Autistic Pride Day 2021: How Society Can Benefit from Greater Inclusion of Autistic People and What We Need to Do to Get There

As many of you may or may not be aware, it’s Autistic Pride Day today. It’s a day which is becoming increasingly important to the autistic community, but one which still isn’t as widely known about as it could be. Even many within the autistic community haven’t heard of it or are only vaguely aware of it.

Over the past few months, in my role at Wirral Council, I’ve been working with a number of colleagues to establish a Neurodiversity Staff Network with a view towards supporting our neurodivergent staff and promoting the benefits of neurodiversity, both within the workplace and in society more generally. I’ve been delighted with how quickly Network has grown and established a substantial agenda for making a positive contribution to the organisation I work for. More widely, I’ve also recently joined the Chartered Management Institute West Midlands & North West Regional Board as the Diversity & Inclusion Lead where I hope to build upon my ongoing work with the Neurodiversity Staff Network in a wider regional context.

More personally, though, my main connection to neurodivergence is through my own experience as an autistic person, and, more precisely, as an autistic person who didn’t receive an official diagnosis until a couple of months before turning thirty. It’s been a little over two years since I received my diagnosis, and so I wanted to write this blog in order to share my experience and articulate the benefits that neurodivergent people can offer in all aspects of our lives.

In the first instance, though, you may be forgiven for asking ‘Autism Pride Day? Wasn’t that a couple of months ago?’ Don’t worry. Another year in lockdown hasn’t passed that quickly…again! Indeed, it was Autism Awareness Day, Week and Month back in April. So, why is there another day for autism in the calendar? Well, the reasons for this are somewhat complicated and mainly concerned with the fact that the majority of the autistic community don’t feel that the Autism Awareness events serve us: whilst there may be a specific day, week and month dedicated to autism awareness, it’s a day which is about us more than it is for us – and, in a lot of cases, it’s less about us and more to do with the families of autistic people and medical industry which seeks to ‘treat’ or even 'cure' autism. In other words, it’s a series of events on the calendar which serve - what is know in the autistic community as - the autism community. (It’s important to note that the term autism community isn’t necessarily a pejorative one which tars carers, family members and professionals who support autistic people with the same brush. Rather, it’s a term which is intended to highlight the fact that it is all too often autism community voices which dominate the public discourse on autism, rather than the voices of the autistic community ourselves – and that it is important that any awareness-raising is directly informed by our lived experience).

As Autistic Pride Day is one for taking stock of the positives and identifying what we can do better to support autistic people and better utilise out talents, I don’t want to dwell on these negatives too much, but it would be remiss of me not give a brief explanation of why this state of affairs is problematic and the autistic community itself in need of a day which genuinely serves our interests.

As I said above, Autism Awareness Day, Week and Month are events led by a group of autism-related organisations which serve the interests of those organisations rather than the interests of autistic people – and the objections to these events go far beyond the common feeling that it is time to move beyond autism awareness towards autism acceptance, inclusion, appreciation, and empowerment, etc. It may come as a shock to many but the most prominent autism-related organisation in the world, an American charity called Autism Speaks, is one which, amongst other things, routinely pathologizes and de-humanises autistic people, and supports forms of ‘therapy’ which are widely recognised as abusive and traumatic for autistic people. It is this exact organisation which started Autism Awareness Day/Week/Month and is still the most prominent promoter of it. I could write a whole blog on this topic alone and many autistic people already have done. For those who feel the burning need to learn more about this topic in particular: a quick look through my previous LinkedIn posts will signpost you to a plethora of articles on this topic. For the purposes of this blog, it suffices to say that the perception of the Autism Awareness movement amongst the autistic community is that it works directly against the interests of autistic people, and, as a result, many (if not most) of the community don’t engage with Autism Awareness, or, even, actively campaign against it. My personal feelings towards Autism Awareness Day/Week/Month are more nuanced than many others’ – though I sympathise with the feeling that we need to boycott it entirely and recognise this as an entirely legitimate stance. Importantly, though, I and many others in the autistic community recognise Autistic Pride Day as the day for recognising, celebrating and supporting autistic people: it is organised and led by autistic people, informed by our lived experience, and, in the spirit of neurodiversity and inclusion, it celebrates autism as one of many forms of neurodivergence rather than a pathological deviation from the norm which can and/or should be cured. In other words, it’s primarily a day that is for us and seeks to serve our interests.

