Senate Select Committee on Autism
Dear Senators
First, thank you very much for establishing and participating in this inquiry. It is important work which can improve the wellbeing of all Australians, autistic or not.
Purpose
I would like to make a submission on the legislative guidance and governmental support which can be provided for autistic people in relation to employment.
The specific suggestions I would make are that:
- Guidance is published on what discrimination against autistic employees looks like; and
- The concept of “an employers obligation to make reasonable adjustments” for disability is widened to ensure employers implement actions which address the incorrect perceptions and biases which affect autistic employees.
Implementing both suggestions would include promotion of information about how employers can obtain expert guidance. Such guidance may be needed to educate their human resource departments, their workforce as a whole, or to help out in individual cases.
This submission focusses on autistic people who are fortunate enough to be employed and, more specifically, to those whose autism is not disclosed by them to others. It is about people who want their working lives defined by the quality of their work and not their condition.
In doing so, I am deeply conscious that there are so many autistic people who can’t obtain a job or whose autism is manifest and whose careers are defined by it. An opportunity can be denied to someone out of prejudice. But it can just as easily be denied them through limited expectations masquerading as understanding.
It is possible that the information below is also applicable to the other terms of reference for your inquiry.
My Background
I am autistic. I currently work full time in a large company. I have been fully employed my whole
adult life in a variety of professional roles. I have performed those roles well. I have performed
many roles which have been highly important to the organisations I have worked for and require a high degree of trust in my abilities.
I have only disclosed my autism, or of information which may lead people to conclude that I am autistic, to a few co workers over 25 years. I have not made any disclosures to my current team members or others that I work with. I have, by necessity, made disclosures of my autism to members of the Human Resources team at my current organisation.
Where issues have arisen, they have arisen with co workers and hiring managers who were unaware of my autism.
When I have raised these issues with Human Resources, I believe the support provided and level of understanding was poor and, in some instances, exacerbated the harm.
I work in an organisation with significant resources and many good programs for disability and diversity. It has a good public reputation in this area. However the information and level of understanding about autism is negligible.
If this is the case in our better organisations, then I have to believe it is lot worse elsewhere.
Governments have a leadership opportunity to make things significantly better.
Nature of disadvantage
With autistic employees, the employment disadvantages they suffer stem in many cases from incorrect perceptions of their behaviour.
The Victorian Government Better Health website explains these perceptions well. In describing autistic adults:
“This may mean that they appear disinterested in others, ‘aloof’ or unsure of how to engage in social interactions. They may have difficulty using or interpreting non verbal communication such as eye contact, gestures and facial expressions, or appear disinterested in the experiences and emotions of others”.
The operative word in this paragraph is “appear”. The perceptions are often an error. I am sure you will receive evidence that autistic people don’t lack empathy, they lack the trappings of empathy.
These perceptions, however small, are career killers.
They have consequences. The slightest sense that an employee makes another person feel uncomfortable is enough to damage that employee’s reputation and devastate their career progression. A very competent employee will be stopped in their tracks. An average employee will go backwards.
These perceptions lead autistic people to be denied opportunities, to be the first to be made redundant in restructures and to be overlooked for objectively less qualified candidates.
As a country, we have made advances to overcome the illegitimate perceptions caused by a person’s gender, race and sexual orientation. We are at the starting line for this when it comes to autism.
With autism, the solution may be a lot harder. The perceptions:
- May arise from a disability which is invisible (even to the autistic employee themselves); and
- Cause reactions in others which are, for the most part, unintentional. I will leave it to the experts, but it is pretty clear that this is caused by the mis matched communication styles of autistic and neuro typical people.
Autistic people have a bias towards verbal or written communication and a more literal interpretation of both. In workplace settings, especially professional ones, precise, literal language is often important. In fact, an employed autistic person can feel more comfortable within this workplace than outside of it.
However, even in the workplace, non verbal communication (like those described above) are still important. Non verbal communication is what a neuro typical person seeks out to ensure they are being heard and valued. To many autistic people non verbal communication is, at best, ambiguous and, at worst, unintelligible white noise which they need to filter out.
Consider one scenario: Both the neuro typical and autistic employee understand that the neuro typical employees proposal is important. To properly listen to it, the autistic person may look down at their hands or out the window to ensure they are not distracted and give the proposal their fullest attention.
To the neuro typical person this will look like the opposite. The proposal they have invested so much effort into, is being ignored.
On the first occasion this happens it may be forgiven. But each repetition of this behaviour builds up like plaque on the reputation of the autistic employee. The willingness to include the autistic employee in subsequent work diminishes.
It isn’t overt, but an autistic employee can find themselves slowly ghosted in their own organisation.
The law doesn’t just protect people from conscious bigotry. It protects people from others’ sense of being uncomfortable around them just because of how they were born. We don’t allow an employer to just employ men because it makes him more comfortable. We don’t allow the baker to refuse to make a wedding cake for a couple just because she is uncomfortable with gay marriage.
Spotting the discrimination
I would like to move on to what can be done about this, but before that I would just like to make a note about language.
