In this segment, the speaker argues that hiring uniquely abled individuals—particularly those on the autism spectrum—significantly improves overall workplace productivity and morale. Citing growing research, the speaker emphasizes that simply hiring and treating these employees well yields measurable benefits. An anecdote is shared about a CEO of a 200‑300‑person company who hired three autistic employees at minimum wage; he describes it as the best business decision he ever made. The benefits highlighted include: the employees willingly take on tasks that others avoid, they perform these tasks with a positive attitude, and they maintain an impeccably clean and orderly environment (e.g., picking up stray papers, straightening tilted pictures). The speaker also notes that many leaders have personal connections to the autism community, reinforcing the social value of such inclusive hiring practices.
Chapters
The other thing that I haven't mentioned, and this is really well documented now, is include uniquely abled individuals into your normal population. The productivity and the morale of the entire place goes up. And there's lots of research data on that now. And you don't have to do anything. You just hire them and treat them right. And one of my good friends is CEO of a company I think it's got about 200 or 300 people in it. So we're having lunch and I said, well, so how's it going? You know, you hired 3. He said, it was the best business decision I ever made. I said, how come? He said, I hired 3 people at essentially minimum wage and the productivity and the morale of my entire company went up. Not bad. And we thought, well, how did that happen? Well, a couple of things. First of all, it's a pretty good assumption that every single individual has no more than 1 or 2 degrees of separation from somebody with a diagnosis, and a large portion of those are with autism. So they know people. In fact, often the head of a company either has a child with autism or knows somebody who does. So there's a— Well, I'm glad our— maybe it's not with the person I know, but I'm glad our company is doing something that's helping this community. Secondly, they're doing a job that nobody else wants to do, and they do it great, and they do it with a smile. And doing it with a smile, you know, it's really hard to complain when the person next to you has clearly a significant diagnosis and is smiling and coming to work. And he said the last thing was, for some reason, the people we hired They're impeccable. They can't stand the mess, and they'll walk down the hall and they'll see a piece of paper on the floor, and everybody else will ignore it, but not them. They'll pick it up and throw it away. And they'll see a picture, it'll be tilted, and they'll go and they'll straighten it up. And he said, it's really hard to do messy work in an impeccable environment.