At the same time, though, it is clear that awareness raising is an important component of Autistic Pride: despite there having been a lot of progress in the public perception of autism over the past two decades or so, it is still widely misunderstood, due, in no small part, to a plethora of deficit-focused myths about autism and two-dimensional representations of autistic people in the media. Autistic Pride is important in correcting many of these misconceptions and shifting us towards a more balanced, strength-focused perception of autism. Importantly, it’s also not just non-autistic people who stand to benefit from a more holistic understanding of autism: naturally, a wider and better understanding of autism will lead to reduced disablement of autistic people in all sorts of areas of our society and an all-round better future for the next generation, but Autistic Pride also has an important role to play in improving the self-understanding, self-acceptance and self-confidence of autistic people ourselves.

Let’s take the phenomenon of masking, for instance: the most central aspect of autism you’ve probably never heard of. It’s a daily aspect of autistic people’s lives where we supress or hide our autistic traits – either consciously or unconsciously. Whether we’re diagnosed or not, autistic traits are all too often ‘conditioned’ out of us. Talking enthusiastically and at length about special interests, for instance, may be punished (either explicitly or implicitly) by parents and teachers, etc. Whereas insufficiently demonstrating affective empathy in conversation with others may also lead to negative social consequences. It doesn’t take long before we get the message and develop conscious or unconscious strategies in order to appear ‘normal.’ Supressing stimming behaviours, mirroring body language, scripting conversations or mimicking eye contact are just some examples. Crucially, though, this camouflaging or masking of one’s real self can be hugely psychologically damaging, and, more often than not, leads to a wide range of reactive mental health conditions: approximately 80% of autistic people are affected by some form of mental health difficulty for precisely this reason.

This is why it’s really important to widen societal understanding and acceptance of autism: doing so will allow us to progressively alleviate the social pressure to mask and allow autistic people to live authentic and happy lives. Autistic Pride and a strength-focused discourse around autism is, of course, helpful; but visible disclosure and autistic leadership in the process is vital for enabling us all to gain a sufficiently well-rounded and three-dimensional understanding of autism – and it’s precisely for this reason that initiatives like neurodiversity staff networks and articles like this are crucial for moving the discussion and perception of autism in the right direction.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about the strengths and challenges of autism in a way that goes beyond the two-dimensional myths and tropes that all too often dominate the public perception of autism.

Most, if not all, people have heard of the concept of the autistic spectrum…but very few people actually understand what it means. The autistic spectrum isn’t a continuum of less or more autistic on which we can plot individual people according to how severe their autistic traits are. Indeed, this is literally a one-dimensional concept. It’s more accurate to think of the autistic spectrum as something like a colour wheel where each radius-strand of colour represents a quality such as: ability to focus, ability to read body language, ability to spot patterns, abstract thinking, executive functioning, motor skills, propensity towards anxiety, social skills, and sensitivity to sensory stimuli, etc.

Every person can be understood as being stronger or weaker in each of these aspects and having more or less segments filled in in each of these radius-strands. For those who have done a Facet5 personality assessment, it’s a bit like a Facet5 personality profile, only with many more aspects of cognitive, emotional and physical functioning to consider. Importantly, thought, these aspects combine to produce a person’s personality and the resulting profile will be almost as unique as each individual person. Most neurotypical people will have a fairly average distribution of segments across each of these aspects and have a relatively smooth or spherical profile. What distinguishes autistic and other neurodivergent people from the neurotypical population is a greater variety in the distribution of these segments, and, therefore, a more spiky profile. For example, to go with a common cliché, an autistic person may have an enhanced ability to spot patterns but a reduced ability to read body language. In other words, autistic people tend to be stronger than average in some areas, and weaker than average in other areas.