Like other forms of discrimination, the language used to describe the perceptions of autistic people has developed into a type of code. As above “disinterested” and “aloof” are used. These are clearly negative.
What about “intense”, “dogged” and “single minded”? These are fine for an artist or a Nobel prize winning scientist, but rarely the inclusive language used in company values statements.
Other language used includes “not a team player”, “difficult” and “not a people person”.
For each of these read “this person makes me feel uncomfortable”.
As with all discriminatory language it is diminishing and limiting.
Those words are the manifestation of the perceptions. They are the tools of discrimination.
Sometimes these words are written and preserved in a performance review as evidence of a career being flushed down the toilet. But more often than not they are spoken in private meetings and at after works drinks.
I bring this up because I feel that awareness of the use of such language and a sensitivity to it is the best path for HR departments to unpick the discrimination and then address it.
Guidance from government on such language is therefore crucial.
What can be done about it
If disadvantage or discrimination occurs in a workplace it is subject to the Disability Discrimination Act.
In relation to my submission, I would like to address two relevant concepts from that legislation:
- Discrimination against disability is illegal.
- Employers should make reasonable adjustments for disabled employees.
Discrimination
People with a disability are protected against discrimination in, amongst other things: recruitment, promotion and dismissal/demotion.
In my experience, employers do not have the education about autism and the forms of its discrimination to be able to properly apply their obligations under the Act.
I do not know if the Act needs amending. But guidance and education about what discrimination looks like for autistic employees is sorely needed.
When the language of discrimination looks exactly like the legitimate language which can be used
to choose one employee over another for a job, a promotion or a raise then it is
understandably difficult for an employer to deal with a complaint in this area.
The government can help by publishing advice to help both employers and employees to navigate such a complaint. When such advice is inadequate the employer should have a reasonable obligation to obtain expert independent advice of the efficacy of the complaint or advice regarding the evidence. And when these don’t work, or where the employer does not fulfil their duty, then the employee should have a clear path to raise a complaint with an appropriate government agency in the knowledge that that agency has people with sufficient expertise in autism to provide assistance.
Adjustments
Under the Act, a central premise is that a person with a disability should be provided with reasonable adjustments to help them do their job.
Guidance is then given which invariably refers to physical changes like bigger computer screens or ramps.
This creates a mindset where the solutions are physical changes and personal to the affected employee.
If an autistic employee advises their employer of their autism, whether as part of a complaint or not, they might be asked to articulate the adjustments they are seeking to do their job.
First, if they have raised it as part of a complaint, then it should primarily be dealt with as an issue of discrimination, not adjustment.
But either way, it is often not appropriate to put this back onto the employee or limit the solutions to be about the employee. The autistic employee may not need personal adjustments to do their job. They may be perfectly capable of it.
The question should not be “what adjustments do you need” but “what needs to be adjusted/ what do we need to change?”
What those employees need is for their organisation to have, or obtain, expertise. The employer needs to understand and, if necessary, intervene when an autistic employee has a working relationship with other employees which may be affected by invisible perceptions about their autism.
It would be outrageous to ask an employee, who says they are being discriminated against because they are gay, “what adjustments can you make?”.
But that is exactly how autistic employees are being treated.
In essence it can feel like they are being asked “what adjustments can you make to come across as less autistic?”.
Substitute “autistic” for “gay”, “female” or “pregnant” and such a question would be a blatant and offensive breach of the Sex Discrimination Act. However this seems to be an unintended consequence of the Disability Discrimination Act.
We need to understand that the disadvantage around autism is an ingrained prejudice against difference. That is not solved by individual specific workplace adjustments.
The exact solution for this may need some work. But at the very least, the concept of “an employers obligation to make reasonable adjustments” should be widened to ensure employers implement actions which address the incorrect perceptions and biases which affect autistic employees. These adjustments may require some actions which involve an autistic employee’s colleagues or the organisation as a whole.
Most employers can’t be expected to maintain specialist autism expertise within their HR department. This is where the government can also help by making available resources and expertise to help educate and address discrimination if it arises.
I do not think the adjustments I am suggesting are unreasonable. Australia has a duty to be a world leader in relation to all forms of discrimination and that may mean doing a bit of hard work and requiring our government and employers to do so too.
Adult Autism Diagnosis
Just one final point. There are difficulties with providing all autistic people, especially adults with a definitive diagnosis that they are autistic. This is because a lot of the current diagnostic tools rely heavily on childhood experiences.
I know this is being worked on, but it should not mean that those without a formal diagnosis should be open to discrimination without protection.
Potentially the protections under the Disability Discrimination Act should not apply to someone who merely claims (or feels) that they may be autistic. But potentially it should extend to people who are being treated by relevant medical practitioners (psychologists and GPs) on the basis that they are autistic even though a formal diagnosis is not available.
Conclusion
Once again, thank you for this opportunity and for opening an avenue to outline some issues that many people may not know about.
I am happy to help your inquiry in anyway by providing any further information that you may require. I have been brief in this submission about the specifics of my own workplace experiences, but have documented them extensively and would be happy to provide further information.