As charities I know we are always working hard to ensure our services are inclusive for all, but how good are we at ensuring we are inclusive for our staff? A lot of charities are run by small teams, with everyone taking on multiple roles and tasks to get the job done. Being inclusive takes finances, large HR teams and endless policies, right?

The importance of inclusivity in the workplace is especially true for charities because we are often leading the charge for social justice. However, to embody this, we must look inwards; this is so true of The Dyslexia Association. We provide information, advice, and guidance to employers on neuroinclusive workplaces and the Equality Act.

We have found that simple changes can make big differences, such as the physical working space, flexible working, and recent technologies. AI tools for example are transforming the way we work, and they offer new ways of working to support neurodivergent and dyslexic employees. These tools help level the playing field by providing customised support for individual need.

The Dyslexia Association have had the pleasure of using new AI technology through a partnership with LILA Assistant which is an ethical AI writing and content creation tool - designed to be accessible and inclusive. Unlike LLMs such as Chat GPT which require prompts and therefore the expertise of knowing how to prompt engineer (the ability to write sophisticated prompts which give instructions to get a desired result) LILA has 80 templates ranging from marketing strategies, to social media and blog posts, meaning that for those who identify as neurodiverse, it’s easier to navigate, whilst being accessible to anyone who works in the charity to use easily. It also has 52 chat assistants, each designed to do specific tasks such as HR, marketing, PR, DE&I etc and an existing prompt library to copy and paste, making it easier to navigate specific tasks that a charity does day to day and to benefit multiple departments such as marketing, fundraising, HR etc.

Whilst many have advocated for the use of AI, what has discouraged many from using it, is the barrier to entry for being able to write the correct instructions to get the tools to perform properly, so rather than benefiting staff, it has proved a further barrier, if writing or technology know-how is something that is already a challenge. LILA is transforming the way that we think about how we integrate AI within our teams moving forwards and we’re using it to support our staff, so that everyone within the team gets to reap the benefits of using AI.

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