In essence, the autistic spectrum is non-linear and multifaceted: it’s not a single continuum from mildly to severely autistic. This understanding of the autistic spectrum is well-known within the autistic community but what I find is often missed is the fact that the level of functioning of each aspect of the spectrum is inextricably linked to the others. For example, I can be sensitive to certain kinds of light and sound, and I find that when I get overloaded in this way my interoception, proprioception and vestibular system can be affected. In other words, if I over-expose myself to noisy environments and/or sharp contrasts between light and dark, I can experience difficulties with my balance, co-ordination and perception of what’s going on inside my body with respects to pain, hunger and thirst, etc. Again, everyone has these inter-relationships between these aspects of their cognitive, emotional and physical functioning. It’s not uncommon, for example, for people to need to turn the car radio down in order to maximise concentration to reverse into a parking space: overloading one sense impacts on another and reducing that load can free up cognitive capacity. Autistic people are no different. It’s just that we have a little more variability between our individual abilities and can be a little more sensitive to how overloading one area can impact on another – and each of our profiles is as unique as each individual person. In other words, speaking of autistic strengths and weaknesses is too binary because it doesn’t capture the nuanced and changeable reality of who we are, and it’s for precisely this reason why we no longer use high- and low-functioning labels.

Nonetheless, there are some common strengths autistic people have as well as challenges we face. We’re generally more sensitive to sensory stimuli and can struggle with intuitively processing others’ body language, for example. Far more significant, though, are the strengths of autistic people and the contributions we can make to society when allowed to thrive.

Ada Lovelace, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Issac Newton, Marie Curie, and Nikola Tesla are just some of the historical figures who have received a speculative posthumous diagnosis in light of what we know of their personalities – and abstract thinking, identifying patterns and the ability to hyperfocus on a narrow field of interest are just some of the common autistic strengths which are something of a prerequisite for the radical innovation in thought which these figures represent.

More widely, though, there are a wide range of common strengths that autistic people possess which are an enormous advantage for all sorts of organisations. These include:

• Sharp observation skills: as many autistic people have hypersensitivities to sensory stimuli, we often notice details that others miss.
• Attention to detail: as a detailed-oriented perspective is our natural mode of experiencing the world, many of us automatically tend towards producing work which is equally detailed.
• Analytical and logical thinking: we tend to be more objective and unemotional in our thought processes, and, as such, we have an innately logical approach.
• Systematic and strategic thinking: due to our ability to notice patterns, identify faults and simulate how those patterns will play out in the future, many of us have a gift for strategic thinking.
• Industrious and task-focused: as the complexities of social interaction can be harder for us to grasp intuitively, we’re naturally more comfortable with focusing solely on our work and less likely to get involved with water cooler chat during work time.
• Critical, creative and divergent thinking: put simply, we just think differently and – due to our differences – are used to having to find our own methods for succeeding; taking a novel approach and spotting innovative solutions to problems that others can’t comes quite naturally to us.
• Hyperfocus and tenacity: when something captures our attention, we can become deeply focused on it and have the tenacity to see tasks through well past the point at which others would be likely to tire and lose focus.
• Strong memory and independent learning skills: as we’re generally less people-focused and can hyperfocus, we tend to have a greater capacity for learning and retaining new information; this means we can swiftly and independently develop new area of expertise and often thrive in situations where we’re required to do so.
• Perfectionism and passion: as we have a keen ability to identify faults in systems, we naturally strive for perfection and eliminate any issues as the design stage, and generally won’t rest until we’re happy with the results.
• Direct and authentic communication: we tend not to be as conversant in sub-text as our non-autistic counterparts, and, as such, say what we mean rather than express things ‘between the lines’ which can lead to miscommunication.
• Honesty, integrity, loyalty and reliability: as we value direct and authentic communication, we tend to be open and straightforward with our agendas, and more loyal to our employers.
• Accepting of difference: we’re different and understand the value of each and every person’s perspective, and, as such, are naturally accepting of others’ needs – though we may communicate this in a different way.

One doesn’t need to work in organisational development to see how any one of these qualities can be of immense value to any organisation. It is, perhaps, our strategic lens, our ability to think divergently and innovate, and our capacity to hyperfocus, though, which can bring the most distinct form of added value in the workplace.

