For people with ADHD, the workplace can be both exciting and exhausting — a place where strengths like creativity, quick thinking, and passion can shine, but also where misunderstood challenges quietly chip away at mental wellbeing.

In many workplaces, the reality of ADHD is still invisible. It’s masked by overwork, misinterpreted as forgetfulness or disorganisation, or written off as “just needing to try harder.”

But as ADHD expert Dr. Russell Barkley explains:

“ADHD is not about knowing what to do, it is about doing what you know.”
— Dr. Russell A. Barkley, Clinical Psychologist and ADHD Researcher

This distinction is crucial. People with ADHD often know what needs to be done — they just struggle to bridge the gap between intention and action, especially in environments that don’t support their cognitive wiring.

Without that support, the cost is high, it often translates into anxiety, depression, burnout, and disengagement., absenteeism.  But when workplaces understand and accommodate ADHD, employees thrive.

Here are six ways to create a mentally healthy, ADHD-inclusive workplace:

1. Recognise the Full Spectrum of ADHD

ADHD isn’t just about attention — it affects motivation, time perception, emotional regulation, executive function, and sleep.

Many employees with ADHD experience:

• Hyperfocus: intense concentration on a task of interest, often to the exclusion of everything else — including rest, food, or transitions.
• Time blindness: difficulty estimating how long tasks will take or knowing when to stop.
• Emotional sensitivity: strong responses to rejection, feedback, or perceived failure (sometimes called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria).

What to do:

• Invest in neurodiversity training for managers and teams that specifically includes ADHD.
• Invite employees with lived experience to speak at lunch & learns or panels.
• Use anonymous pulse surveys to uncover unseen barriers related to attention, overwhelm, or emotional fatigue.
• Normalize ADHD traits in internal comms and leadership messaging (e.g., “It’s okay to need reminders or structure — we all work differently”).

2. Shift from Performance Judgement to Support

Employees with ADHD are often labelled as inconsistent — brilliant one day, behind the next. But these patterns often reflect contextual mismatches, not motivation or skill deficits.

What to do:

• Hold regular, low-pressure check-ins to explore what’s working and what’s not.
• Create Workplace Adjustment Passports  or BioDecks (for a copy of a Biodeck, please get in touch ) that detail support needs in writing.
• Offer structured flexibility: options like flexible hours, deadlines with buffers, and role clarity help reduce decision fatigue and anxiety.

3. Design Environments That Support Focus — and Stop Burnout

While ADHD includes difficulty sustaining attention, it also brings the ability to hyperfocus — especially on creative or stimulating tasks. But without boundaries, hyperfocus can lead to long hours, missed meals, and eventual burnout.

Burnout is common in ADHD because of:

• Chronic masking
• Misunderstood or unmet support needs
• Pressure to keep up by working overtime

What to do:

• Encourage realistic workloads and build breaks into the day — don’t expect employees with ADHD to self-regulate time without support
• Agree on a Definition of Done (concept from Dan Martell) to clarify what “finished” actually looks like for each task or project. This reduces perfectionism, procrastination, and the endless spiral of overworking common in ADHD.
• Train managers to spot early signs of hyperfocus burnout — such as skipped meals, late-night Slack messages, or irritability — and encourage gentle course correction, not praise for unhealthy hustle.

4. Support Recovery, Not Just Resilience

People with ADHD often push themselves past the point of exhaustion — either from hyperfocus, internal pressure to “keep up,” or time blindness that makes it hard to notice when rest is needed.

Even when they do take time off, they may feel guilty or anxious, especially if:

• Their workload is waiting for them unchanged
• They don’t feel permission from leadership to pause
• Colleagues assume they’re slacking

What to do:

• Offer mental health days as part of your wellbeing policy — and promote them proactively.
• Ensure real workload adjustments happen before and after time off, so it doesn’t feel like a setback.
• Train managers to encourage rest as a strength, not a weakness.
• Invite team members to share how taking time to reset has improved their focus, energy, or wellbeing.

5. Train Managers in ADHD-Aware Leadership

Your managers make or break psychological safety for employees with ADHD. Judgmental attitudes, unclear communication, or assumptions about laziness can undo the best policies.

What to do:

• Provide manager training in neuro-inclusive communication, emotional regulation, and clarity over complexity.
• Set up regular 1:1s that focus not just on goals but on wellbeing, barriers, and support.
• Add wellbeing KPIs to management reviews — showing that inclusion is part of performance.

6. Empower Self-Advocacy — and Back It Up

Many ADHD employees hesitate to speak up. They’ve been labelled “difficult,” “too much,” or “scattered” before. Encouraging self-advocacy only works if the environment is psychologically safe.

What to do:

• Provide toolkits about disclosure rights and adjustment ideas.
• Run workshops on strengths-based self-awareness, time management, and setting boundaries.
• Publicly recognise those who lead by example — people who speak up, co-design adjustments, or support others.

Supporting ADHD in the workplace isn’t about making exceptions — it’s about removing barriers. When employees with ADHD have what they need to succeed, their strengths shine: lateral thinking, resilience, spontaneity, creativity, and empathy.

This article was written by Olga Zilberberg, a Neuro-Affirming CBT and NLP Practitioner and founder of The Missing Link — an organisation that provides consultancy and training services in neurodiversity and mental health to forward-thinking workplaces.

For enquiries, collaboration, or to learn more, visit www.themissinglink.org.uk or contact Olga directly at olga@themissinglink.org.uk.