About the author: Dr Caroline Gorden is the founder and director of CESI Learning and a published criminologist specialising in how credibility and guilt are constructed in formal processes. She holds a PhD in Criminology, has published over 25 peer-reviewed works on social exclusion, criminal justice, and institutional fairness, and is the author of Case Studies of Famous Trials and the Construction of Guilt and Innocence, published by Bristol Policy Press in 2022. She was previously a Senior Lecturer and Reader at Wrexham University, where she co-directed Cyfiawnder: The Social Inclusion Research Institute, and remains a Visiting Research Associate there. Since 2023 she has worked as a workplace coach specialising in adults with ADHD and autism. Her work at CESI Learning applies criminological research directly to workplace investigations, grievances, and disciplinary procedures.
This article is for: HR professionals, managers, and EDI leads who are responsible for choosing training and development provision for their organisations, and who want to make sure their investment is both legally defensible and genuinely effective.
What you will learn: Why the neurodiversity training market is changing, what the policy and legal direction of travel in the UK means for how you choose your CPD, and what to look for in a course that will actually make a difference in high-stakes situations.
Why it matters: Tribunal claims involving neurodivergent employees have risen 95% over five years. Generic awareness training is not sufficient preparation for formal processes — and the gap between knowing that and knowing what to do about it is exactly where most organisations are currently sitting.
I want you to think about the last time someone in your organisation was asked to justify an EDI training budget.
Perhaps it was straightforward. Perhaps it was not. Perhaps it is a conversation that is becoming more frequent, or more pointed, as organisations watch events in the United States and wonder what the right posture is for a UK employer in 2026. The anti-DEI rhetoric coming from across the Atlantic has created real uncertainty, and if you work in HR or EDI, you will know that the ground has shifted at least slightly beneath your feet over the past eighteen months, even if you are not entirely sure in which direction.
I want to address that uncertainty directly in this post, because I think it is creating a genuine opportunity for HR professionals who are paying attention — and I also think it is important to be honest about what is actually happening, rather than either dismissing the concern or catastrophising it.
The EDI landscape is changing. But not in the way you might fear.
It is true that some organisations are retreating from generic EDI initiatives. Research by law firm Freeths found that 28% of UK businesses have reduced or abandoned their EDI programmes in the past year, and job titles are changing across the sector as organisations distance themselves from language that has become politically charged. The word “inclusion” is, in some contexts, generating defensive reactions rather than engagement, and the repackaging of inclusion work under the banner of wellbeing or organisational effectiveness is a real and observable trend.
But here is what is also true, and what I think matters more for how you make decisions about training and development.
The UK Government’s direction of travel is not towards less inclusion. It is towards more rigorous, more specific, and more legally enforceable inclusion practice. The Employment Rights Act 2025, coming into full effect in October 2026, raises the standard of employer obligation around harassment prevention from “reasonable steps” to “all reasonable steps,” and extends liability for third-party harassment across all protected characteristics. The Equality Act 2010 has not changed. And employment lawyers are now on record saying that for UK employers to roll back their EDI policies and training would be “legally incoherent” — not just ethically questionable, but actively dangerous from a legal risk perspective.
The Buckland Review of Autism Employment, published in February 2024 and commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions, found that employers and managers often report poor knowledge of autism and feel under-prepared to identify and implement adjustments for autistic people. Its recommendations included developing specific training packages to address that gap, and redesigning interview and recruitment processes to remove the barriers that autistic candidates and employees routinely face. In January 2025, the Labour Government commissioned an independent expert panel, led by Professor Amanda Kirby, to build on the Buckland Review and develop recommendations specifically around neuroinclusive practice in workplaces, with a particular focus on practical guidance around reasonable adjustments and inclusive employment processes.
Tribunal claims involving neurodivergent employees have risen 95% over five years, with 517 cases recorded in the last year alone. And the City and Guilds Neurodiversity Index 2026 found that despite growing awareness, 37% of managers have still received no training on neurodiversity at all.
What this adds up to is not a picture of inclusion becoming irrelevant. It is a picture of performative inclusion being stripped away, and substantive, specific, legally grounded inclusion practice becoming more important than ever. The organisations that are retreating are the ones that were never that invested in the first place, as Paul Sesay, CEO of Inclusive Companies, put it earlier this year. The organisations that are investing are investing more carefully, more specifically, and with a clearer eye on what the legal and operational stakes actually are.
That distinction matters for how you choose your training.
What the shift away from generic training actually means
The neurodiversity training market has been saturated for some time. There is no shortage of awareness programmes, e-learning modules, and keynote talks about what neurodivergence is, why it matters, and how it enriches teams. Most of this provision is well-intentioned and some of it is genuinely good.
But awareness is not a skill. And in the specific, high-stakes situations where the legal and human consequences of getting it wrong are most severe — formal investigations, grievances, disciplinary interviews — general awareness of neurodiversity is not sufficient preparation for the person in the room who has to conduct the process fairly.
This is the gap that the Buckland Review identified. This is the gap that the Kirby Panel is developing recommendations to address. And this is the gap that CESI Learning was built to fill.
When an autistic employee is called into a formal interview, the interviewer needs to understand far more than that autistic people experience the world differently. They need to understand specifically how autistic memory retrieves information under pressure, why non-chronological recall is not an indicator of dishonesty, how autistic compliance in formal settings can be mistaken for an admission of guilt, and what structured interview approaches — such as WAFA, or Witness-Aimed First Account — actually look like in practice. They need a pre-interview checklist they can use in real time, a letter to employee template that is supportive rather than prosecutorial, and a framework for reasonable adjustments that goes beyond “ask the employee what they need.”
