Opening the Conversation on Autism Reasonable Adjustments

I’ve tried to chunk up potential reasonable adjustments into groups to help a manager understand them. But how to open that conversation? You can’t assume a manager will know much about autism – they may have a friend or family member with an autistic child but they may not be aware that they know adult autistics. They may not have thought about the fact that many workers are autistic, and they may have some wrong stereotypes in their heads. So raising possible reasonable adjustments you’ll probably need to explain things quite a bit. You could direct them to a reputable website like the NHS or National Autistic Society, but as those tend to reference children most, it may also be helpful to talk about your difficulties under a group of headings such as:

• Interpersonal (coping with people and social situations)
• Communications (understanding what others are saying and getting them to understand you)
• Management (making performance management as clear and stress-free as possible)
• Sensory (preventing sensory overload)

Reasonable adjustments are intended to make the world more accessible for disabled people. Some of them are very easy to understand – such as ramps and lifts, subtitles or Braille labels. Adjustments for autism are less obvious, partly because you can’t see that someone is autistic. A second problem is that the sorts of adjustments you might need can sound like things that everyone else would want too, so you come across as asking for special privileges. For example, I have (and need) a fixed desk, but that’s probably something most people would like to have. I also have (and need) an agreement that I get some down-time over lunch – again, most people would like to be assured of that. So opening the conversation about those adjustments I need to make it about the benefit to the business.

The purpose of my fixed desk is to make me calmer, less stressed and more able to focus, but the purpose of doing that is to get the maximum value for my organisation out of my time. I’m being paid a wage to be useful, and if I can be a lot more useful with a fixed desk, then that makes all kinds of sense to the business. If I had to worry about where I’d sit every day I’d probably spend the first hour at work getting over the sensory overload and stress, I’d probably be only semi productive most of the day because of sensory novelties and distractions, and I’d have to go home early because I was ill and worn out. Ultimately out of a (say) eight-hour day, I’d only be good for about three hours’ worth of productive work. (I’m assuming I’d lose one hour at the start and end of the day = six hours, and only being half productive for six hours = three hours of work.) That’s less than half of what I can get done with my fixed desk, so clearly as regards my organisation, that reasonable adjustment is worthwhile.

[You might be thinking – but surely it’d be even better for the organisation to hire someone who didn’t need a fixed desk and so could be eight-hours’ worth of productive without any special treatment? Well, there’s a lot to unpick there, but legally, sacking me (or you) for being autistic isn’t an option, 1% of the world or thereabouts is autistic and there are difficulties filling jobs in this time of low unemployment, so actually employing people like me is a pretty sensible strategy, even before we get onto the many ways a bit of diversity of thought can be useful. Lots of autistic people feel ashamed about asking for adjustments or unsure they “deserve” them, but thinking about it in terms of the benefit to the business might help with that. I try to think of myself as a resource that the organisation is paying for, so it is entitled to have me make best use of that resource.]

Talking to your manager, you can set out how some moderate, cheap changes will make you more productive and effective. You might want to use the sort of explanation I put above in terms of loss of time to stress or being unfocussed without the adjustments. Most managers will be open to ways of making their team more efficient! If you have difficulties, or don’t know what to say, HR may also be able to help. And finding other autistics in your organisation and seeing how they’ve managed and what adjustments they have is also likely to be really useful. It’s a much easier sell to say “my colleague Joe Bloggs has a fixed desk (or whatever) as a reasonable adjustment for autism: can I have that too please?” than for your manager to have to work everything out from scratch.

Above all – keep it calm, productive and work-focussed. You might be hugely stressed by working in a loud office, but making your manager stressed too probably won’t make them more helpful – they’re only human.