Feedback Without Fear: How rejection sensitivity shapes your workplace, and How to Hire, Keep and Hear Neurodivergent Talent – 90 min Workplace Webinar

For managers, HR, D&I leads and whole teams

Your steadiest performer never switches off. Your sharpest thinker goes silent in meetings. Someone brilliant just resigned, apparently out of nowhere, after one piece of minor feedback. These have a common thread, and it has a name: rejection sensitivity.

This webinar introduces Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), an intense response to real or perceived rejection or criticism that many neurodivergent adults carry into work, and shows you what it changes about how you give feedback, run meetings, hire, and hold on to good people.

Duration: 1.5 hours (60 minutes training, 30 minutes Q&A)

Format: Virtual (unless otherwise arranged)

Price: £500 (no VAT). For audiences over 40, contact us for pricing.

Scheduling: UK time; lunchtime and twilight sessions available

The challenge

Most organisations say they want neurodivergent talent: the pattern-spotting, the deep focus, the honesty, the different angles on a problem. Then their hiring process quietly filters those same people out, and their culture quietly burns out the ones already in post. Rejection sensitivity sits underneath both: candidates who self-reject rather than apply, employees who mask all day and run on fear, ideas that never get voiced because being wrong in public feels unbearable.

None of it shows up in a dashboard. All of it shows up in results: exits you never saw coming, promotions never applied for, and the flaw in the plan that somebody spotted and never raised.

The fix is not a programme. It is a set of habits and process changes, most of them free, that lower threat without lowering a single expectation, and make work clearer for everyone.

What you’ll learn

  • What RSD is, and what it isn’t. A clear, neuroaffirmative definition: not oversensitivity, not unprofessionalism, but a nervous system doing exactly what it has learned to do.

  • What you’re already seeing at work. The two-line email read as fury, the over-preparer who can’t switch off, the quiet resignation after minor feedback, and what is actually underneath each one.

  • How to give feedback that lands. Practical language swaps and six manager habits: expected feedback, precise praise, context on every meeting invite, and repair when you get it wrong.

  • How your hiring filters out neurodivergent talent. False essentials, surprise interviews, culture fit, and opaque processes, with a cheap, concrete fix for each.

  • How to retain and grow neurodivergent staff. Why people leave, what makes them stay, handling disclosure well, and progression routes that reward the work rather than self-promotion.

  • One change to make this week. Every attendee leaves with a specific, written commitment for their own team, adverts or meetings.

Who this training is for

Line managers, HR and people teams, D&I leads, senior leadership, and whole organisations. It works as a standalone session, as part of a management development programme, or paired with our Building a Neuro-Inclusive Organisation training for a fuller picture. All of our training is neuro-affirmative, practical, and delivered by neurodivergent trainers who know this experience from the inside.

And because Autistic Girls Network is a charity, your training fees directly fund free support for families of neurodivergent young people: our 36,000-strong community, free monthly workshops, local groups and mentoring.

Book this training

Contact us to book, or to talk about a bespoke version for your organisation, sector or management team. Sessions run online as standard; in-person delivery is available.

If you’ve recognised yourself in this page, you’re in good company; many people first meet the term RSD this way. Our website and free community are open to you too: start at autisticgirlsnetwork.org.