ADHD or just personal preference?

Hmm I was wondering that too. But as @Smorgs pointed out they may have other forms of neurodivergence too…

Some of this is a management issue. Some of this is an individual holding firm boundaries (unrelated to ADHD). Some is your preference vs their preference. Some of this is an ADHD issue.

Management issue:
If your team is constantly getting last minute requests (and needing to stay late?) to complete them, this is a management issue. They need to be saying which item is a priority for the day and which items can wait. If your team is required to do out of office events, this needs to be covered contractually. If that out of hours work isn’t being covered fairly amongst the team (which can happen with or without reasonable adjustments), this needs to be sorted by your manager. Not sharing shared documents because they are on the shared system seems perfectly reasonable and if your team is constantly emailing half finished documents to each other, that’s a massive waste of time.

The person with ADHD is doing their job. The bare minimum is fine, it’s what they are paid to do. If the bare minimum from the team isn’t getting through the work, then you have a resource issue and that’s a manager problem. They don’t have to be flexible about their working pattern (nobody does) if it’s not in their contract to do so.

You prefer calls. They prefer instant messaging. Neither is right or wrong it’s just how people work.

You should be able to use Excel as default and they have programs that work with your programs to make it easier for them to work. Reasonable adjustments are things that don’t impact the rest of the team e.g. not liking the sounds in office so being able to wear ear plugs or if they are dyslexic being able to put their work through a program to help them.

Before you go to your manager, you need to work out what is a managerial problem. What is just a person protecting their own boundaries. What is personal preference and what is potentially a reasonable adjustment that doesn’t feel reasonable to you. If you prefer excel and the rest of the business uses excel, it’s reasonable to use excel and the person with ADHD then converts to work in their program of choice.

This is why people are so skeptical about neurodiversity. Because so often the adjustments are either things that everyone would happen to like, or they seem to cherry pick parts of the job. There was a young woman recently awarded £12k compensation because her company didn’t provide a chill out room at a company party for her to use in case she got overwhelmed.

everyone has parts of their job they don’t like. Nobody likes commuting at rush hour. Lots of people would prefer to work from home.

and yes, I have lots of neurodivergent family
members and I know the conditions are real.

You're missing the point that I'm making.

What your colleague does or doesn't do is not your direct concern, and your manager will quite rightly tell you that it isn't your business.

What is your business are the specific challenges in your own role, which may or may not be directly connected to your colleague's way of working. If you want to be taken seriously, then you need to focus on the things that you are struggling with. Not what everyone else is or isn't doing.

No manager is going to respond well to the complaint of "it isn't fair" because they will know that they have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments and that they would be breaking the law if they insisted on treating everyone in exactly the same way. However, if you go to them with an outline of the specific challenges that you are facing which need to be addressed, then that might open up a constructive conversation about how to move forward in a way that works for everyone.

I think that’s the crux of the matter, ie, you think they do ‘the bare minimum’. Everyone else is pulling together, responding to last minute requests, getting work done, reacting to business needs, etc and yet they’re just plodding along in their own sweet merry way, and because of their adhd, are ‘protected’ from any sort of intervention. Anyone else, you’d say, ‘come on Joan, can we have that report by end of the day’ but you’re unable to say this to your colleague.

For me, the fact a member of your team is so inflexible as to 'not be able' to take on any last minute or urgent or unforseen work is the biggest issue here. The rest of the team will ALWAYS, therefore, be the ones picking up additional work.

There's a person like this is my team and their ADHD/ASD does not preclude them from being able to pick and choose what work they do. They kicked off massively when it was decided that ALL team members had to answer phone calls from the general public on a rota basis and claimed they weren't able to do this because of their conditions. However, because the role was deemed a 'customer facing' one, they weren't able to simply elect not to do it.

If making and receiving calls is deemed to be a part of the role, it's your manager's fault that this particular employee is able to seemingly pick and choose what work they do and how they do it. They're clearly being allowed to dictate their own job description with impunity because of weak management.

ADHD is an extremely complex condition.

In some cases it manifests that the person with it will use spreadsheets, sometimes even more than normal, but typically the right amount, and in some cases they will use fewer spreadsheets, and often none at all.

Sounds like they are completely unsuitable for the job they have been employed to do.

It's up to you if you want to take on last minute requests with a short deadline. You seem to be suggesting that just because this is how you've decided to work so should your colleague.

You want to make a call, they'd rather have any email. So send the email? I don't understand how it disadvantages you to put things in writing. It's good business practice.

I don't understand how them storing work on a shared drive causes delays. Can't you open it from the shared drive? Good business practice is NOT to have different copies of the same document circulating.

Why should they be flexible with their agreed working days? This possibly has nothing to do with reasonable adjustments and instead could be about them having better contractual terms than you. Presumably, you negotiated the terms of your own contact.

Do they get paid more than you? Do you feel like you're working harder than them? To be honest, your complaints seem to be quite petty.

So talk to your manager.

But don't phrase it as ADHDColleague does this or won't do this etc. Because your manager may quite reasonably respond to say that what your colleague does or doesn't do is not your concern.

Instead, focus on your own particular challenges in the workplace.

I struggle with responding to last minute requests because....

It would help me to confirm the details of xyz in a telephone call because...

I'm struggling to cover events on my non-work days because...

Tbh, that screams ASD rather than ADHD but I'm just splitting hairs.

By contrast, I'm dyspraxic and find Trello really, really hard to use... I wonder whose 'reasonable adjustment' would come first if I was in your team?

By and large, when my dyspraxic traits affect the way I work, I just have to cope and try harder. There's only so much my employer can reasonably do for me, and I do accept that. My manager is very good at allocating work in a way that plays to the team's individual strengths, though.

Adaptability and flexibility is required in a vast number of jobs.
If the person is unable to do that I wonder if they are suited to the job. Reasonable adjustments are precisely that, reasonable. No employer is required to make unreasonable ones.

ADHD might not be the only neurodivergence/disability they have. They aren't obliged to tell all their coworkers everything they have.

Surely most people these days don’t like making phone calls? But if part of the job they need support to do so? We had actors come in to train us in doing appraisals as we needed it - perhaps some job skills like this will also need training

Exactly. It isn't a zero sum game where adjustments for one employee necessarily have to impact negatively on other colleagues. It is the manager's job to support all members of the team effectively.

Here are the diagnostic criteria for ADHD

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t3/

They don’t have to: they can accommodate one colleague’s needs or preferences, whilst ensuring the rest of the team is supported properly and that resourcing is sufficient to fill in any gaps. But colleagues need to speak up and ensure the manager is aware of the impact of the adjustments on capacity, and where the gaps are.