Autistic Civil Servant Q&A

Since 2020 I’ve done a fair amount of public speaking about my experiences of being autistic in the UK civil service workplace and some questions come up time and again so I’ll try and collect them and my attempts at an answer here. Also, I’m a civil servant so a Q&A document comes really naturally. Would anyone like a submission on that or possibly some policy options? 🙂

I’m autistic – shall I tell my manager?

Lots of autistic people only get a diagnosis in adulthood – back when I was a child diagnosis wasn’t routine, particularly not for girls. I got my diagnosis when I was well into my civil service career and wasn’t sure whether I should tell anyone. Part of me feared the effects of the stigma that autism carries in society – there’s a stereotype of what “autistic” looks like, and it’s not a stereotype that’s going to do your career any good. But equally, if you want any adjustments at work (list of potential adjustments here), or indeed to be able to bring your whole self to work, then you need to tell your manager and colleagues. So – what to do?

Everyone’s situation will be different and everyone has to judge for themselves what the likely consequences of disclosing an autism diagnosis at work will be, but here are my experiences:

When I straight out told people that I’m autistic, almost all the reactions were positive and affirming. No-one reacted with open hostility.
Managers were happy with the idea of reasonable adjustments but didn’t know what to offer. (See list of suggestions here.)
Most people said the right sort of things, like “how can I help?” or “do you want me to do anything differently?”
A few people said the wrong sort of things, but not out of any ill-will. Things like: “you don’t look autistic”, or “we’d better make sure you don’t need to do X kind of work”.
Some people took it upon themselves to “protect” me, which was nice intention but also patronising. They “protected” me from high profile work, which potentially held back my career.
People were scared of the unknown. They didn’t understand what having an autistic colleague might by like (basically not all that different from having any other colleague) and their worry made them stay away from the thing they were worried about. That meant some people didn’t want to work with me.
Under pressure, people forgot to be supportive. It became annoying that I couldn’t “read between the lines” or understand what they meant without being told. That didn’t mean they’d become more prejudiced – it meant their stress had affected their behaviour.
But the majority of people accepted me for being me most of the time.

As an autistic person it’s difficult to cope with that kind of “mostly OK” result; I tend to default to black and white thinking, which means I interpret things as entirely good or entirely bad. I expected disclosing to be wholly bad, it turned out to be mostly good, but that then meant I expected it to be wholly good, and then got disappointed when there was some bad as well as good. I also expect people to be logical and consistent so it throws me when they’re supportive one day and forget under pressure the next.

But I’d like to share that disclosing my diagnosis at work was a mostly positive experience, and I’ve been glad to know that my openness has helped other colleagues. If we’re all more open, we will begin to break down the stigma and fear about autism in the workplace so that future autistic colleagues won’t have to wrestle with this dilemma about whether or not to disclose.

What is masking?

“Masking” is when an autistic person hides their autism to “pass” as neurotypical. That can happen because society keeps punishing them for autistic behaviours with ridicule or rejection, or because the autistic person has made a conscious choice to downplay their autistic identity in a given situation. So – masking at work – is it a trauma response or a tactical choice? I’d say it can be both.

For me, masking is the behaviours I was trained into over 30 or more years of not knowing I was autistic. It wasn’t socially acceptable to avoid eye contact or seem not to enjoy social situations, so I got good at lip reading (it’s much easier to watch lips than make eye contact) and learned a “script” of social things to say that seemed to make other people sufficiently happy with my performance in social situations. I feel that “people” isn’t my native language, but I’ve got pretty good at “speaking people” over the years, and sometimes even enjoy it. It can be absolutely exhausting to have to keep it up indefinitely though, and I start to feel trapped and panicky.

Should I mask at work?

So – what to do at work? Do I adapt as far as I can to fit in? There are definitely reasons for doing that. I fear (I hope I’m wrong) that our working culture carries a stigma and prejudice against autistic people so if I’m trying to convince others to agree to a particular decision, they may be more likely to respond positively to me if they don’t know I’m autistic. But that doesn’t feel right – we all know that a “don’t ask don’t tell” culture is corrosive over time, and the world’s not going to become a better place through everyone who’s different pretending that they’re not.

