For people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD, the traditional workplace can be a challenging world to navigate. 

Yet, diagnosis rates of the condition are rocketing across all age groups and employment lawyers are now being flooded with enquiries from people who are concerned about how their condition has been handled at work.

Businesses are being forced to pay attention.

Bahar Khorram is one of those people. The IT executive was working at Capgemini, the global consultancy firm. While on her probation period, she started struggling with her tasks and asked for support.

“I was trying to avoid taking the legal route because I really liked the company. This was my dream job, I loved it, and I knew I could do it. So I was trying to manage it in my head and trying to do what they asked. But when I realised that I couldn’t, I was experiencing anxiety,” she said.

“I started losing a lot of weight, I went to the doctor, and I sat there, and I burst into tears, and he said, ‘you are depressed, and you have anxiety.'”

Not everyone’s experience is the same, but people with the condition might have difficulty concentrating on certain tasks or remembering instructions. They might struggle with organisation and restlessness.

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Last month, an employment tribunal in London found Capgemini failed to provide the recommended neurodiversity awareness training, and this amounted to discrimination.

In a statement, the company said: “Capgemini is deeply committed to building a truly inclusive and diverse workplace, where everyone feels valued and respected.

“We continuously strengthen our culture of inclusion through employee networks, training, and open dialogue, ensuring that every voice is heard. We don’t comment on specific employees.”

An issue for businesses across the country

The Capgemini case is not remote or isolated. The decision has ramifications for businesses across the country, especially as rates of ADHD diagnosis are climbing.

Official data analysed by Sky News shows the number of people in work with disabilities or long-term health conditions has risen by 21% since the pandemic. That includes a 35% jump in workers with learning difficulties and mental conditions like ADHD.

Many of these people will already be in work and are being diagnosed as adults. This is a trend that is particularly pronounced among older women, with ADHD traditionally having been underdiagnosed in young girls.

However, it will also affect the future workforce. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the number of disabled children with ADHD as their main condition has more than doubled – from 38,000 in 2013 to 66,000 in 2023.

It means the profile of the workforce is changing, and businesses will have to think hard about how they can harness the potential and meet the needs of their workers to maximise their productivity.

A growing legal issue

Failure to do so could also have legal consequences. Although not every case of ADHD meets the definition of a disability, employment lawyers are increasingly receiving enquiries about possible discrimination related to neurodivergent conditions, especially since the pandemic.

Elizabeth McGlone, an employment lawyer at the law firm Didlaw, said every other enquiry she receives now relates to neurodiversity, up from one in every 10 or 20 before the pandemic.

“So the classic scenario is performance. They’re struggling at work in relation to time management, attendance, assimilating information, assimilating tasks, prioritising. And it’s not so much that they can’t do the job, they are just not having enough adjustments made to be able to do the job,” she said.

“I do think employers have greater responsibilities. I do also think it depends on the size and the resources of your business. So for a smaller business, it’s going to be much more difficult to make great changes. But some of the changes don’t have to be that significant.

“They can be as small as moving someone’s desk so they haven’t got as much surrounding noise, or making sure that they are taking regular rest breaks.”

Grey areas

However, not all cases are clear-cut. Neurodiversity sits on a spectrum, and a diagnosis can create grey areas for businesses, where it is difficult to determine how much of a role the condition is playing in an employee’s performance at work.

“You don’t want to be cynical,” said Ms McGlone.

“Obviously, you take everybody at face value, but I have had chronological circumstances where somebody has got performance issues, the employer isn’t aware of any diagnosis, then a diagnosis has been sought and confirmed… sometimes you do feel some element of it being contrived, but that’s very, very few and far between.”

British journalists have called on Sir Keir Starmer to protect their Gazan counterparts and press Israel to allow international reporters into the war zone.

A vigil was held opposite Downing Street on Wednesday for the nearly 200 journalists killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023.

Ahead of the gathering, the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) London freelance branch handed a letter to Number 10 calling on the prime minister to clarify what steps the government is taking to protect journalists in Gaza and to ensure they have safe access to food, water and necessary equipment.

They also asked what the government is doing to get international journalists into Gaza to report freely. Currently, Israel only allows them in under IDF supervision.

At least 189 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

It is the deadliest period for journalists since the CPJ started gathering data in 1992.

Israel has repeatedly denied targeting reporters and accused some of those killed of being terrorists, including prominent Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, who was killed two weeks ago.

The latest attack happened on Monday, when five journalists were among 21 people killed at Nasser Hospital in a “double tap” strike. Benjamin Netanyahu described it as a “tragic mishap”.

Journalists at the vigil held up placards with the names of Gazan journalists, many of whom were freelance, who have been killed. They read their names out.

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The will of Mariam Abu Daqqa, made days before her death on Monday, was read out, bringing tears to the eyes of seasoned reporters as it contained a message to her two children.

And a voice note from Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, whose son and grandchildren have been killed, was played out as he encouraged the government and British journalists to do everything possible to stop the war.

