I think my member of staff is autistic – what should I do?

You’d be surprised how often I’m asked this. Or actually, you wouldn’t be surprised if you remembered that about 1 in every 100 people are autistic. The statistics show that only about 22% of autistic adults are in any kind of work, but that’s 22% of the people who have a diagnosis and are open about it. Many of us haven’t (yet) received a formal diagnosis because diagnosis wasn’t common when we were young, or we are hiding who we are because of fears about stigma. Because I talk openly around the UK civil service about being autistic, lots of autistic civil servants are prepared to be open about themselves to me where they wouldn’t be with other colleagues, so I happen to know there are a fair few of us. Possibly – as it should do – the UK civil service represents the UK population it serves, which would make about 1 in a 100 of us autistic. So if your Department has 5000 people in it, 50 of them may be autistic. And the chances are you’ve met one of those 50 and over your career you’re very likely to have line-managed one of them.

So you think your colleague is autistic – what do you do? What you definitely don’t do is go up to them and say “I think you’re autistic – have you ever thought about that?” Diagnosing your colleagues is seldom a good idea. It may be your colleague doesn’t want to be open about a diagnosis that’s personal to them – and that’s absolutely fine. It’s their information and they don’t have to share it with you. Equally, your colleague may be one of the people who’s undiagnosed and might be upset about your suggestion. It’s a big deal to tell someone you think they have a disability. So don’t do that.

What you can do though is to offer some of the ways of working that might help your colleague if the do happen to be autistic. You could try to avoid too much non-literal language. The chances are making your meaning clearer will help everyone so it’s a win win situation! You could also make sure that team bonding doesn’t only happen in the pub – that’ll potentially help your maybe-autistic colleague but also colleagues with caring responsibilities, health conditions and those who don’t drink. There are plenty of things you can offer – see this list of potential reasonable adjustments – and see if any of those help. But above all, you can ask the colleague if anything about how the team is operating isn’t working for them.

Remember, if someone seems to be different to you:

• Listen more
• Judge slower
• Don’t assume
• If in doubt, ask

What you’re interpreting as “rudeness” or “poor performance” might be the result of different brain wiring, different culture, a health condition or all manner of other things so before you write that person off, see if there’s something simple you can change that will release their potential. It often works!