Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How One Company Became Disability-Confident Through an Apprenticeship Model
Transcript
- Lucas: If we've helped you think through a career move or decision, that's exactly why we do this. We deliberately don't run ads on these shows, and if you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep the conversation going without any commercial interruptions. Appreciate you listening. Lucas: Alright, today I want to talk about a specific approach to disability-confident hiring that I think is genuinely replicable. We're looking at the apprenticeship model Ernst & Young built for candidates on the autism spectrum. Luna: EY's Neurodiversity Centers of Excellence — I've read about those. They started in the US around 2016, right? Lucas: Exactly. They launched in Philadelphia with just a handful of apprentices in the firm's technology and data analytics divisions. The idea was simple: traditional interviews were screening out highly capable candidates because the process itself — the eye contact, the open-ended behavioral questions, the unfamiliar room — was a barrier for many autistic individuals. Lucas: So they redesigned the entire assessment. Instead of a panel interview, candidates spend a day working on real technical problems. For a data analytics role, they might get a dataset and a business question — here's a client's sales data, find the trends. They work through it with a coach present, and observers score the output, not the small talk. Luna: And that's a very different signal than what a traditional interview captures. It's more like a work sample test. Lucas: Precisely. And once hired, each apprentice gets a dedicated workplace coach — someone from a local disability organization, not an EY employee — who helps with communication norms, sensory adjustments, even things like navigating the cafeteria. The coach phases out over time, but it's there from day one. Luna: That strikes me as the key structural difference from a typical internship. The coach is an external partner, so the apprentice has an advocate who's not inside the performance review system. Lucas: Right. And that's expensive — EY has said each apprentice costs roughly $10,000 extra in the first year for coaching and accommodations. But they also report those teams are 30% more productive on pattern-recognition tasks — things like anomaly detection in audit data, which is a core part of the assurance business. So the math works. Luna: I've also read that the retention rate is over 90% in the first two years. That's much higher than typical entry-level turnover in professional services. Lucas: Yes, which makes sense — if you hire people who are well-matched to the work and give them the support they need, they stay. The program has now expanded to twelve countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, and India. They've hired over 200 people through it globally. Luna: But I want to push back a little. Some disability advocates worry that a separate program like this can create a 'neurodiversity track' that's isolated from the main career ladder. If the apprentices don't get the same stretch assignments or promotion opportunities, it becomes a ceiling, not a ladder. Lucas: That's a fair critique, and EY has acknowledged it. Their response has been to integrate the apprentices into standard teams after the first year — they're not in a separate unit. And they've also trained managers across the firm on neurodiversity inclusion, so the mainstream culture shifts. But you're right, it's an ongoing tension. Lucas: What I find most replicable about this model is the redesign of the hiring gate itself. Any company can take their most technical role and replace the behavioral interview with a practical exercise. It doesn't require a full program — just a willingness to change the signal you're looking for. Luna: And that ties into something we've talked about before: skills-based hiring. This is a subset of that, but specifically for neurodivergent candidates. Lucas: Exactly. It's not about lowering standards — it's about measuring the actual skill rather than the performance of interviewing. And the business case is concrete: when you tap into a talent pool that's been systematically excluded, you get real productivity gains in areas where your competitors aren't looking. Luna: So for a hiring manager listening: what's the one step that's easiest to copy? The practical assessment day, or the workplace coach? Lucas: I'd say start with the assessment. You can run a pilot with one role, one team. Give candidates four hours to work on a problem, with a brief introduction and a quiet room. Score the output. You don't need a coach to start — though you should add one if you scale. The hardest part is getting leadership to trust a non-traditional process. Lucas: And that's where the data helps. EY published their productivity and retention numbers. If you can show that the cohort outperforms the traditional hires on key metrics, you build the case internally. Luna: One more thing: the program also led to broader accommodations. EY now has quiet rooms and flexible schedules for everyone, not just neurodivergent employees. That's a spillover benefit. Lucas: Right. Universal design — what helps a specific group often helps everyone. And it changes the conversation from 'we need to accommodate' to 'we need to design better systems.' That's the real takeaway.