The Disclosure Workbook
A Neurodivergent Strategy Guide to Navigating Workplace Accommodations & Disclosure Safety©
An easy- to- use skip around guide built to help you decide if, when, and how to share your diagnosis or ask for the workplace changes you need.
Built For Executive Function
This 108-page guide is explicitly designed to combat burnout and mental fatigue. Readers can use dynamic pathing to skip straight to the areas they need (sensory checklists, scripts, and exit plans).
Industry-Specific Checklists
Targeted Workplace Diagnostics: Workplace barriers are not one-size-fits-all. The workbook delivers tailored, granular sensory and operational checklists mapped to distinct fields: Tech/Office, Healthcare, Education, Retail, Legal/Government, and Manufacturing.
S.A.F.E. Score Framework Assessment™
Move away from the stress of the guesswork. This proprietary tool objectively audits your workplace across four critical metrics, enabling you to determine whether disclosure is safe in your current work environment.
FAQs
What is the workbook?
An easy-to-use, skip-around guide filled with practical tools, checklists, and word-for-word scripts built to help you navigate your career on your own terms.
How does it help?
Who should use it?
Who is the Author?
The workbook was created by Dr. Denise Malone-Cash, DSL, a doctoral-level Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology researcher, Employee Relations expert & HR Policy expert, and the founder of Inclusion by Design LLC. She approaches this work through a powerful, multi-lens perspective:
The Corporate Insider: A veteran people leader who spent a decade managing the interactive process and facilitating hundreds of workplace accommodation requests from the inside. She has literally written and deployed the formal corporate policies that govern these systems.
The Lived Experience: A late-diagnosed autistic professional who understands the deep exhaustion of masking, the mechanics of sensory overload, and the high stakes of workplace disclosure.
The Family Advocate: A life coach and the parent of a neurodivergent adult, giving her a deep, lifelong commitment to sustainable, real-world workplace safety.
It provides you with concrete, step-by-step tools to map out your specific workplace situation. It helps you by providing:
The S.A.F.E. Score Framework™: An objective way to score your workplace's environment and culture so you can see if it is actually safe to speak up.
Accommodation Considerations & Checklists: Tailored, industry-specific blueprints (for retail, healthcare, education, and more) to help you accurately isolate and identify the exact environmental changes you need.
The Disclosure Consideration Matrix: A logical tool that maps out the exact pros and cons of sharing your diagnosis with HR versus your direct manager.
Identifying Workplace Allies: Practical frameworks to help you spot and build a safe, protective internal support ecosystem among your peers and colleagues.
Burnout Prevention Support: Proactive exercises and strategies designed to help you manage everyday workplace stress, identify early warning signs, and protect your energy.
Word-for-Word Scripts: Ready-to-use language templates to request adjustments comfortably, even if you are advocating without a formal diagnosis.
Emergency Action Plans: A quick-access section with clear steps to handle a workplace crisis or map out a safe exit plan if a situation goes poorly.
Any neurodivergent person considering disclosure or seeking accommodation needs to know how to navigate the system safely. It is built to be useful across a wide array of environments.
What if I already shared my diagnosis, and it went poorly?
No. One of the core pillars of this guide is validating self-knowledge. The workbook specifically includes:
Diagnosis-Free Templates: Step-by-step language templates to request informal, non-legal workplace adjustments based entirely on your operational needs—not a medical label.
Functional Language: Tools that teach you how to describe your sensory and cognitive needs to a supervisor without using clinical terminology or sharing private medical history.
The workbook contains a dedicated Post-Disclosure Strategy Planner built specifically to handle the aftermath of a difficult situation:
Processing Micro-Invalidations: Frameworks to help you objectively document systemic failures and professional boundary crossings.
Protective Rebuilding: Steps to help you re-establish professional boundaries, manage ongoing workplace stress, and safely evaluate your next career moves.
Do I need to have a formal diagnosis to use this workbook?
The Disclosure Workbook gave me the confidence to approach HR and clearly explain my needs without fear.
J.K.
★★★★★