‘Starmer can do something’

Mariam Elsayeh, NUJ ethics council representative and freelance journalist, told Sky News the UK has the power to protect journalists in Gaza and ensure international journalists are allowed in.

“We can do anything, we’re a great country, and we have the law and a prime minister who graduated from law school and is known for decades for his humanitarian support,” she said.

“During the Iraq War, we all witnessed him defending activists, and he was defending the freedom of protest, and he was doing a lot, so we are recalling this from history, and we know he can do something.”

‘A generation has been erased’

She added that foreign journalists are needed “because a generation of journalists in Gaza have been erased”.

“I’m not just looking for foreign journalists to get into Gaza, I would hope to see the Pope asking to get into Gaza, I would hope to see ministers here asking to get into Gaza, I would hope politicians in the European parliament would get in,” she said.

“If you don’t want us to report, at least let people witness, allow politicians to enter.

“This is not insulting the Palestinian people, what the Israelis are doing is insulting the entire international community because they are not respecting anyone, so at least, respect international law.”

The fertility rate in England and Wales fell to its lowest level on record in 2024. It is the third consecutive year that record has been broken.

Other than a slight jump during the pandemic, birth rates have been falling consistently since 2010. On average, women now have 1.41 babies, compared with 1.42 in 2023 and 1.94 in 2010.

Rates in Scotland are even lower still, according to data released on Tuesday by National Records Scotland. Women there have an average of just 1.25 babies, falling from 1.77 in 2008.

To sustain the size of the global population, demographic experts say women need to have an average of 2.1 babies. This is what they call the “replacement rate”.

A similar rate is required to maintain the population of England and Wales, but it has been below that for more than 50 years. Despite that, the population has increased, largely as a result of immigration.

What’s happening in Britain reflects part of a global trend in declining fertility rates. In South Korea, the country with the lowest fertility rate in the world, women now have fewer than one baby on average – just 0.75.

Fertility remains high in many African countries, however. Somalia has the highest fertility rate in the world, with women there having more than six babies on average.

Despite the declining fertility rate, more babies were born in England and Wales in 2024 compared with 2023, although the 2023 figure was the lowest it had been since 1977.

This is because the population of England and Wales grew by more than 700,000 between 2023 and 2024, mainly due to immigration. So a lower fertility rate is offset by there being more women in the country.

Although fertility rates are falling across England and Wales as a whole, they have risen slightly in London and the West Midlands.

Birmingham was the local authority with the largest increase, rising from 1.61 babies per woman in 2023 to 1.75 in 2024. The largest fall was in Maldon, in Essex, where the number fell from 1.59 to 1.37 per woman.

Since 2014, there has been a fall in fertility in every one of the 303 local authorities for which we have continuous data.

Luton, the local authority with the highest overall fertility rate, where women have an average of exactly two babies, recorded the smallest fall – dropping just 6% in the last 10 years.

In places like Torbay, in Devon, Denbighshire, in north Wales, and the City of Bristol, fertility has fallen by more than a third in the past decade.

Data released last month reveals more information about the demographic make-up of mothers in the UK.

There has been a steady and sustained fall in the number of babies born to British-born mothers, but in 2024 that was offset by an increase in births among those born abroad.

The rise is particularly pronounced among mothers who were born in southern Asia.

In 2024, there were 20,000 more babies born in England and Wales to mothers from that region than there were in 2021 – a rise of almost 50% in just three years.

Births to African mothers have also risen sharply over that period, although there has been an equally rapid fall in babies born to mothers from EU countries, coinciding with Brexit coming into effect.

In 2024, just over a third of babies born in England and Wales had mothers who were born outside the UK, but in some areas foreign-born mothers made up a much higher proportion.

In Luton, for example, which we mentioned earlier, has the highest fertility rate in England and Wales, seven in 10 babies were born to foreign-born mothers in 2024.

As of the 2021 census, the total foreign-born population of Luton was 38%, but many of the foreign-born population will be younger, in age groups more likely to have children.

Birth rates by age

Fertility rates for both men and women are now falling among every age group, and the birth rate among under-30s is the lowest it has ever been.

The number of births to women in their 30s had been rising early this century, but has been steadily falling over the last decade.

In 2024, the average number of babies born to mothers aged between 30 and 34 was the lowest it’s been in more than 20 years.

The average age that mothers have their first child is now 29 years and five months in England and Wales, although there are significant variations in different parts of the country.

In the North East, mothers have their first child shortly after their 28th birthday, on average. In London, it’s three years later – just after turning 31.

The financial burden of low fertility

A combination of women having fewer babies and people living longer means that there is a higher economic burden on each person of working age to support those in retirement.

Demographics expert Dr Paul Morland told Sky News: “In terms of economic society politics, the fundamental problem is that you get more people who are of retirement age [compared with] the number of people working.

“The workers are the ones who are doing the work, paying the taxes, and people over a certain age consume a lot in healthcare – an 80-something consumes five or six times as much as a 20-something.

“The triple lock in the UK means very often that pensioners, even at the very bottom, are better looked after than poor workers. This puts more and more pressure on the state and more and more pressure on labour markets.”

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.