What Is Unsupported Neurodiversity Costing Your Organization?

Benefits leaders need meaningful, data-backed ways to gauge whether their neurodiversity support is working. Many turn to program utilization and benefits spend as the primary measures of ROI. That’s a reasonable place to start – but no place to stop.

When neurodivergent employees go unsupported, the business impact can show up across the organization, not just in one metric or line item. It can show up in the time managers and HR spend navigating workforce challenges, in employee retention and productivity, and in whether existing benefits deliver their full value.

Look across these areas and a clearer picture of ROI starts to form. Here are four key places to assess the costs of unsupported neurodiversity and the effectiveness of your support.

1. Manager and HR Time Spent Navigating Support Needs

Managers regularly respond to differences in communication, executive functioning, changing expectations, and work performance. When a neurodivergent employee needs support, that can mean adapting communication, clarifying expectations, connecting employees to resources, or involving HR when appropriate.

Managers shouldn’t be expected to diagnose employees or become neurodiversity experts. But when clear guidance and resources aren’t easy to access, these situations can require more manager time and additional HR involvement.

RethinkCare’s The Manager Readiness Gap shows how practical guidance can give managers a clearer path for responding to different employee needs, reducing the time spent seeking guidance, clarifying next steps, or escalating issues to HR. That time may not appear as a line item in the budget, but it is part of the broader cost Benefits leaders should consider when assessing ROI.

2. Benefits That Don’t Deliver Their Full ROI

Research on employee benefits understanding found that only 69% of employees understand their core benefits. Optional and specialized benefits can be even harder to navigate. When employees struggle to find the right support, valuable programs can go underused – a challenge we look at more closely in Why Workforce Benefits ROI Isn’t Adding Up – and How to Fix It.

For an employee with ADHD looking for help with focus and organization, or a working parent trying to find support for a child with autism, knowing the company offers resources isn’t enough. They need to recognize that a benefit applies to their situation, know where to find it, and understand what to do next.

That’s an important distinction for Benefits leaders who are interpreting benefit utilization. Low utilization doesn’t always mean low need. It can mean employees can’t find the right entry point to the benefits the organization already provides, limiting the value those benefits can deliver.

3. Turnover When Workplace Fit Doesn’t Fit

Two-thirds of neurodivergent professionals surveyed have left a role or turned down an offer because the environment wasn’t the right fit, according to Mentra’s 2026 Neurodivergent Job Seeker Survey. That makes workplace fit more than an employee experience issue. It can affect whether neurodivergent talent joins an organization – or stays.

But the same survey shows what can happen when the fit is right:

• 78.1% report their longest tenure with one employer was three years or more.
• More than 40% stayed five years or longer.

For Benefits leaders, the ROI connection is retention. When communication, expectations, workflows, and access to resources allow different ways of working to succeed, neurodivergent employees can build long tenures. When the fit falls short, turnover can become part of the cost.

4. Lost Productivity and Other Costs

Some of the costs associated with unsupported neurodiversity can show up well beyond the benefit itself. RethinkCare’s State of Neurodiversity in the Workplace 2026 report found that 79% of professionals with access to neurodiversity resources said those resources helped them avoid costs related to lost focus, missed workdays, urgent care visits, or disability claims.

Productivity is part of that picture. Separately, an independent Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study modeled $2.8 million in productivity gains over three years for a composite organization using RethinkCare, based on a 3% productivity lift among engaged employees.

These findings measure different outcomes, but both broaden the ROI conversation. For Benefits leaders, the value of neurodiversity support may extend beyond utilization to productivity and other costs the organization is already tracking.

5. Why Benefits Leaders Should Look Beyond Utilization to Assess Neurodiversity Support ROI

The four areas above don’t operate in isolation. Manager readiness can affect what reaches HR. Easier access to relevant support can affect whether employees use the benefits available to them. And the support employees experience at work can have implications for retention, productivity, and other workforce costs.

That’s why coordinated neurodiversity support matters. It can give employees and caregivers a clearer path to relevant resources while giving managers and HR a clearer path to help.

For Benefits leaders, that also means looking beyond a single measure of ROI. Many of the measures that can help reveal the impact are already being tracked.

Your Neurodiversity Support ROI Check

•  Where are managers and HR spending time navigating support needs?
•  Are employees finding and using the support available to them?
• What is workplace fit telling you about turnover?
•  Where might unmet needs be affecting productivity and other costs?

Look at those answers together, and you get a broader picture of neurodiversity support ROI – where support may already be creating value and where gaps may still be creating costs.

Ready to see what coordinated support could look like for your workforce?

See It in Action