In my previous career in higher education, for instance, it was certainly these qualities which enabled me to achieve. In my Ph.D. thesis, for example, I used niche areas of mathematics and linguistics to solve longstanding problems in philosophy and psychoanalysis, and, in particular, used set theoretical mathematics to provide insight into aspects of love which many other philosophers had struggled to understand without taking such an interdisciplinary approach.

This is just one example of the sorts of novel approaches which many autistic people find comes naturally and can be invaluable for bringing a diversity of perspective to an organisation and avoiding groupthink. After all, society is diverse and any organisation which doesn’t understand the diversity of perspective in society can find itself disadvantaged. Taking a proactive approach towards neurodiversity within an organisation can engender a competitive advantage at relatively little initial cost, and, of course, lead to net gains in the longer term.

Over the past eighteen months, the impact of the pandemic has had an inadvertent positive effect for many autistic people by enabling more remote working and agility in working patterns in many areas of our working culture. This forced shift in our working culture has temporarily alleviated some barriers autistic people experience in the workplace, whilst, at the same time, exposing just how many barriers are structural to our working culture during ordinary times by making those barriers conspicuously absent. More widely, though, it’s only in recent years that neurodiversity has come to be recognised as an important aspect of diversity and intersectionality in the workplace worthy of attention alongside disability, gender, race, sexuality and all other forms of diversity. For instance, the United Nations recognised these issues by designating the theme for this year’s Autism Awareness Month as ‘Inclusion in the Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Pandemic World.’ It’s important to note, though, that is has been the case because it is only in the past several years that we’ve begun to acknowledge the scale of the barriers autistic people face to inclusion in the workplace and that there’s still a long way to go in order to respond effectively. In a 2018 study , for instance, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) identified that only ‘1 in 10 HR professionals say that their organisation is focusing on neurodiversity at work.’ This is a particularly concerning statistic when viewed in the context of the Office for National Statistics’ 2020 study ?which identified that only 22% of autistic people in the UK are in any form of employment. To put this in context, 52% of disabled people are in work and autistic people are the lowest level of employment amongst all forms of disabled people, despite the fact that the majority are capable of working and want to work.

These are shocking figures which place a responsibility on us as a society to reflect on the barriers autistic people face in gaining and retaining employment, and take decisive action to address the situation. As we would expect, the precise barriers autistic people face will be specific to each country, region, industry, organisation and department, etc., and the steps needed to overcome those barriers will be equally situation-specific. Nonetheless, there are some common themes that any autistic person will tell you are almost ubiquitous – and these mainly revolve around insufficient awareness and acceptance of autism and autistic people. As simplistic as it sounds, what’s needed across our whole working culture – and, indeed, throughout our society in general – is a basic acceptance of difference. Let’s take the concept of spiky profiles I mentioned earlier. Many autistic people can have profound abilities in some areas but struggle with some skills that many people consider to be very basic. To take myself as an example, I can take to a research project, and very quickly and independently develop new areas of expertise with ease. Whereas taking minutes in a meeting is a near-impossible challenge for me due to my sensory differences. Whilst I haven’t knowingly experienced such issues myself in my current role, many autistic people find that colleagues simply don’t believe that someone adept in tasks considered to be more complex can struggle with tasks generally considered to be easier by most, and are, therefore, unwilling to accommodate these differences in the workplace: rather than allowing autistic people to maximally contribute to their organisation by playing to their strengths, many autistic people find that their differences aren’t accommodated in the workplace, and their energy and efforts misspent on draining tasks rather than tasks which can maximise their contribution to their organisation.

Moreover, the consequence of the lack of understanding, acceptance and accommodation means that many autistic people don’t disclose their condition, mask their autistic characteristics, and struggle in silence because the benefits of disclosing simply don’t outweigh the (potential) downsides. Not only does this lead to stress and burnout to autistic people themselves, it’s also a very inefficient use of organisational resources, and many organisations would be much more productive by utilising their talent in the most efficient way by playing to their strengths.

So, why do so many organisations struggle to take this approach? What is it about ‘how it’s always been done’ that presents barriers to autistic people? This is a big question which invites many possible answers. On a very basic level, getting the best out of all employees requires quality leadership and management: it requires managers to take a person-centred approach, take the time to understand their employee’s strengths and challenges, and remain continuously cognisant of how they can best adapt their leadership style and the operational characteristics of their team to get the most out of everyone. The issue is that this kind of proactive leadership takes time and many find that they just can’t find the time to be truly effective managers of the talent they oversee.

