Neurodiversity and the Life Career Rainbow

How Much do Our Paths Diverge? By Vic Mazonas

Psychologist Donald Super developed the idea of a career split into life-stages in the 1950s, and refined the idea further in the 1980s. 

His work incorporated a combination of life roles as well as ideas about the typical stages a person’s life will pass through, in something called the Life Career Rainbow. 

The stages of the Life Career Rainbow are: 

Growth 

Age 13 and under

A time of learning and discovering interests and skills. 

Exploration 

Ages 14-25

The start of employment, where people are less likely to have a defined career path in mind and more likely to jump between roles, exploring a wider range of professions. 

Establishment 

Ages 26-45

The period during which people generally settle into a specific profession or career path, and begin “climbing the career ladder”.  This may include seeking our promotions and development opportunities. 

Maintenance 

Ages 46-65

In this phase people are less likely to change professions or career paths and will focus more on development to maintain the current role rather than seek out new opportunities. 

Disengagement 

66+

A time when many people pursue retirement or at least seek out roles with fewer hours, opening up more time for leisure 

In a world where annual lay-offs for the sake of shareholders are a norm, where zero-hours and temporary roles are common and where many people in their 30s are moving back in with parents due to stagnating wages and increased cost of living, far fewer people are enjoying the kind of stability implied by this outline. 

I expect that, even accounting for all of that, this path is even less familiar to many neurodivergent people. But how different, specifically, is something the data currently hints at, but does not explicitly reveal.

The ONS study Outcomes for Disabled People in the UK (2020) highlights the difficulty that many neurodivergent people face in finding work in the first place, with less than 22% of autistic individuals surveyed being in employment. 

The VEQ (Vulnerability Experiences Quotient) study (2019) measured a broad range of life experiences, with particular data showing the impact that bias against neurodivergent people has on our working life.  We've taken a snapshot of some of their data in the chart below.

At GAIN, our benchmark surveys for corporate members also shows that neurodivergent people experience higher rates of bullying and harassment in the workplace, and indicated a lack of knowledge among line managers as a significant factor in workplace experiences. 

Our individual member survey in 2023 dove deeper into this topic and found that 75% of GAIN members had experienced or witnessed bullying and exclusion in the workplace, with 86% of those saying they had left, or considered leaving, a workplace due to that behaviour.  Line managers were the second most commonly cited sources of mistreatment, and also the most important person in determining if adjustments were given.  Only 27.6% of neurodivergent respondents said they would feel somewhat or very safe reporting bullying in the workplace. 

Any one of the above issues individually is a disruption of career stability that could delay a person’s progress through their career.  Collectively, the impact could be very significant. 

Our corporate members are working with us to transform the industry. We want meaningful and stable lifetime career paths that work for neurodivergent people, that provide us the same opportunities for security and progression, and we’re already starting to see the impact of some of our work. While our individual member survey report did show the concerning data described above, it also showed that members of our community employed by a corporate member were more comfortable being open about their neurodivergence in the workplace, more likely to believe their workplace was becoming more inclusive, and had better experiences requesting workplace adjustments. 

However, if we want to make this change sustainable, we need to know how big the problem we’re solving is. 

We would like to invite you to participate in a short (25 question) survey about your career experiences.

This survey is anonymous, and asks questions about your history of promotions, dismissals, time spent unemployed, longest role and highest salary.  

You can access it using this link here, and it is also being promoted in our Career Club newsletter.