On the other hand, being uncompromisingly my autistic self the whole time might not be the best course of action. I might feel happiest sat on the floor wearing comfortable clothes and noise cancelling headphones, and avoiding eye contact, but that tends to spook people. As a professional, one needs to be able to change and flex, to be persuasive and responsive. Meeting situations that need adaptability and people skills with “I’m autistic – I don’t feel comfortable doing that” might be delightfully autistically blunt, but is unlikely to win many people round. I’ve written elsewhere that certain parts of the civil service competency framework don’t seem particularly well adapted to autistic strengths, but equally there are bits of the civil service code that very much are.

So, much as I hate a compromise, being a black-and-white-thinker who feels most comfortable with points of principle, it has to be a compromise. I need to be able to bring enough of my whole self to work to feel comfortable and optimally productive. That includes challenging autistic stereotypes and casual derogatory language when they crop up. But equally, being professional means adapting a bit to the world around me. My close colleagues know I’m autistic and I’ve explained that if I’m blunt or misread a situation I’d be really grateful if they told me, ideally bluntly. I’ve got reasonable adjustments set up at work to help me be as effective as possible. But if I’m dealing with external stakeholders, I do try and fit in a fair bit. I do the small talk thing that seems expected, I smile and fake eye contact, and I attempt to temper my blunter remarks. I also let the stereotypes go a little more – only this week an external contact made a remark casually in a big meeting about what autistic people “are like”, not knowing that I’m autistic. I could have challenged them, but it would have embarrassed them, derailed the meeting and made for a more awkward conversation that would have been less likely to produce the outcome I wanted. If it happens again, I’ll have a quiet word.

So, for me, masking at work is a compromise. No-one brings ABSOLUTELY their whole self to work, but I’ve accepted that at least for now, I sometimes need to bring a little less of myself than some other people. I’m coming to accept which parts of me are all about autism, and which are just me, and the persona I present to the world is definitely me, but sometimes me toned down a bit! I realise that the ability to make these choices is itself a privilege, and many autistic people just don’t have the same options I do about “hiding in plain sight” when it suits them. But in order to persuade a worried and possibly prejudiced world that autistic people are OK to have around, I think it will help to have people like me visibly flexing and fitting in to some extent. In the future I and we may not need to compromise so much. And that’ll be nice because according to the stereotype, flexing and compromising is something I just can’t do…

Are many civil servants autistic?

Nobody knows for sure, but probably since 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 a Department has 5000 people in it, 50 of them may be autistic.

I think my member of staff is autistic – what should I 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!

What might trip an autistic person up in job applications?

Over the course of several years of fairly consistent failure punctuated by occasional success, plus mentoring some absolutely wonderful autistic colleagues, I’ve picked up a few consistent themes of things that autistic people tend to do that don’t help themselves.

