcomes for many.
Check out our blog article for more on what to look for when selecting a coach!
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We survey clients during and after coaching to measure the effectiveness of our coaching program and to collect feedback on how we can improve. We ask questions related to the impact, quality, and overall satisfaction with coaching. Ensuring successful outcomes is at the heart of everything we do, and our survey results reflect our strong commitment to our clients.
Check out our testimonials to hear directly from our past clients!
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Executive Function (EF) is a term for a set of cognitive skills that help you manage your behavior and achieve goals. These skills include things like:
Planning and organizing: Making a plan to reach a goal and figuring out the steps you need to take.
Flexible thinking: Adjusting to new situations or changing your approach when something isn’t working.
Self-control: Managing impulses, emotions, and behaviors so you can stay focused and act appropriately.
Basically, executive function is like the brain’s “management system.” It’s what allows you to think ahead, focus, solve problems, and regulate emotions — all the things that help you get things done efficiently and effectively.
When people have trouble with executive function, they might struggle with things like starting tasks, keeping track of time, remembering what they were supposed to do, or staying calm under pressure.
Check out our page about executive function to learn more!
Additional Services
In addition to Workplace Coaching, we also offer dedicated manager training, turnkey hiring program support, team training workshops, and an on-demand content platform.
Manager Readiness
Most managers want to support neurodiverse employees, but they often need help understanding how to best support them.
We help managers and their direct reports find more effective ways of working together through three avenues:
One-on-one coaching with managers who have an employee enrolled in Workplace Coaching
Office Hours where managers can discuss challenges, ask questions, and receive guidance
Training Workshops with tailored strategies for managers of neurodiverse employees
Common Topics We Cover With Managers
Navigating employee disability disclosure and privacy
Identifying and leveraging employee strengths
How to give clear, accessible directions
Creating structure when ambiguity is part of the role
Supporting employees who ask too many or too few questions
How to give effective, actionable feedback
Disability etiquette and promoting a culture of belonging
Hiring Programs
We provide turnkey neurodiverse and skills-based hiring program services to support interviewing and onboarding of new employees.
We partner with your Talent Acquisition team to reduce barriers and accommodate candidates through your standard processes or through dedicated neurodiverse hiring programs. We’ll help you hire strong talent and avoid common pitfalls with new hiring programs.
We provide group Training Workshops and 1:1 Coaching for candidates and new employees to prepare them to confidently navigate the interview process and meet the expectation of their role, while reducing additional support required from managers.
Candidate Interview Prep
Introduction and behavioral interviewing strategies
Navigating common technology and accessibility features
Stress management tools and techniques
Employee Onboarding Prep
Understanding role expectations and responsibilities
Adopting systems to manage priorities, deadlines, and time
Structuring 1:1's and team communication norms
Training Workshops
We offer a collection of interactive Training Workshops packed with actionable content and led by experts in cognitive development, education, and accessibility.
Neurodiversity Series
The Neurodiversity Series consists of up to three 60-minute training workshops that build on each other and cover progressively more advanced topics related to neurodiversity. We offer six variations of this series thoughtfully crafted for different audiences within your organization: teams, managers, senior leadership, recruiting, and HR accommodations. We also tailor the content to suit your specific needs and cultural values. All participants will receive a post-training one-pager summarizing key takeaways. Topics covered include:
Defining and understanding Neurodiversity
Disability etiquette and disclosing in the workplace
Social model and language of disability
Creating a culture of belonging
Accessible communication strategies
Identifying and leveraging individual strengths
Executive Function Series
Our Executive Function Series focuses on building concrete skills in each of our 12 most popular areas of executive function in the workplace. Each area is offered as a discrete 60-minute training workshop and can be combined to form a larger training program (e.g. a monthly lunch and learn). Our goal is to support employees and their managers in tackling common executive function challenges in the workplace, improving productivity, and leveraging the strengths of all teammates. Topics covered include:
Allocating Time Correctly
Meeting Deadlines
Scheduling Best Practices
Starting Tasks
Constructive Conversations
Staying Attentive in Meetings
Navigating Ambiguity
Managing Time & Hyperfocus
Progressing on Long-Term Projects
Perfectionism Strategies
Navigating Email
Building Habits
Feedback From Our Training Workshop Partners
“I wanted to express gratitude and compliments for the neurodiversity training workshop. Your subject matter expertise and seamless facilitation skills resulted in an impactful, engaging, and informative session. I have developed, facilitated, and participated in many trainings over the years—yours was exceptional.”
“I appreciate your partnership in designing and delivering these executive function workshops. Your passion really brought the content to life and drove a ton of audience engagement. Several managers have since reached out to let me know how these workshops made a meaningful impact on productivity and overall employee well-being. ”
Content Platform
Most people can benefit from executive function support—some prefer to learn flexibly when and how it works for them.
That's why we developed our Content Platform, to not only complement our coaching accommodation and training programs, but to also offer executive function tools and strategies to all employees as a benefit.
The Content Platform includes on-demand videos, guides, and interactive exercises covering all of our most popular areas of executive function.
Interested in learning more about our services? Please click the button below to contact us, and we’ll reach out to find time to connect.