That level of specificity is not something a general neurodiversity awareness course can provide. And it is not something your organisation can afford to be without, given the legal direction of travel.
What to look for when choosing a neurodiversity course
Given all of the above, here is what I would suggest you look for when evaluating any neurodiversity training provision — not as a checklist of nice-to-haves, but as a set of questions that distinguish substantive training from awareness dressed up as skill development.
Is it specific enough to be useful in the situations that carry the most legal risk? Generic awareness has its place, but if you are responsible for formal processes involving neurodivergent employees, you need training that addresses those processes directly. Ask whether the course covers workplace investigations, grievance procedures, disciplinary interviews, and reasonable adjustments in formal settings specifically — not just neurodiversity in general.
Is it grounded in published research rather than professional opinion? The most defensible training provision is built on an evidence base that can withstand scrutiny. Look for courses that cite peer-reviewed research, reference current case law, and are designed by someone whose expertise is verifiable and documented — not just claimed. If you were ever asked in a tribunal why you chose a particular training provider, you should be able to give a clear answer.
Is it formally accredited by a recognised body? CPD UK certification and CMI validation are not decorative. They are quality marks that confirm the course content has been independently assessed against professional standards. A certificate of attendance from an unaccredited provider does not carry the same weight — in a legal context or a professional development context — as a CPD UK certified course or a CMI qualification.
Does it give you something to use, not just something to know? The best training changes what you do, not just what you understand. Look for provision that includes practical tools — checklists, templates, structured interview frameworks — that you can apply in real situations, not just concepts you will remember for a few weeks before they fade.
Does it treat reasonable adjustments as a process design question rather than an individual accommodation? The most important shift in thinking around neurodivergent inclusion right now — reflected in both the Buckland Review and the Kirby Panel’s remit — is the move from case-by-case accommodation toward inclusive process design. Training that helps you redesign your processes to be fair for everyone, rather than simply making ad hoc adjustments for individuals who disclose, is both more legally robust and more operationally sustainable.
What CESI Learning offers
CESI Learning was founded specifically to address the gap between general awareness and the practical, legally grounded skills that HR professionals and managers need when working with autistic and ADHD employees in formal processes. Every course is built on published peer-reviewed research — not professional opinion — and designed to give you something you can use in real situations, not just something you can put on your CPD record.
Our CPD UK certified course, Effective Interviewing of Autistic Employees in Investigations, Grievances, and Disciplinaries, is a four-hour online course, self-paced and available now at CESI COURSES – CESI Learning It is priced at £120. It covers how credibility and perceptions of guilt are socially and psychologically constructed in workplace interviews, why autistic employees face an increased risk of misinterpretation in formal processes, and how to apply structured, inclusive interview approaches that support clearer recall, mutual understanding, and procedural fairness. It includes a practical guidebook — with a pre-interview checklist, a letter to employee template, a reasonable adjustments checklist, and structured questioning guidance — that you can refer to in real time.
For senior leaders and managers who want to build this understanding at a strategic level, the CMI Level 7 Certificate in Autism-Informed Strategic Management and Leadership Practice opens for its first cohort in September 2026. This is the only CMI Level 7 qualification of its kind — mapped directly to the standard CMI Level 7 in Strategic Management and Leadership Practice, but with a specialist lens in autism-informed leadership that no other qualification offers. It covers the full arc of an autistic employee’s experience, from recruitment through to grievance, disciplinary, and investigation, grounded in sociology, psychology, and criminology. You can register your interest now at Join the Waitlist – CESI Learning — enrolment opens ahead of the September 2026 start date.
Both courses are grounded in the same intellectual foundation: that the way someone communicates, behaves, and responds in a formal process is not a reliable indicator of their honesty, intent, or capability — and that fair processes, designed to account for that, are not a concession to political fashion. They are a legal and organisational necessity.
That argument has not become less true because some organisations are nervous about the word ‘inclusion’. If anything, it has become more urgent.
Fair processes don’t happen by accident. They happen by design.
Dr Caroline Gorden is the founder and director of CESI Learning. Her book, Case Studies of Famous Trials and the Construction of Guilt and Innocence, is published by Bristol Policy Press (2022). She can be found on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drcarolinegorden
References
Gorden, C. and Birkbeck, C. (2022) Case Studies of Famous Trials and the Construction of Guilt and Innocence. Bristol: Bristol Policy Press.
Buckland, R. (2024) The Buckland Review of Autism Employment: Report and Recommendations. Department for Work and Pensions. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-buckland-review-of-autism-employment-report-and-recommendations
Irwin Mitchell (2026) Employment Tribunal Cases Linked to Neurodiversity Almost Double in Five Years. Available at: https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/newsandmedia/2026/feb/employment-tribunal-cases-linked-to-neurodiversity-almost-double-in-five-years
Freeths (2025) Survey of General Counsels and Chief Legal Officers on EDI and Ethical Policies. Reported in People Management, November 2025.
City and Guilds Foundation and Do-IT Solutions (2026) Neurodiversity Index 2026. Available at: https://cityandguildsfoundation.org/what-we-offer/campaigning/neurodiversity-index/
Department for Work and Pensions (2025) Employment Prospects for Neurodiverse People Set to Be Boosted with Launch of New Expert Panel. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/employment-prospects-for-neurodiverse-people-set-to-be-boosted-with-launch-of-new-expert-panel
Chandler, R., Russell, A. and Maras, K. (2018) ‘Compliance in autism: Does it occur and is it a problem?’, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 56, pp. 10-21