Answering too literally/precisely. We autistics tend to be literal and precise, but that can work against us in job applications. If the application form wants an example of you managing a large team, if you’re like me you’ll probably agonise over whether the team in your best example was big enough, and possibly write about the biggest team you’ve ever managed, regardless of whether that’s the best example. What the question is probably getting at is what skills you used to manage a large team and how you overcame the problems that came up, rather than a statement saying “I managed a team of 95 people!”
Failing to read between the lines. Compounding the literal/precise answer trap is the difficulty we autistics have in reading between the lines and working out what the recruiter actually wants to hear about. “Why do you want this job?” probably wants an answer about why the role aligns with your skills and values, rather than a simple expression of how keen/passionate you are about the role.
Stating process steps rather than outcomes. Again compounding the problems is the tendency to be literal about saying “what you did”. If you ask me what I did at work yesterday I’ll probably say “I went to some meetings and wrote some emails”. That’s true, but it’s not going to get me any job interviews. I need not to be afraid to say the slightly-less-literal parts about what the consequences were of what I did. So I should say that I “influenced and persuaded senior colleagues to focus more attention and personal capital on the problems autistic colleagues have in the workplace using verbal and written communication skills to agree a sequence of future actions”.
Providing too much detail. Job applications often have a strict word limit. The autistic tendency is to need to provide lots of detailed context, but of course that eats up the word allocation leaving you very few words left to say what you did, which is the bit that’ll get you credit. In my example earlier about managing a large team, I probably don’t need to say much about what organisation I was working for, or what subject matter we dealt with, or when it happened, or what the teams’ names were etc. – what the example needs to consist of is the skills you used managing a large team. ANY large team.
Assuming the reader has more knowledge than they do. The flip side of the “too much detail” issue is expecting too much of the reader. I’ve spent my whole life fighting against the autistic trait of sounding patronising when you don’t mean to be, and I go too far the other way. Also, I tacitly assume other peoples’ brains work like mine does (spoiler alert – unless the other person is autistic, they don’t!) The way I feel confident receiving an overview of a situation is to have lots of context that will enable me to infer the interpersonal stuff that I can’t see by instinct. So the result of those two issues is the recruiter gets a whole load of detail (to allow them to form their own judgement) and no distillation of the key facts (because stating the obvious would be patronising). What the typical time-poor neurotypical recruiter wants is a summary of the facts and as little detail as possible – the total opposite.
Leaving out what made the situation difficult. Assuming the reader has more knowledge than they do can mean you imagine they can spot what made the task difficult without being told. The recruiter is reading lots of applications – make it easy for them. Also, as autistics, what was hard for us wouldn’t necessarily be the same as for the neurotypical recruiter. What was hard for me about my most recent job move was moving offices, but what a recruiter would want to hear about would be making new networks, mastering new subject matter etc. etc. – the things that would be hard for them.
Jargon and long words. Many autistics, including me, use long words, jargon and formal language because they feel natural too us. Possibly we also use them a lot at work because we know we need to sound formal and professional and slightly overdo it. The time-poor neurotypical recruiter will find over-formal language harder to read than shorter words and short sentences (and no jargon!) So again, make it easy for them.
Being self-deprecating. If you’ve lived more than half of your life undiagnosed autistic, you’re probably used to be ostracised and rejected for your social faux pas. You’ve probably been picked on and bullied at school and quite possibly in the workplace as well. As a result your self-belief has taken a lot of knocks and your instinct is probably to try to deflect hostility with humour or self-deprecation. The only way I have found to get people to like me is to be self-deprecating or funny, so trying to win over a recruitment panel, that’s what I’ll do. But it’s the wrong strategy for this situation. Horrible as it may feel, and much as your whole being may cringe at the idea of talking yourself up (which feels like setting yourself up to be knocked down), that’s what you have to do…

I realise that what I’ve just described is effectively a kind of masking – adapting ourselves to the communications style and preferences of the recruiters rather than being our whole selves – but that may be a compromise we have to make until the world gets more used to autistic people, if we want to get those jobs. And us getting those jobs is part of how we’re going to change the world to make it more welcoming and accepting of autistic people. I hope.

What reasonable adjustments might be possible for autism in a job interview?

This list is a work in progress and I’d be really grateful for suggestions to add to it…

Explain to the interview panel up front about autism. They may not know much about it, so if you let them know that sometimes your speech, body language or (lack of) eye contact may be not what they’re expecting, that will help them be less surprised and put off by it.
Ask for the questions in advance. If you’re autistic, your brain wiring may make it more difficult for you to understand what someone’s getting at in a question. Getting the questions in advance (say – 30mins early) allows you to spend that 30mins working out that the hoped for answer to “why do you want to work for this company?” probably isn’t “because your offices are right next to my favourite coffee shop”. Which may be the first (honest) answer that comes to your mind.
Ask for the questions in writing. I certainly find I process information visually and information I’ve only heard goes straight out of my head. If you tell me your name and I haven’t written it down (=made the information visual) it’ll be gone in 30secs. Seriously. So the chances of remembering the start of a multi part interview question by the time the interviewer gets to the end are basically nil. For example: “why do you want to work for our company, in the IT department, in the strategy function, in Reading” is likely to get an answer just to the last part of the question – “because Reading is where I live”. (Plus the office is next to that coffee shop.)
Ask for multi-part questions to be split into separate individual questions. So in the example above, “why do you want to work for our company?” would become a stand alone question.
Check meaning. If you have no idea what the question is asking, it’s better to ask than to guess, because the chances of guessing right are low. In the example multi-part question I gave above, you could ask “are you asking me specifically about my interests in IT or in strategy?” and if they say “both”, at least you can answer those things one at a time.
Take notes in the interview. If you need to write things down (make the information visible) to be able to think, then ask to do that. Even if you can’t get the questions given to your written down or in advance, you can jot down key words from the question as it’s asked which will give you a better chance of remembering the main points of it.
Allow yourself time to think. If you need to sit quietly for a bit before answering in order to think about what you want to say, then the panel would almost certainly rather you did that than start straight away and say something random. You could even say “could I just take a moment to think about that before I answer?” Panels often like it when you show awareness of what you need to do to get the best out of yourself.
Video interviews. This one is controversial because it doesn’t work for everyone, but I personally find it a lot easier to be interviewed over a video call than in person. On a video call I can be fidgeting out of sight of the camera (a way of managing my sensory hyper-sensitivity) and I also don’t have to make eye contact. Nor spend 90% of my brain capacity on thoughts such as “I’m in a room with people I don’t know – this is really uncomfortable!” or “oh my golly what does this body language mean and how should I respond to it?”