There’s also a wider issue in terms of how we conceptualise disability: developing a well-rounded understanding of how employees can best contribute to their teams and organisations requires a strength-focused approach in considering how to utilise talent, and this is all too often anathema to how we think about people with all forms of disability. Put simply, our society reflexively views disability through what is known as the medical model of disability. In other words, we see characteristics of disability as inherently disabling, and, as such, tend not to think there isn’t anything we can do to overcome them: we see disability as something which arises as a result of an individual person’s impairment and view disabled people as inherently deficient in some way or another because they diverge from the norm. This way of thinking, though, doesn’t fully account for the complexity with which we interact with our environment. The social model of disability, on the other hand, sees disability as something which occurs in the relationship between a person and their environment rather than an homogenous result of an inherent personal deficit.

This is a very important difference in perspective because the natural consequence of the medical model is to seek to ‘fix’ the disabled person in some way, whereas the consequence of the social model is to identify what’s disabling about the environment and adapt it so that it is accessible to all. In the first instance, it’s easier to understand this with respect to how people with physical disabilities interact with their environment. For example, a wheelchair user wouldn’t be able to gain access to a building if the only route into the building were via a set of stairs. Adding a ramp to a building’s infrastructure, on the other hand, makes the environment accessible, and, therefore, effectively removes the disability insofar as the wheelchair user would become able to enter the building which they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. In other words, without a ramp, it is the building’s infrastructure that disables the wheelchair user, not their physical condition itself, and we overcome barriers for disabled people by adapting our environment to make it accessible for all.

Whilst it’s relatively easy to intuitively grasp this concept with respect to physical disabilities, it can be harder to grasp when it becomes to unseen disabilities because…well…they’re unseen: it’s just harder to remain cognisant of barriers when we aren’t affected by them and can’t see them ourselves. Whereas we wouldn’t expect a wheelchair user to use a set of stairs, then, we often inadvertently and unnecessarily expect people with unseen physical disabilities to do all sorts of things they aren’t capable of, or, at least, find very challenging. With respect to autism, a corresponding example to the wheelchair ramp would be something like the environment of a supermarket: the bright lights and loud music make supermarkets quite stressful for people with sensory sensitivities – and, in many circumstances, this can make these environments inaccessible and effectively disable certain people. There are all sorts of things we can do to overcome this. I, for instance, wear tinted glasses and ear defenders whenever I visit a supermarket, and, for the large part, these make such environments tolerable (though it is much harder during the pandemic because I can’t wear a face mask without my glasses steaming up). From a social model perspective, though, we could ask: do all supermarkets really need to use such harsh fluorescent lights? And do we really need music blaring in the background in all supermarkets? After all, everyone is effected by these things. It’s just that neurodivergent people are more sensitive to them. It follows, therefore, that neurotypical people may be experiencing stress as a consequence of encountering these environments but that it’s not stressful enough for them to identify these environmental factors as a significant factor in that stress. In our contemporary world, we could all benefit from reducing our level of background stress and taking heed of the voices of neurodivergent people could be a significant step towards achieving this. We, in other words, can be seen as the canaries in the mine: we’re identifying issues in our public space which affect everyone, it’s just that we notice these issues well before neurotypical people and are much more adversely affected by them.

In a workplace context, it’s the social infrastructure which can be – and more often than not is – disabling for autistic people. For example, as I mentioned above, our society doesn’t have a sufficient understanding of how autistic people can have spiky profiles, and, as a result, we often implicitly expect that an individual who can undertake more complex tasks must also be able to do ‘easier’ tasks that many of us take for granted – and, despite having an unseen disability myself, I am equally guilty of this myself at times because our society’s oversimplified view of disability is just as internalised and unconscious as any other prejudice. In extreme cases, we may view individuals with spiky profiles as incompetent or unwilling to do certain tasks, and may discipline them even when they are trying their absolute best. The key for overcoming this is naturally to have a better understanding and acceptance of autism across society, and a willingness to play to autistic people’s strengths for the benefit of the organisation, as well as society as a whole.

