Cherie Clonan, CEO of marketing agency The Digital Picnic, explains how perks like free dinners, burnout-preventing days off and even ADHD assessments have boosted employee wellbeing – and her net income.

If you walk into the offices of The Digital Picnic (TDP) in Melbourne, Australia, there’s a high probability that that there won’t be a single person there. While an vacant office might not sound like the setting for one of Australia’s most radically inclusive businesses, it’s just one of many policies that has led to this tiny digital marketing agency being described by their clients as “the nicest place on the internet“, according to Cherie Clonan, the business’s founder and CEO.

At TDP, there are only six in-office days per month, on Mondays and Thursdays. The first week of each month is entirely work from home, with minimal meetings and nothing client-facing. If employees can’t face even those few days in the office, they have the alternative to work remotely all the period.

“We just desire to get the best out of people and not chip away at their soul in order to get that,” Clonan tells the BBC.

Clonan, who was recently named Woman of the Year in the B&T Women in Media awards for her human-centred and inclusive way to leadership, is firmly focussed on transforming workplace population. As a proudly autistic chief, she has a distinctive lens on neuro-affirming work practices, centred around flexibility, empathy and accommodation, where the mental health of her throng is a core focus.

“[Mental health] has never been more significant,” says Clonan, who explains her priority is to foster a population where employees can be open about their mental health without terror of stigma or judgment. “I don’t ponder we’re actually well as a population, off the back of some pretty large years where it was all a lot for a long period. It’s more significant now than ever for organisational leaders to prioritise mental health beyond a cupcake once a year.”

Mental health is increasingly being recognised as a crucial factor in workplace productivity and employee well-being. According to the globe Health Organization (WHO), mental health conditions like depression and anxiety expense the global economy $1tn (£780bn) annually in lost productivity. And psychological well-being is now a high priority for workers too. The American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey noted, for example, that 92% of employees surveyed said that it is “very” or “somewhat significant” to them to work for an organisation that values their emotional and psychological well-being.

Despite this growing awareness, many workplaces still lack adequate back systems. This is especially factual when it comes to employees who are neurodivergent, the umbrella term that includes conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and dyslexia. For these individuals, the everyday pressures of masking their cognitive differences in workplaces designed for neurotypical people can be overwhelming, and contributes to heightened rates of stress, anxiety, depression and burnout.

According to Nancy Doyle, chief science officer at Genius Within and visiting professor at Birkbeck, University of London, who specialises in neurodiversity and disability inclusion at work, it’s vital that any trauma and burnout resulting from the workplace is seen as a systemic issue rather than person failures. “We require to do more preventative work, looking at working conditions, hours, fair pay, sensory overwhelm, meaningful work, self-determination at work and relationships,” she says.

With WHO noting that an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, there is a powerful argument for businesses to rethink their way to inclusion. In truth, according to WHO, every $1 (£0.78) invested in mental health returns $4 (£3.10) in productivity gains, making mental health back not just a moral obligation but a intelligent business selection, they declare.

At TDP, policies are designed to allow individuals to thrive in a way that traditional workplaces might overlook. Some accommodations are straightforward. Their onboarding pack for recent employees includes a pair of noise cancelling headphones to assist avoid sensory overload when in the office, and the freezer has ready meals for any employee to eat or receive home. As well as just six office days per month, work schedules are built around an person’s circadian rhythm, whether they prefer an early rise or can only manage an 11:00 commence.

Other business policies are more radical, such as an employee advantage scheme that covers the expense of autism and ADHD assessments for any staff; as well as a paid day of “life leave” every month, on top of annual leave to compensate for the hyperfocus and resulting burnout that’s ordinary in neurodivergent people. There’s a business commitment to promoting pregnant women (“I desire people to recognize that they’re secure to work here as a working parent,” says Clonan) and a trans-positive inclusion policy with monetary back for gender affirming surgery. Clonan has also overhauled their hiring and recruitment way to be as inclusive as feasible, including sending interview questions in advance.

While solutions and costs will vary for different businesses and workplaces, Clonan says that she sees these accommodations and policy changes as a essential part of doing business – and that they expense no more than most workplaces spend on learning and advancement in a year. “I can view it in the returns and setback,” she says. “I’ve learned that it’s more expensive to have a workplace that’s not inclusive then it is to have a workplace that is inclusive.”

For example, Clonan says major policy costs at TPD include A$2,000-4,000 (£1,020-£2,040/ $1,312-$2,625) per person for an ASD or ADHD diagnosis; while for gender affirming surgery, it’s a one-period remittance of A$1,000 (£510/ $655) towards, five additional days of paid personal leave, A$500 (£255/$330) for administrative costs and A$500 for a recent clothing capital.