What reasonable adjustments might be possible for autism in the workplace?

Full list being kept updated here.

Allow Rest breaks (people are tiring)
Give clear (=blunt) feedback
Offer reassurance to combat self-doubt
Provide a quiet office
Minimise electronic beeping in the work area
Offer noise cancelling headphones
Provide natural light
Provide a designated desk (probably in a corner)
Allow comfortable clothes
Discourage smelly food in the work area
Provide visual cues
Limit phone use – provide video conferencing instead so the autistic colleague has visual communication cues from who they’re talking to
Expect unexpected patterns of ability (=”spiky profile”)
As far as possible, minimise form filling
Make performance-management as un-stressful as you can
Don’t make team bonding entirely dependent on unstructured socialising (=there are other ways to bond as a group than going down the pub)
Offer help writing clear objectives
As far as possible, limit the number of meetings and allow autistic colleagues to have their cameras off in video calls
Awareness and acceptance from colleagues that bluntness is not intended to be rudeness
As much structure and routine in changing and uncertain times as is possible
Confirmation of actions arising from meetings/calls if these were not made clear
Summarise key points of 1:1s in an email after the meeting
Allow autistic colleagues not to do “icebreakers” AND ensure they don’t have to make a social “scene” in asserting that right

What is an autistic meltdown?

For an autistic person meltdown happens when the sensory overload because too great and we’re unable to function. That inability to function might mean withdrawing from all communication, staying still, needing to be silent and as far away as possible from other people. If I begin to feel a meltdown starting at work I lock myself in a loo cubicle to be assured that no-one will approach me and I’ll be alone.

But that doesn’t totally solve the problem because in a state of near meltdown my personal space seems to be expand exponentially. Most people need a certain amount of personal space around them into which others don’t intrude – that might be up to a metre or so. When I’m approaching meltdown, I don’t want anyone within 10m of me, and in a modern well-used office building it’s almost impossible to find anywhere where you can be sure no-one will come within 10m. Go outside into a packed city and the same applies, with the added noise of traffic, and all the sights and smells of the city.

If you can’t imagine sensory overload because you’re the kind of person who likes lots of stimulation, imagine my experience of the world – sights, sounds, smells, touches etc – as being like a small child I have with me all the time. The small child is almost NEVER still and quiet. When I’m feeling rested and relaxed, that’s quite entertaining and enjoyable. But after a while I get the same sort of stress response as if the sensory “child” was prodding me constantly, screaming, and asking the same question over and over again and not listening to the answer. I can’t concentrate on anything else because the sensory “child” keeps interrupting – I can’t rest because they keep prodding me and screaming – and after a while the place where they’re prodding becomes bruised and painful. I just want it to STOP – which might mean that in that moment I desperately need as little sensory input as possible – which is the only thing that will make the “child” become quieter and less intrusive.

The trouble for a neurotypical friend or colleague encountering an autistic meltdown is that almost everything that you instinctively want to do to help will make it worse. Talking to the person, hugging or touching them, keeping them company, turning the TV on, providing distractions – all of those things can contribute to overload. Because the autistic person is in deep distress they may also snap or lash out – as you’d expect if they were in unbearable physical pain – and that will be upsetting for both people.

The trouble for the autistic person is that in order to get the sensory input to stop they have to do some really complicated thinking about how to respond so as to manage the neurotypical friend or colleague’s feelings. If someone is wanting to help you, you can’t say “PLEASE just go away,” as they may be offended or worried. (Similarly, “if you don’t turn the WhatsApp notification on your phone off I’m going to SCREAM” seems not to go down well…!) And a neurotypical person who is offended or worried will need to talk to you about their feelings and/or stick around until their concerns are allayed. So all you can do is say “I’m fine!” and make it sound as convincing as possible in the hope that you’ll get the solitude you need. It’s one of the really sad ironies of autism that so many well-intentioned and kindly neurotypical attempts to help make things much worse, and as an autistic person you internalise the idea that real, actually-effective help is never going to come.