Importantly, though, this isn’t an abstract problem: it’s one that has very tangible results for autistic people in both their everyday working lives, their career progression, and the organisations they work for. Career development and progression paths, for example, are often more rigid than we believe them to be and inherently disabling to autistic people when they take a one-size-fits-all approach which doesn’t recognise the natural variety in people’s strengths and weaknesses, and how our personal and professional development can take unique paths. Many organisations end up squandering their autistic talent by denying career progression without the fulfilment of certain pre-requisites or inadvertently forcing autistic individuals to leave the organisation by pressuring them to progress into roles which actively work against their natural strengths. For instance, many autistic people are naturally strategic thinkers and are ideally placed to work in senior leadership, and yet struggle with the more operational and interpersonal aspects of management which are part and parcel of the earlier stages of organisations’ career progression pathways. Greater flexibility in these respects can only be a good thing: after all, we’re all different; we all have different strengths and weaknesses; so, introducing greater flexibility into the way we do things can have all sorts of unforeseen benefits for all of us. Getting it right for neurodivergent individuals, in other words, can lead to innumerable benefits for all. This is precisely the dynamic which is inherent in the concept of universal design: neurodivergent people often notice things that others don’t because barriers are so much more visible to us, and accommodating us can lead to the removal of barriers for others which they may not be themselves aware of. To reiterate the point I made earlier: we are the canaries in the mine, to a large extent, and we wouldn’t ignore a canary falling off its perch, would we?

Improving understanding, acceptance and accommodation, and introducing greater flexibility into how we utilise people’s skills in the workplace is the only way forward in this regard. This is why workplace initiatives like neurodiversity staff networks are vital for optimising organisational structures for utilising all employee’s talents to the maximum through: acting as a hub for experience sharing, peer support and information sharing; assisting in employee development and empowerment; acting as a consultation forum with regard to new and/or existing policies, practices, procedures and strategies to ensure the lived experience of neurodiverse people informs organisational development and change; and leading in the organisation and promotion of relevant awareness raising and acceptance campaigns.

More widely, though, as has been argued in a number of Forbes articles , what’s needed across our whole working culture is a shift from the concept of cultural fit to cultural add in terms of all forms of diversity and intersectionality. We need to find ways to initiate a symbiotic process of inclusion which will ultimately benefit organisations just as much as the individuals themselves. In other words, creating ‘autism-friendly workplaces’ isn’t just about implementing universal design in physical office spaces by making lighting and sound modifications, etc. – though these initiatives do have an important role to play. Indeed, for our workplaces to be truly inclusive, we need to undertake some quite radical thinking with respect to organisational policies and procures, such as recruitment processes, performance reviews and career progression pathways.

When it comes to the recruitment process, for example, we need to really consider whether ‘the way we’ve always done things’ is really the best way for us to continue to do things into the future. We tend to think that the conventional recruitment process is quite neutral but its very form throws up all sorts of barriers for neurodivergent people because the process is inherently biased against neurodivergent characteristics: all too often, the conventional recruitment process exposes typical neurodivergent weaknesses and supresses opportunities for people to showcase typical neurodivergent strengths.

