If you're an employer reading this and thinking "how can i help make my company adhd friendly" then i highly recommend you check out the welfare pack from adhduk [1].
i had a chat with the ceo of the charity when i got diagnosed to see if i could help and he is one of the few people i've spoken to in the space that is actively considering adhd in the workplace.
my favourite parts are:
- before criticising timeliness, ask if timeliness is critical to the role. if it isn't, have a policy of flexible time, make it ok to make up lateness later. if it is, find ways to make it less so with scheduling and partnering
- hot desking / open offices: make provisions for people to have quiet and uninterrupted work environments. perhaps that is alternate office space, providing noise cancelling headphones.
- meeting timeliness: fully integrate calendar and reminder systems. for many with adhd something not in the calendar may aswell not exist.
there are loads more but most of the key point boil down to: stop immediately thinking that every time someone doesn't meet your expectations, that it's a personal failure of theirs. start considering how the environment (physical, social, technological, conceptual) might be an impediment to them. start questioning your assumptions around what is "actually" necessary for a role and what you think is necessary.
my personal addition to this is: lots of the ways in which i disappoint people ultimately derive from an innate fear of disappointing people. the irony is not lost on me. the answer, ive found, is to create for myself an environment in which a) my colleagues can separate their disappointment in my actions/ outcomes from me. b) where i can communicate my issues / worries as and when they arrive without fear.
my favourite one has been telling people that a particular task will be far to boring for me to do alone and being able to partner up with someone else to get it done. or that asking me to remember to do something in prep for a meeting is a bad idea and to either pop it straight into my calendar, do it now or make some time during the meeting to do it. that last one is basically the amazon meeting agenda policy where the start of every meeting is reading the notes for the meeting, it's adhd dream.
i am reminded to leave this caveat: yes, these are problems we all face, the questions is: do the problems cause a material impact on your life (lost jobs, failed relationships (love/friends), missed opportunities, states of being that you cant escape). the difference between having adhd and not is whether the problems cause disorder in your life currently, and have done so for much of your life.
1]: https://adhduk.co.uk/adhd-and-work/