In order to end this post on a less down-beat note, here are some things I’ve found help with heading off meltdowns in the office:

Noise cancelling headphones. I’m wearing them now and they certainly calm down the sensory “child” a fair bit. They also helpfully signal to colleagues that you’re doing something and don’t want to be interrupted.
Sitting in a corner. Here in my corner I only have sensory distractions coming from two directions instead of four – again, it reduces overstimulation of the sensory “child”.
Act early. When I feel myself getting overwhelmed, I’ve learned to act rather than push on through. The sensory “child” needs to be calmed down – I am not going to be able to do anything else until that’s attended to, and ignoring the problem will make it worse.
Openness. I now talk pretty openly about my autistic experience so friends and colleagues are getting more understanding about my need for solitude and quiet. They’re also more understanding when I say that while it probably sounds really weird to them I just can’t BEAR the continual bleep of their computer (or whatever it is).

I hope that a better understanding of reasonable adjustments, and of autism in general, including how prevalent it is in the population, may over time make it easy to manage sensory overloads, and ideally prevent them happening. Until then, we just have to try to keep that sensory “child” under control!

Getting an autism diagnosis

When I was a child, autism diagnosis wasn’t routine, particularly in girls, which means there are a lot of us of a certain age and above who’ve never had a diagnosis and so potentially spent their whole lives thinking that if they only tried a bit harder, they could be “normal”. I am lucky enough to be friends with some of them and one had a daughter who had recently got an autism diagnosis. The daughter’s diagnosis led the mother, my friend, to get a diagnosis herself, and she realised that I was a lot like her. It was my sensory hypersensitivity that stood out – she noticed I can’t bear the taste of anything other than skimmed cows’ milk in tea – and she realised that that could be an autism marker. (A really valuable work tea-point conversation that turned out to be!) I read a number of autobiographies of autistic women and it felt like reading my own story, so I thought I should see whether I met the diagnostic criteria for autism.

If you’re interested in exploring a diagnosis the first thing is to talk to your GP and the NHS has resources online too. Referral to a consultant may take a while – it varies according to where you are in the country – but getting that diagnosis can make a huge difference to who you know yourself to be.

On the day of the appointment, I needed to take someone with me who had known me in childhood. It’s an important part of identifying autism that it’s life-long – the diagnosis process needs to check that your autism-like experiences haven’t developed in later life from (perhaps) trauma experiences. I answered a lot of questions about my experiences, and how I think and operate, and what feels comfortable to me. One question that stands out in my memory was about my response to a multi-victim tragedy that was then in the news. I felt overwhelmed with sorrow about a particular person whose story had been reported – they had known they were trapped and going to die. But I found it much harder to associate with the victims as a group – I was using one example to represent the whole. It’s a marker for how my brain works that I need one or more examples to be able to really engage with a thing, rather than a big generalised categories. As another example, if you say the word “apple” to me, I picture a specific apple (the one in my lunch, on this occasion) rather than some sort of generalised apple concept.

At the end of the couple of hours of questions with me and my family member, the doctor doing the assessment confirmed that yes, I was autistic. I had expected to be borderline, but she seemed to imply that it was pretty clear cut. Her main clinical concern about me was that I had got so good at masking that I would exhaust myself and burn out if I didn’t feel able to be a bit more myself. That’s a common experience for autistic people who’ve lived with society’s expectations of women and girls.

Since that time I’ve tried to be more open about who and what I am. I know quite a few other people who are coming to realise that an autism diagnosis fits them and can be really helpful to them, and I also very much hope to chip away at the stigmas and prejudices our society still has about autism.

If you think you might be autistic, a first step could be to talk to your GP, but I would also suggest reading about autistic experiences in books or online to see if they resonate with you. You could also see if any of the reasonable adjustments for autism that I’ve collected might help you. You don’t need to wait for a formal diagnosis – if there’s something that would help you be your best and most effective self at work, then it’s definitely worth giving it a try right now! I’ve also written about my experience of telling my manager. If you do get a diagnosis, I hope it helps you as much as it has helped me.