CVs, for instance, are actually quite a poor predictor of future performance and advantage those from more privileged backgrounds who may actually turn out to be less effective once in post than their CV indicates: prestigious schools, colleges and universities catch recruiters’ attention, whereas applicants who attended less prestigious institutions have often had to work much harder to achieve the same results and gain the same opportunities. Our reliance on CVs can, therefore, disadvantage those applicants who have had to fight the hardest to get to where they are and this dynamic is only intensifying in our contemporary, highly-competitive and fast-paced recruitment culture where standardised applicant tracking systems are increasingly used to screen candidates down to a manageable number before an actual recruiter reviews the applications. Autistic people, in particular, tend to struggle with these modes of communication which – by their very nature – necessitate a curated narrative of an individual’s experience and skills, and rely an ability to understand and manipulate sub-text to do so. This is especially the case when job adverts specify criteria (either essential or desired) which are unnecessary and not pertinent to the role in question: generic criteria such as strong emotional intelligence, communication and interpersonal skills, an ability to work in a fast-paced environment, and thriving under pressure can be weak points for many autistic people but can feature prominently in job descriptions and person specifications whether they are pertinent to the role or not. In the best of cases, these criteria are usually linked to a policy of cultural fit and a desire for all employees to have these kinds of skills. What’s often misunderstood by recruiters, though, is that very few people offer an all-round package and requiring such skills across an entire workforce may exclude a whole range of other skills and qualities that would bring a much greater added value to an organisation. Moreover, many autistic people may not realise that many ‘essential’ criteria are not so essential, and, as a result, may not even apply for roles because of perceived barriers to entry. Autistic people in particular tend to have a strong weakness-focused self image, and, as such, focus unduly on the criteria they don’t fulfil: whether we’ve been diagnosed in childhood and internalised the weakness-focused discourse around autism through receiving ‘support’ which takes its lead from the medical model of disability, or made it through childhood without a diagnosis and struggled to understand why some things appear to be so much harder for us in comparison to our peers, the way our society is structured means that autistic people are all too often nudged into a weakness-focused view of ourselves which means we tend not to have the same level of confidence as non-autistic people to ‘just apply anyway and see what happens.’ Even where such criteria are genuinely required for roles, they may be phrased in ways which autistic people may misread, such as: ‘unquestionable time-management’ or ‘undeniable leadership skills.’ Put simply: the conventional recruitment process is far from autism-friendly, and, indeed, disadvantages a wide range of people who may have a lot to bring to any organisation.

Even for those who do make it through the initial application round, communication-based interviews can present all manner of potential barriers for neurodivergent candidates. For example, autistic candidates can struggle to meet some expected standards of communication (e.g., eye contact) which may not actually be required by the role itself. Whereas interview questions which are designed to expose the candidate to a situation which requires tact in order to respond effectively can be even more challenging, and, again, may not actually be a skill required for the given role: not only do these test traits which aren’t necessarily pertinent to the role and are usually weak points for autistic people, our natural tendency towards systematic and rigorous thinking can disadvantage us in other ways; interview questions which require a swift and diplomatic response can be particularly challenging because we take longer to formulate an appropriate response. Of course, these traits can be a weakness in face-paced working environment but are a strength in roles which require a more methodical and meticulous approach. All too often, though, the things that communication-based interviews test aren’t actually in alignment with the traits required to perform effectively in a role. Questions such as ‘why are you leaving your current job?’ or ‘if you were a flavour of ice cream which would you be?’ may be psychologically-revealing but what they reveal can often be irrelevant and merely open up a door for the interviewers’ privileges and prejudices to impose themselves onto what is supposed to be a neutral process.

More broadly, ‘selling oneself’ is another common weak point for autistic people: many autistic people can be highly effective in undertaking a task but almost entirely incapable of explaining how and why they are proficient in that task because of a spiky profile. In the field of creative writing, the maxim one’s taught on day one is show, don’t tell because it is much more effective for us to see something and process it on our own terms than be told what to think by someone else. The modus operandi of a communication-based interview scenario, on the other hand, is tell, don’t show. However, it’s usually not a key component of a role to be able to explain how and why we are good at doing what we do. Granted, it may be a key aspect of a politician’s role or highly competitive role with many incremental stages of career progression, but most roles require us to just get on with tasks rather than spending vital resources on talking ourselves up. In the language of learning and teaching theory, there’s a huge question around whether communication-based interviews are an authentic and effective mode of assessment: in most cases, they rank candidates in accordance with a set of skills which they won’t actually require to be effective in the role. A lot of autistic people can intuitively see that ‘selling oneself’ and ‘talking oneself up’ are not skills required for the role and may overlook or struggle to engage with these aspects of the process because we value proficiency in a task itself over explaining how and why we’re proficient in a task. For us, the explicitly-stated criteria draw our attention and we struggle to focus on the more intangible aspects of the process which often make the difference when interviewers come to rank candidates. For precisely these reasons, many organisations’ reliance on the hidden job market can be an even greater impediment for autistic jobseekers whose natural strengths don’t usually include networking and presenting a curated image to others.

