Someone has told you they're neurodivergent. Who can you tell?

Not automatically anyone. A disclosure hands you information about someone’s health, which sits in a protected category of personal data, and it may at the same time trigger duties you now owe them. Those two things pull in opposite directions. In most cases you may share with people who need to act, for a reason you can state, and the scope is something to agree with the person before you tell anybody. [1]

The moment someone tells you, two things become true, and they pull against each other. You are now holding information about an identified person’s health, and your ability to pass that on is restricted. [2] At the same time, you may now have knowledge that triggers duties you owe them, most obviously around adjustments, and discharging those duties often requires telling somebody else something. [1]

Information about a person’s health is treated as a protected category of personal data, which means the ordinary rules about handling staff information are not enough on their own. You need a specific reason to process it, and “it would be useful” is not one. [4] Three practical consequences follow, and they are the ones most often missed.

• A verbal disclosure counts. Nobody has to write it down or use a formal word for the obligations to apply.
• Where you record it matters. A diagnosis noted in a general performance file is handled differently from one held in a restricted record with defined access. [3]
• The word “disclosure” is doing a lot of work. Someone saying “I have ADHD” and someone saying “I’m finding open-plan really hard and I think it’s an ADHD thing” have given you different amounts of information, and you should be careful not to treat the second as though it were the first.

The instinct is to ask the person to agree, treat the agreement as settling it, and move on. It is a reasonable instinct and it is not quite enough on its own. The difficulty is the imbalance built into the employment relationship. Agreement given by somebody whose employer is asking, who may not feel able to say no, does not carry the weight it would between equals, and relying on it as your only basis is a weaker position than it feels like at the time. [3]

That is not an argument against asking. Asking is right, and doing it well is most of good practice here. It is an argument against treating the answer as the end of the matter, and against the version of asking that is really telling: “I’ll just let the team know, is that alright?”

What you can do is name the trade-off rather than resolve it silently. Explain what the adjustment would require, who would need to know what in order to make it work, and let them decide with that in front of them. People frequently choose differently once they can see the actual scope rather than imagining the worst version of it. What you should not do is quietly widen the circle because the adjustment seemed more important, or quietly drop the adjustment because the confidentiality seemed more important. Both are decisions taken on somebody’s behalf that they could have taken themselves.

Where information travels further than it should have, there are two distinct routes, and they are often confused. One concerns the handling of the information itself. The other concerns how the person was treated as a result, which is a different question with different tests and different consequences. [6]

The practical point for you is that these are separate. Fixing the first, with a corrected record, a restricted file, an apology, does not dispose of the second. A situation can be handled properly in data terms and still have gone badly wrong for the person.

1. Write down what was actually said, in their words rather than your interpretation, and note the date. Keep it out of the general performance file.
2. Ask who already knows. You may be the third person told, or the first.
3. Separate the diagnosis from the need. Work out what has to change. That, not the label, is what most people need to hear.
4. Agree the circle before you widen it. Name the people, say what each will be told and why, and get their view.
5. Put the agreement in writing to them, briefly, the same week.
6. Check where it is recorded, and whether the access to that record matches what you just agreed.
7. Diarise a review. Circumstances change, and an agreement made once is not a decision made forever.

• I have described the trade-off to them rather than deciding it for them
• I have not quietly widened the circle, or quietly dropped the adjustment
• There is a review date

At Reinforce Potential, we provide support workers and assistants who help employees plan, organise and work through their day. An employee doesn’t need a diagnosis to enquire about our support; they may already know they’re neurodivergent or be exploring that possibility. To discuss practical help, read about our employer support service. Agree with the employee what information is needed before you get in touch. This is practical workplace support; the draft article is not an offer of legal advice.

Make an employer enquiry about the tasks an employee wants help with and how support could be arranged. This Local form uses invented test details only and sends no email.