“We factor this into our budgets, seeing it as a short-term capital for long-term boost,” says Clonan of the ROI, noting that the considerable expense of rehiring a role (“around A$33,000 (£16,815/$21,640),” she says) makes retaining talent a priority for her.

Doyle agrees inclusivity at work doesn’t require to be complicated or expensive. “Some companies are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as it were. I’m working with companies correct now to ‘flip the expense model’ and commence with a needs-led way to all employees, embedding the straightforward flexes into everyday onboarding, act appraisal and talent management.”

Clonan says TDP has grown from a tiny enterprise with just A$4,000 (£2,040/$1,312) in its lender account to a multi-million-dollar agency and maintained staff retention rates that surpass the industry average by an order of years, which she explains fairly simply. “Pay people well and treat them well. Surely [this] has to be the basic philosophy for business achievement.”

Below, Clonan talks with the BBC about the benefits of normalising mental health and how business leaders can invest in creating a more inclusive workplace.

What are the mental health ramifications you’ve seen of not being welcomed and adapted to at work?

The digital marketing industry has a notorious reputation. It can be a toxic industry to work in. It can be risky, especially if you have an organisational chief who’s returns over people at every touch point. In some agencies, there’s no prioritisation of mental health whatsoever, and I’m seeing people either not make it in the industry at all, or if they do, it’s not without hits and scars.

People require to radically comprehend themselves to bring their best selves to work. We use the Science of Leadership, which is a wheel where you can identify people sitting in the blue zone, which is joyful, healed, constructive, doing their best work, living their best professional lives. That’s pretty challenging to achieve. Green is more like a people-pleasing zone. A lot of neurodivergent people sit there because it’s our “fawn response” as a trauma response [to avoid conflict]. If they’ve been really challenging done by in a particular workplace, they arrive in really red. That’s a risky spot for them. They’re angry burnt out, there’s a lot of ego, they’re scared, they’re threatened. They’re in fight, not flight.

We have to repeat it all the period: “You’re secure here. We desire your career to explode, and we can’t do that if we’ve got this super fixed, scared, red, angry response to a lot of things. I require to recognize what you require so that this is a secure encounter for you to work here.” And that way has been transformative.

What tangible benefits have you seen on your employees’ mental health and your business?

Normalising mental health results in psychological safety and being neuroinclusive is excellent for business. In four years, we took this business from A$4,000 (£2,040/$1,312) to A$4m (£2m/$1.3m) in annual turnover, and that was through the worst period for our industry. We were looking at agencies who were walking 20 people out on one day through mass layoffs [during Covid-19], and quietly wondering, “What are we doing differently?”

Some of our staff have been here as long as we’ve been employing people, from 2018, and in our industry that is unheard of. If you don’t worry what chewing people up and spitting someone out does to a person, if all that matters to you is money, recognize that it costs A$33,000 to replace a chewed up and spat up person because it expense A$33,000 to make any recent hire. So why wouldn’t you try to commit to understanding mental health better and making any workplace a psychologically secure setting?

What are companies or leaders getting incorrect when it comes to their neurodiverse workforce?

We require to represent neurodivergence beyond the ideas of “geniuses” or “increased productivity”, because that is transactional rather than transformational.

To get that representation I require, firstly, neurodivergent folk within my business, and then I require to make a psychologically secure workplace for them so that they have a chance to develop here. When they develop, they’re probably going to get promoted. And then I require to have some truthful conversations about what more elder roles look like for them because some [neurodivergent people] have no desire to manage people. And for a lot of workplaces, that’s almost always the outcome: We can’t promote you if you’re not managing a throng.

But we require to get more creative and realise that not every person’s path to growth is a promotion to management, unless they desire to. And we simultaneously have to push back on this stereotypical concept that autistic people can’t manage teams. If that’s the case, why am I getting hit up every second week from people to discover from what I’m doing?

What advice would you provide to another business chief looking to enhance mental health in their workplace?

The best advice I can is to make sure that no accommodation is off the table. Next, invest in some training. Put leaders through mental health first aid and view if you can invest in different folks coming into your workplace to run keynotes on mental health and how it might now [at work].

Swallow your ego and recognise that you’re going to make some mistakes before you get it correct. I’ve made so many myself and that’s an significant, vulnerable feeling you have to sit with.

And finally, put people with an array of different lived encounter in leadership positions. Homogenous workforces can be risky. In workplaces, you have to be able to look around and view yourself represented to feel secure.

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