WithYouWithMe is a FREE online training platform for overlooked talent that develops and up-skills talented military professionals to transition successfully into industry through our pathway and mentoring model.
One of Australia’s fastest growing technology companies with 3x growth YoY since 2018 while also winning LinkedIn's Top StartUp's Award. Being a multi-national company operating in Australia, Canada and UK their aim is to solve underemployment by highlighting the skills of Veterans, Neurodiverse and Refugees over experience.
During my role as a Marketer I would be actively help others with their neurodiversity or issues they had within the workplace. This although not an official role, I became WYWM's Neurodivergent Champion within the company due to expertise within the field and friendly personality.
It eventually became part of my identity and personal brand.
I received message from someone within the company on Discord about a problem they were facing. The were struggling with the the tasks that they were given and confused as to what to do.
They were highly stressed and were on the brink of breaking down into tears. They heard that I was neurodivergent and so had reached out to me for advice which I gladly accepted.
There were many considerations that had to be accounted for such as does their manager know? What is the company policy? How can I help them without going behind their managers back or betraying their confidence?
I internalised all these questions before I jumped on the call with that individual. I knew before going into the call that I had to be calm and sensitive to the individuals needs while following the company policy.
After jumping on the call the person who was really unset and confused with what they should do. There were a lot of anxiety in their voice when speaking about the problem they were having and so I just sat back and listened.
The problem was that they had two different managers and were given two sets of tasks to do at once and were confused with how to prioritise these tasks while understanding their neurodivergent condition ADHD.
I then relied on my own experiences to best guide them and approached them in a empathetic, logical and calm manner.
The solution was to help them process what being neurodivergent meant to them and busting some of the common myths tied to that condition. I also advised a action plan & helped them with the following:
Finally I gave them a massive confidence boost by giving them a pep talk.
The Problem
As mentioned I had to make sure that I was following company policy so before I jumped on the call but had to be sensitive to the situation.
How I overcame
I made sure to fully understand what the company policy was before I began the call and told the individual that it was best to let their manager know when they feel comfortable.
The result was the person having difficulty were able to become super productive and able to complete the tasks to a very high standard. Their manager also thanked me for helping the employee in such a professional empathetic manner.
Lessons Learnt
If I were to do this again I would have offered to be on the call with their manager for support if they neeeded.
Tech Skills
I was approached by management on how to effectively manage neurodiverse employees and for them to get educated on the subject.
Therefore I volunteered to perform this task with my work colleague Jason. We had to come with with a bunch of training sessions that would be informative for management about neurodiversity.
We decided that Jason would handle the PowerPoint and the 1 hour session would be executed with the following agenda:
During the session mangers wanted to know how they could use what they learnt in the session within their job roles. So I was happy to provide job specific input with examples on how they could use this.
For example those that were in Career Success could do dummy runs with the neurodivergent employee until they are comfortable doing phone calls with clients.
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Challenge
Half way through the presentation Jason stumbled and was flooded with emotion when talking about his personal battle with neurodivergent discrimination.
How I Overcame
I overcame this by asking Jason if it was okay to take over which he agreed. I then carried on with the meeting and improvised the content by sharing one of my neurodivergent stories.
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Finally I had to present my findings to the CEO of WithYouWithMe Tom Moore, I did this through PowerPoint and added some meme's to not make it boring. This was very well received by Tom because it showed that there was a significant increase in User engagement by gaining 71 new users per week (record number!) to the platform compared to the old funnel of 2 users. Therefore I achieved success in the task I was given.
From the Data we can also see:
Tech Skills
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What do people Say about me?
"Jack is an asset to any team he works in. He has such a tremendous diversity of thought that enables him to see the bigger picture and not only create revolutionary ideas from it, but also drive those ideas forward to fruition. He is tenacious and a force to be reckoned with. A pleasure to work with."
Squad Leader
WithYouWithMe
"In a marketing setting, Jack not only delivers quality content but also delivers a strong message in anything that he creates. Every bit of content that he had created during his time at WYWM has been what drove a lot of neurodiverse candidates to the potential platform."
Course Content Developer/ Quality Assurance
WithYouWithMe
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