Some of these issues can be overcome by avoiding certain questions and providing candidates with them in advance so that they can give them proper consideration, but there are far more effective ways of assessing a candidate’s suitability for a role, such as: project-based assessments or trial periods on the job, etc. Precisely which methods are most suitable depends on each specific role but the important point to consider is that there are more authentic and effective ways to assess candidates than conventional, communication-based interviews. The common objections to these non-traditional modes of assessment centre around scalability but the objections fail to recognise just how intensive the conventional recruitment process can be and that we don’t tend to question this because ‘it’s just how we’ve always done things.’ Indeed, scalability issues haven’t prevented organisations like SAP, Specialisterne, Microsoft, and J.P. Morgan from adopting more inclusive recruitment practices. What marks these organisations out from others is that they’re merely willing to consider different ways of doing things and appraise them on their own merits. After all, in a lot of cases, the much greater retention rates of autistic employees mean that more inclusive recruitment practices can actually reduce the resources an organisation needs to put into recruitment in the longer term. More to the point, it’s very often autistic and other neurodivergent people who have the ability spot this potential for greater efficiency in the longer-term gain. In other words, part of the reason why many organisations don’t recognise the issues around the conventional recruitment process could be the very fact that there aren’t enough neurodivergent people working in recruitment and bringing their perspective to improving how we do things.

Beyond the recruitment process, once in a role, performance reviews, or unwritten and unspoken expectations and criteria for career progression can present further challenges to maximising neurodivergent employees’ contributions to an organisation.

All of the above means that there’s a lot of unutilised potential and that there are great gains to be had from identifying and supporting neurodivergent talent, including those that are currently employed but under-utilised, as well as those who are not currently employed at all. In other words, the issue extends far beyond inclusive office spaces and individual workplace accommodations: for our working culture to become socially inclusive, our entire working culture needs to gain a greater understanding of neurodiversity and accepting of all forms of difference.

Quality neurodiversity training designed by the neurodivergent community is, therefore, an essential step on the path to greater inclusion: in the broadest possible terms, we need to learn to be less judgemental, more accepting, and aware that others are fighting all sorts of battles that we can’t see. One of the most significant prompts in my personal development was when I began teaching in the higher education sector. As the sole person responsible for enacting reasonable adjustments in the classroom, it was essential for me to familiarise myself with my students’ support plans and accommodate their differences in my teaching. The scale and variety of the unseen difficulties people face – largely in silence – came a quite a shock and forced me to reappraise the assumptions I bring with me into any and every interaction I have with another person. Just being aware that others could be struggling with all sorts of challenges we can’t ourselves see brings a whole different level of mindfulness and kindness to the way we interact with others – and this can only be a good thing! Indeed, overcoming our tendency to presume others’ needs and abilities is essential for real inclusion: many people who require reasonable adjustments aren’t sure enough that disclosing their condition will have the desired outcome, and, therefore, can lack confidence in disclosing, especially where they’re expected to initiate the process themselves (which can be a very difficult thing to do sensitively, especially for neurodivergent people).

It also important, then, to normalise reasonable adjustments and train managers to build multiple opportunities for disclosure and requesting reasonable adjustments as part of induction and performance review processes in the most open and accessible way possible. In other words, we need to promote open and non-judgemental communication about our individual needs. This is the only way we will get to a truly inclusive working culture and universal neurodiversity training is needed to provide each and every one of us with the tools needed to understand and accept each other in the most sensitive and considerate way possible.

In the interim, initiatives like the Neurodiversity Staff Network I’ve created at Wirral Council are essential for giving a voice to all neurodivergent people and promoting genuine inclusion in the workplace. In this respect, I’m thrilled with the support the Network has received and for the positive agenda we have established in such a short time. We’re still in the relatively early days of the neurodiversity movement and very few workplaces have an established neurodiversity staff network or similar initiative. I’d, therefore, like to encourage anyone with a relevant experience of neurodiversity to look into starting their own neurodiversity staff networks in their own workplaces as a means for identifying how their own organisations can become more inclusive for everyone. There’s a long way to go on this path, but what my experience has shown is that bringing people together to discuss these issues openly can very quickly harness the power of collective thinking and quickly identify the steps needed to make the necessary improvements in the organisations in question.

In the meantime, have a great Autistic Pride Day!

?