According to a Deloitte research, an estimated 85% of people on the autism spectrum in the United States are unemployed, compared to 4.2% of the overall population. These insight suggests that companies are still struggling to create an autism-friendly workplace where the full potential of neurodivergent professionals is leveraged.
It is important for companies to create an environment that is autism-friendly and welcoming to employees who have autism. The first step in doing this is by educating yourself on what it means to manage an autistic employee and how you can provide them with the support they need.
In this article, we will discuss managing autism in the workforce.
Autism mostly affects the ability to socialize and communicate with others. One of the characteristics of an employee with autism is that they may have difficulty communicating clearly with their coworkers. One could prefer certain environments that might not be suitable for your company, but it is important that you adjust your terms to provide an autism-friendly environment.
Everyone should be welcomed at work.
Another characteristic could be repetitive actions or words. You need to understand and study the impact of autism in the workforce so that none of your employees feel left out.
What are some common challenges people with autism face in the workplace?
Some challenges that people with autism face in the workplace could include:
- Inability to socialize with coworkers and express themselves. This is one of the challenges most autistic employees face. It gets worse when coworkers are not understanding and feel like a person is just boring.
- Inability to remember certain instructions given. Autism-friendly jobs will understand this and write down the necessary information.
- Inability to pay attention to details to certain topics. Certain autistic employees have certain topics of interest that they enjoy. But pressing a particular topic that might not be of interest to them is challenging.
How can you create an autism-friendly job?
Have you ever found yourself wondering how to manage autism-friendly jobs? We have. And we’ve figured out how to do it.
Most of the time, when people first start to work with people with autism, they feel overwhelmed by the number of things that could go wrong. It might seem like every other day, someone would come in with a new issue that needed to be addressed: “The light is too bright,” or “I can’t concentrate when there are so many sounds around me.”
But then we had an idea: if you could identify what it was that made your employees comfortable (and uncomfortable), and make those things happen in your office spaces, then perhaps you could help them feel more relaxed and focused while they worked.
You can start by asking each employee what they need in order to feel like they are doing their best work. Some could say they wanted some music playing while they worked; others might want quiet time so they could concentrate on their thoughts without distraction; still others might want a space for their dog or cat so they wouldn’t feel anxious about leaving them home alone all day long. It could be anything, and you should be prepared to adjust to improve autism employment.
Once you find out what it is that makes each individual employee happy, unhappy, or content, then it will be easy to manage an autism-friendly environment.
Many people with autism are able to live and work in the community, but they do benefit from a few modifications at autism-friendly jobs. These can include:
- A quiet place to go when needed.
- A designated area for using computers.
- An understanding that their working styles may be different from their co-workers. For example, they may need more time on tasks.
- A visual schedule of upcoming tasks or meetings posted in their workspace so they know what’s coming up next.
Autism-friendly working environments should be encouraged in all companies because it will improve the relationships amongst employees and produce higher performance rates.