80% of employees struggle with this hidden workplace bias. Here’s what employers can do

It’s 7:45 a.m. in the office. Someone bounces in, already back from the gym, already through their emails. Cheerfully asks if everyone’s “okay” because it’s so quiet and people seem a bit tired.

Around the office, people clutch coffee like a life raft, waiting for their brains to come online and cursing the 8 a.m. meeting. And the cheerful colleague. But at least they got in early enough to find parking and grab coffee before it ran out—this time.

Now: which person are you? The early riser, or the one watching them, wondering why you can never feel that awake at this hour no matter how hard you try?

Those clutching their strong brews are probably not just tired, they are socially jet-lagged. Up to 80% of the workforce uses alarm clocks to wake earlier than their body is primed to. That’s not a discipline problem. That’s a design problem.

That coffee isn’t a character weakness. And the fact that most humans require chemical and digital intervention to function at socially mandated hours should tell us something important about those hours.

Neurodiversity and Chronodiversity

What comes to your mind when people mention neurodiversity at work? Many people have heard that neurodiversity refers to ADHD or dyslexia, or they equate it with cognitive diversity—different ways of thinking or processing information. However, these interpretations are narrow—and insufficient for supporting neurologically friendly environments.

Neurodiversity is neurological diversity: the full range of ways human nervous systems can be wired. It encompasses cognition, emotion, sensory processing, motor coordination, speech, and crucially, circadian regulation: how our nervous systems manage sleep-wake timing, energy fluctuations, and daily rhythms. But the latter is rarely discussed in the context of talent processes in organizations—and hardly ever in the context of neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity and chronodiversity are as central to human life as biodiversity to life on Earth. Maximizing the thriving of human talent at work requires understanding of many ways diversity manifests itself and impacts the ways we work.

Normativity and Its Enforcement

The parallel between neurodiversity and chronodiversity is that societies and cultures treat forms of neurological wiring and time orientation as normative, and others as aberrant. While neurodiversity and chronodiversity are biological facts, neuronormativity and chrononormativity are the social enforcement of what is deemed to be “normal.”

Chrononormativity expresses itself in workplace assumptions and behaviors that are rarely questioned:

• Early arrival is equated with ambition and commitment
• Morning responsiveness is read as professionalism
• Meetings default to early hours those with more power prefer
• Leadership visibility clusters in morning time
• Performance reviews implicitly reward temporal conformity

Just as neurodivergent individuals often feel pressure to mask, performing neurotypicality to appear “normal,” chronodivergent individuals simulate morningness with sheer grit and coffee.

This comes at a cost.

The Current Reality: The Difference Tax

Most organizations are yet to achieve meaningful neurological inclusion. The few that have begun addressing neurodiversity typically focus narrowly on its cognitive aspects or communication styles. And most organizations continue to operate as if everyone’s internal clock were identical.

The timing structures of modern work—early meetings, fixed hours, morning-centric performance expectations—were inherited from agricultural and industrial time systems. But they were never designed for biological reality—and those whose bodies do not “fit” cultural models pay a significant price not only in fatigue, but in mental (e.g., depression) and physical health (cardiovascular risks, metabolic dysfunction). The healthcare cost of this preventable damage also adds up.

Population-scale research reveals that chronotype follows a normal distribution, with approximately 30% early chronotypes, 30% intermediate types, and 40% late chronotypes. Among specific populations, the distribution skews later—studies of young adults consistently find the prevalence of evening types.

The chronic misalignment between biological and social time—social jet lag that most of us feel—produces accumulating sleep debt, cognitive function loss, and increased health risks. Chrononormativity produces what might be called the chronodiversity paradox: a biological majority is treated as a cultural minority. When late chronotypes struggle with early starts, they are labeled unmotivated and lazy, while mismatches with the system are ignored.

Neurodivergent populations are disproportionately impacted. Research consistently demonstrates that adults with ADHD exhibit delayed circadian rhythm phase, with up to 75–78% showing significantly later timing of physiological sleep readiness and preferred sleep-wake schedules compared to neurotypical peers. Autistic individuals also frequently experience irregular or delayed sleep-wake patterns.

These are not “poor behavioral choices” or signs of “insufficient discipline.” They are neurological realities stemming from genetic, neurological, and hormonal processes.

A Holistic Inclusion Framework: Where Chronodiversity Fits

Early-morning meetings exclude late chronotypes from social participation. Fixed schedules ignore cognitive performance variations across the day. Forcing temporal conformity produces emotional exhaustion. Misaligned timing creates physical stress through chronic sleep disruption.

 Early risers can suffer from misalignment too – night shifts, late-night email expectations, commutes that devour their best creative time. Without attention to chronodiversity, everyone suffers.

A workplace that insists everyone perform on the same schedule harms people and limits the expression of their full talent. But applying the holistic and intersectional inclusion principles developed in Ludmila’s book, The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work, can make much difference. Here are some suggestions for what this might look like:

• Participation: Include employees in designing schedules rather than imposing “flexibility” designed by morning-normative managers. Those who experienced social jet lag firsthand understand the impact a 9 a.m. “optional” meeting has on the rest of their day. Designing for people without their input produces policies that look inclusive on paper while excluding in practice. Even when shift work is required, having a choice makes all the difference.
• Focus on Outcomes: For most jobs, productivity has no timestamp. If an employee delivers exceptional analysis submitted at 3 a.m., does it matter they weren’t visible at 8 a.m.? When performance evaluations reward “responsiveness” measured by morning email reply speed, or when “commitment” is assessed by early arrival, we evaluate temporal style rather than substance. Review your criteria: do they measure what gets accomplished, or when someone is seen accomplishing it?
• Flexibility: Remove arbitrary temporal barriers. Genuine flexibility means examining every time-bound requirement: Must this meeting be synchronous? Must it be morning? Must everyone attend the same session? Expanding flexibility to include schedule self-determination supports the vast majority of employees. Both larks and owls can thrive when design is thoughtful and work is aligned around meaning.
• Organizational Justice: Examine schedules and policies from the justice perspective. Are scheduling procedures applied consistently, or do senior leaders get flexibility denied to others? Are decisions free from bias, or do early risers receive more favorable evaluations? Are parking, food, and workspaces available for people of later chronotypes?
• Transparency: Make temporal expectations explicit. Many organizations claim flexibility while maintaining hidden norms: the unspoken understanding that “real players” attend the 8 a.m. leadership meeting, that promotion requires visibility during “executive hours,” that working remotely in the afternoon signals lower commitment. Make expectations explicit—and make them job-relevant.
• Valid Tools: Stop using temporal proxies for personal qualities. Early arrival doesn’t indicate dedication. Visible presence during specific hours doesn’t measure performance. These shortcuts embed chronotype bias into talent decisions. Valid assessment examines what someone produces, not when they produce it.

Moving toward chrono-inclusive practice requires organizations to recognize that morningness is cultural, not biological, and remove stigma around biological timing differences. Normalizing chronotype differences can help develop systems that offer meaningful flexibility and create infrastructure—parking, food access, workspace availability, and chronoleadership approaches developed by Camilla—to address temporal bias.

Talent thrives when organizations practice holistic inclusion. And holistic inclusion requires neurological and time rhythm inclusion—neither is optional if relying on coffee, alarm clocks, and fumes to function is to stop being a default.