Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Autistic Employees: Not accepting authority?
Jen Blacow
21st April 2021
As an HR consultant or manager, you may sooner or later be managing an employee who is on the autistic spectrum. You (or they) may not even know they are autistic.
As well as many benefits, this will sometimes come with challenges that can make you feel frustrated and unsure of what to do.
I recently spoke to an HR Consultant contact who was updating employment contracts for a tech company. As skilled as she was, she was being completely side-tracked by a particular employee who disputed every written word of his ‘updated’ contract.
He had been told his contract had not changed. It was just not the same ‘word for word’ as his old one.
The misunderstanding here was that there were no real material changes to his contract of employment. But to the (likely autistic) employee, it had changed because, well, the words had changed!
It reminded me that simple misunderstandings due to how different people think can cause major grievances that can last (and I have witnessed them lasting) several months. This is not good for employees nor employers and best to be avoided. This is why Aspiedent’s Workplace Assessments are so valuable. We often come in once, point out the misunderstandings, provide the solutions and leave. Job done.
Other commonly encountered issues for HR Professionals when dealing with neurodiverse employees include:
The employee is overly precise, appears critical
Aspiedent has come across cases where managers have a headache because an employee keeps pointing out all of their fellow colleague’s mistakes and making corrections. Their identification of other’s mistakes is interpreted by their colleagues as arrogant.
But, if you look at it from the autistic perspective, the employee in question simply sees mistakes that they think need fixing and is genuinely trying to help when they point out the mistakes!
In this instance, the manager may just need to spell out to the autistic employee why other colleagues may not appreciate this, and/or implement a system in which employees can discreetly pick out mistakes and fix them, without embarrassing other employees.
An autistic person might get very frustrated with their managers because they are not correcting other colleague's mistakes all the time. They might even think this is sloppy management. This can cause lots of anguish to the autistic employee and upset the harmony of the workplace.
However, because of the autistic person’s limited understanding of the social world and of non-autistic people, they may just need some training to understand their manager’s perspective.
In turn, what managers may need to appreciate, is that the autistic person themselves would rather be corrected constantly for their mistakes, and therefore does not understand why it may irritate others!
Having said this, occasionally an autistic person’s ability to spot mistakes is invaluable. For example, such a person could be invaluable in a fraud department, where their ability to spot errors and inconsistencies in data would be a real asset to their business.
The employee struggles to accept authority or criticism, especially when they think authority does not understand their job
A while ago, we encountered an employee in the public sector who was regularly in dispute with his managers over what the right or wrong answer was to external requests for information.
This was interpreted as the employee not accepting authority, nor criticism about his ability to do his job. Perhaps even as a ‘Know it all’.
Actually, it was simply the employee misinterpreting the questions. He was therefore trying to answer a totally different question to what his manager thought he was answering.
Easy solution: we advised the managers to check this employee had the same understanding of the questions as they did before they argued about the answers.
This is just one example but there are many instances where it may appear an employee appears to reject authority when it is just a misunderstanding, or a different interpretation of the facts.
The Employee wants to do things all their way
This is an interesting one as it can cause a lot of interpersonal problems for autistic people at work.
It is not unheard of for people with autism to drive their employers up the wall because of their regular suggestions for different ways of doing things.
An autistic person can sometimes see where a process or procedure could be completed much more efficiently, but then really struggle to comprehend why some employers do not want their employees to be getting involved in changing things that others have become comfortable with, even if they are less productive.
This may be because autistic people are less likely to understand the often subtle, political aspects of their workplace. For example, a manager fearing they may lose their position should a new and more efficient way be found to do things (perhaps particularly in the public sector). Or a manager’s allegiance with a particular employee which results in that employees’ ideas being given more notice than ones from other members of the team.
On the other hand, an autistic employee’s insistence on doing something in their way may purely be because they would struggle as a result of their autistic difficulties to do it any other way. Their way is best for them (thus technically best for the company).
One example of this is somebody who struggles with rigid processes and procedures because of their autistic style of thinking and working but manages to get to the desired outcome just as quickly and accurately in their way. They will inevitably believe their way is the better way!
In this situation, it may be an idea for the individual to be encouraged to create a document that explains to their colleagues and managers why they do what they do in a certain way. Understanding the reasoning behind somebody’s way of doing something goes a long way to improving tolerance of other people’s differences.
It could be classed as discrimination against somebody for forcing them to do things a certain way when that way is extremely difficult or impossible for them because of disability and another way would be possible for them. It is important to bear this in mind when working with individuals.
However, remind the autistic employee when you are making accommodations for them, as they then might be more tolerant to this ‘more difficult’ or even (perceived or real) less efficient way everybody else does things.
Indeed, non-autistic people may find certain ways of doing things easier and more efficient because of how they think and would find the autistic person’s way difficult.
Conclusion
As is often the case with autism in the workplace, the difficulties that HR professionals and managers may encounter with autistic staff are more easily resolvable than one might first think. It does however require some real understanding of autism – not just the label of autism, but how they think and learn.
The more that managers can get their heads around individuals with autism, the better they will be at managing all their people and the quirks that come with them. Sometimes this can be done with minimal input from specialists like Aspiedent. However, sometimes somebody’s ‘autism profile’ needs to be determined during a workplace assessment before any solutions are likely to be found.
Note that solutions are normally cheap and simple to implement, but are not obvious until a workplace assessment has been carried out. It is only occasionally that the job description needs to be modified.
These solutions can help employers tap into the hidden strengths of staff with autism and other neurodiverse conditions and therefore provide a significant return on investment.