Published on 12, July, 2020
Just wondering is there any point declaring your autism at work? Would be interested to hear people's experiences
I declared mine before starting a job for the first time ever with my new job. I thought it would help but I'm not sure it has. I feel like my bosses treat me with more understanding which is a good thing but everything else is the same or worse
I had an Occupational Health Assesment where I said what my reasonable adjustments needed to be. The main one was having a regular timetable that didnt change without warning
2 weeks into the job and I am still the only teaching assistant in the college without a timetable. My boss said to me "You can design your own timetable" since she knows I need one. In a new job, where I know none of the classes or students. Also, the only way to do this is to use software systems that I have never used before and havn't been shown how to use, even though I am supposed to have been trained on them. She also sent me a email notification to have a 1-2-1 meeting with me at the end of the day with no message attached to explain what the meeting was about or any warning that it was going to happen. Yet she writes blogs on autism for the organisation's website so I dont understand how she doesnt understand these things.
Everyone's telling me different things today in the office. Different people from different departments are coming up to me telling me totally contradictory things about what I am supposed to be doing till the end of term, there's no communication and it seems even more confusing than my previous jobs.
Makes me wonder what the point of disclosing my autism was
It depends.
I decided to declare my autism at work after reading about how only 20% of autistic adults are in paid employment, the lowest of any disabled group as per the Disability Act. That horrified me. I have many frustrations with my career - I've never been considered for promotion and have seen people younger and less established than me get promoted. I felt that I was already disadvantaged in certain regards, so I declared it.
I got the usual nonsense about how "brave" I was. I was actually asked to do a talk at work (this is a major UK company you will all know) which I did. I talked about my own experiences, but also how we could work together to make a workplace that is autism-friendly. The talk was filmed, and about sixty people showed up which was amazing. Everyone told me how wonderful it was, and in certain senses I'm glad I did it: I've had parents of autistic children asking for advice, I had other colleagues with autism talk to me and ask me if they should also declare it (of course, I never led them in either direction, but told them to take some time to really consider the benefits and drawbacks). It has been a great privilege to be able to help others.
But as soon as I finished the talk, I felt naked. I had given myself away and the deepest part of my psyche was now in the hands of this company that had passed me by time and again, whilst regularly telling me how wonderful I was.
Has it changed anything? Not really. Our Disability Network are really looking at autism and would like me to lead a project talking to other channels of the business, which is an honour and privilege, but the talk was full of pleas not to judge people by how sociable or "bantery" they are, but by the quality of their work and the strength of their characters. I feel that this has not changed, at all, sadly.