Workplace Frictions
Challenges we help solve
The following scenarios reflect common workplace challenges experienced by neurodivergent employees and the organizations that want to support them. Burch Price & Associates can help.
HIRING & RECRUITMENT
Strong Candidate Overlooked
A growing organization struggled to fill specialist roles despite a strong applicant pool. Qualified candidates were moving through initial screening but not making it past the interview stage.
Situation
A candidate had the skills and experience the role required but came across as reserved during the interview. They did not engage in small talk, took longer to respond, and avoided eye contact. The panel rated them as “not a fit” despite strong substantive answers.
Hidden Risk
When hiring decisions rely on subjective impression rather than job-relevant criteria, the organization consistently loses qualified candidates it cannot afford to pass over. Roles stay open longer, hiring costs increase, and teams miss out on the range of skills and perspectives that drive stronger outcomes.
HOW BPA HELPS
We evaluate where subjective judgment is shaping hiring decisions and redesign interview processes around structured, job-relevant assessment so candidates are evaluated on their ability to perform the role rather than their interview style.
What Improves
Hiring decisions become more objective, talented candidates are no longer screened out for the wrong reasons, and teams benefit from a broader range of skills and perspectives.
Could this be happening in your organization? BPA organizational assessments identify the underlying causes and provide practical, evidence-based recommendations for improvement.
Resume Screening Eliminates Candidates Before a Human Sees Them
An organization investing heavily in talent acquisition found its pipeline consistently underperforming. Strong applicants were not making it through to first-round interviews.
Situation
A candidate with relevant skills had a non-linear work history including shorter tenures and a gap year. Automated screening or an early recruiter pass flagged the resume as a risk before it ever reached a hiring manager. No one asked why.
Hidden Risk
When screening criteria are not regularly examined, capable candidates are filtered out at the top of the funnel based on pattern recognition rather than performance data. The cost is largely invisible because these candidates never enter the pipeline, but the impact shows up in longer vacancies, reduced workforce diversity, and a narrower talent base.
HOW BPA HELPS
We uncover where screening processes are eliminating candidates for reasons unrelated to job performance and work with recruiting teams to build criteria that distinguish between patterns that predict poor fit and those that simply reflect a non-traditional career path.
What Improves
Screening becomes a starting point for a conversation rather than an automatic filter, the pipeline becomes more representative of available talent, and the organization stops losing strong candidates before anyone has a chance to meet them.
Are strong candidates being filtered out before anyone meets them? BPA assessments help organizations examine where the process is working against them and build a more effective approach to screening and selection.
EMPLOYEE RETENTION
Unexpected Employee Departure
A mid-sized company noticed a pattern of resignations that consistently surprised leadership, even in cases where managers felt the relationship had been positive.
Situation
An employee resigned after receiving feedback in a performance review that had never been communicated before that meeting. Their manager had noticed concerns but addressed them informally, inconsistently, or not at all.
Hidden Risk
Unexpected departures carry significant costs beyond recruitment. When neurodivergent employees leave, organizations lose not just productivity but the specific thinking styles that drive error detection, creative problem solving, and the kind of attention to detail that is genuinely hard to replace. Over time this erodes trust, reduces engagement, and accelerates further attrition.
HOW BPA HELPS
We examine how performance expectations and feedback are communicated across the organization and identify where the process breaks down between what managers observe and what employees actually hear. We work alongside leaders to build structures that support clearer, more consistent performance conversations.
What Improves
Employees understand what is expected of them before it becomes a problem, managers have a framework for delivering feedback that actually lands, retention improves, and the organization holds onto the cognitive diversity that makes its teams stronger.
If your organization is experiencing unexpected turnover, the cause is rarely obvious from the outside. BPA works with leadership teams to identify where communication and feedback processes are breaking down before they become a retention problem.
Promotion Decisions Based on Perception
A professional services firm found that certain high performers were consistently rated well in reviews but rarely advanced, while others with similar results moved into leadership roles. Turnover among senior individual contributors was increasing.
Situation
A high performer with two strong review cycles was passed over for a senior or lead role. Feedback referenced intangible concerns like “not sure they’re ready to manage people” or “hard to picture them running the room.” No specific performance gap was identified.
Hidden Risk
When promotion criteria are applied inconsistently or shaped by perception rather than performance, the organization loses its strongest contributors to competitors willing to recognize the work they are already doing. It also removes neurodivergent perspectives from leadership, which narrows how the organization thinks at the top and limits the kind of innovative decision making that comes from genuinely diverse leadership teams.
HOW BPA HELPS
We identify where subjective perception is operating as an unexamined gate in promotion decisions and help organizations understand where the criteria being applied in practice diverge from what is written down. We provide evidence-based recommendations to bring advancement processes into alignment with actual performance.
What Improves
Promotion decisions become more consistent and defensible, high performers have clearer pathways to advancement, and the organization builds leadership that reflects the full range of how its people think.
Are your best people plateauing without a clear reason why? BPA helps organizations examine how advancement decisions are really being made and build processes that reflect actual performance rather than perception.
TEAM PERFORMANCE
Valuable Perspectives Not Being Heard
A technology company noticed that post-meeting Slack threads often contained sharper analysis than the decisions made in the meeting itself. Leadership could not identify why.
Situation
A team member consistently identified issues or contributed ideas that proved to be correct or useful, but rarely surfaced them in the meeting where the decision was made. Insights arrived afterward, in writing, when it was too late to act on them.
Hidden Risk
When the format of a meeting determines whose thinking reaches the table, the organization is making decisions with less information than it has available. Neurodivergent contributors are disproportionately likely to be the ones filtered out by live, fast-paced discussion formats, which means the organization is specifically losing the pattern recognition, creative connections, and precision thinking that drive innovation.
HOW BPA HELPS
We help organizations understand how their decision-making processes are shaping whose input gets heard, and redesign team practices to give equal weight to written and verbal contributions so the format stops filtering out the strongest thinking in the room.
What Improves
More perspectives inform decisions before they are made, neurodivergent contributors are no longer read as disengaged, and the team’s full creative and analytical range becomes visible, usable, and reflected in the quality of its output.
Does your team have more to offer than what’s coming through in meetings? BPA works with organizations to understand what’s getting in the way and redesign how decisions get made so the right thinking reaches the table.
Meetings Dominated by Fast Thinkers
A senior leadership team was experiencing decision fatigue and recurring second-guessing after meetings. Despite investing in experienced hires, the quality of strategic decisions was not improving.
Situation
Team meetings consistently produced the same voices and the same ideas. Colleagues who thought carefully before responding rarely got a word in, and the quality of decisions reflected it.
Hidden Risk
When meetings are structured in ways that favor speed of verbal response over quality of thought, organizations mistake participation for contribution and make decisions from a narrower base than they realize. This is where neurodivergent talent is most consistently underused. The result is reduced innovation, stronger groupthink, and underperformance from teams that have the capability to do better.
HOW BPA HELPS
We examine how meeting structures and team norms are shaping participation and introduce evidence-based formats that allow people to engage with the substance of a discussion before being asked to respond in real time.
What Improves
Decision quality improves, participation broadens, groupthink decreases, and the organization starts accessing the creative and analytical thinking it has been paying for but not fully using.
If your meetings are producing the same voices and the same ideas, the structure may be the problem. BPA assessments help organizations understand what is shaping participation and what it would take to change it.