Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all,
I am an autistic male with an official diagnosis from Psychiatry-UK. I revealed myself as autistic to my workplace, and the results were disappointing.
My knowledge of corporate environment tells me that the HR is just scared of a discriminations lawsuit and advised my managers to keep me at distance. They cannot just fire me because I waited for 2 years to disclose my condition.
Some questions:
Thanks
Iain, you know what you are talking about.
Judge Dredd said:An HR would never say "we are firing him because he is aspie".
Agreed. HR teams by and large know not to leave any paper trail for this.
One role I was brought into to restructure a team in a university had my last task as getting rid of a group of militant trade union reps and disabled staff on the team who had an incredibly high absence rate.
I protested that this was unfair but the response was "then leave and we will find someone who wil do it".
They went to considerable lengths to avoid any written communications on the subject and even in meetings would not say it explicitly in case someone was recording.
In the end they decided to reduce the headcount of the team, rewrite the job description to allow them to reasonably decline the staff they didn't want and then made everyone apply for the jobs so they could then make the rest redundant.
Essentially all kinds of dodgyness goes on with HR teams but this is normally at the request of management. They are pretty good about giving plausable deniability too.
I’m so sorry Mark. I have found disclosing only had negative consequences too. A lot of neurotypical people seem to have these stereotypes about autism and you’re then treated differently even when they claim to be inclusive. Everything I’ve gone for since disclosing autism, I haven’t even got to interview stage. I don’t understand why people aren’t treated as individuals, not everyone with autism is the same, and there are positive traits of autism too. I think I’m going to go down the not disclosing route in future
They wouldn’t need to, if you suspected foul-play and wanted to know for sure, as at a final straw you could Request Subject Access for any communication and decisions regarding yourself made since your disclosure, they wouldn’t be able to obfuscate the fact they had colluded behind your back in that instance.. I’d only recommend doing that if everyone has already got-their-claws-out as it were.. It is also OHT’s job to protect from lawsuits, so HR and OHT are often at odds, as is the operational branch..
sorry, I cannot teach you how corporate environment works.
An HR would never say "we are firing him because he is aspie". They will say something like: "we do not like his approach to work, it is disruptive", and the OHT would have absolutely nothing to say. Do you really think that an HR would be so naïve to say something that would give grounds to a massive lawsuits? The main scope of the HR is to protect the company from lawsuits, not to protect the employee.
Okay do you wanna provide a bit more context bit more information? What exactly do you think I’m wrong about?
One conversation between HR and the Occupational Health Therapist, would end a ‘cultural fit’ or ‘no aspies’ witch-hunt, the OHT would tell them that they are going the right-direction to a major-liability, if that don’t make every reasonable-adjustment available on request. Anybody who would ride that line into a disciplinary-hearing would be in for a short-sharp-shock. Hidden Disability is still a protected-characteristic..
You do not have a clue of what are you talking about.
Okay let me put it this way you cannot legally be sacked for not disclosing your disability. So unfair dismissal laws only kick in after two years. But the equality act will apply from the moment you are hired in fact aspects of it will apply before you are hired.
You can absolutely take your boss / ex boss to an employment tribunal for disability discrimination before two years. Of course proving it is another matter but you can still get the matter in front of an employment judge. In fact if you believe you’ve been unfairly discriminated against during the application process for a job you can still take an employer to employment tribunal even though you’ve never worked for them so long as the discrimination relates to your disability. Again when you get to the employment tribunal you do have to prove it.
that said proving these things is not as difficult as you might imagine. there is a funky standard of proof for discrimination cases. basically says if you can present enough evidence to make a kind of on the face of it argument And the employer doesn’t present any evidence at all The standard of proof is largely ‘well there’s something suss going on here and they haven’t done anything to try and prove it wasn’t so they're guilty.’
at least that’s my understanding, I am not a lawyer. but they did it that way to make sure that employers can’t get out of being accused of discrimination by just staying quiet and trying to bury evidence.
> You absolutely cannot be sacked for not disclosing your disability,
You have no idea of what you are talking about. If you have been in the workplace for less than 2 years you can be fired without any reason or explanation. HR will never tell you "we do not want aspies in the workplace", they will only tell you some bullcrap about "cultural fit" or something.
No, I am not going in management. I want to get in a higher tier tech position, but the management will not even consider you for advancement if you cannot kiss the right asses. I need a course in corporate ass kissing. I can mask well enough to pass in a cursory inspection, but I need a whole skillset if I want to be endorsed by an idiotic manager and a dumb *** from HR.
Yeah I’ve not heard of any companies that force people to attend work social events like Christmas party but if your company was then that’s probably going to be a reasonable adjustment given your situation
Judge Dredd said:I have seen how people are chosen for advancement, and it is 5% tech skills and 95% social skills.
Ah, my mistake. Sorry for misreading it.
Yes, you are right. To move up from being a techie you absolutely need an abundance of people skills, so this is what will hold you back now and will affect your ability to maintain a position elsewhere if you get a team leader / manager / project manager role elsewhere (assuming this is the progression you mean).
I had to read up loads on social skills to get into management in the first place as managing IT techies is like herding cats. You need to understand people and know how to motivate, sustain and discipline them in the right situations and for a long time I resisted this path.
You need to speak with everything from salesmen to accountants, office managers and other teams to get stuff done - meetings can sometimes take up all your working time and not leave you time to do your actual job.
This was long before my diagnosis so I had to try to learn like a neurotypical.
It can be incredibly stressful as you have to mask constantly and you have the management above you pushing for things to be done their way and techies below you telling you that is rubbish or unobtainable - you have to keep both sides placated while still getting the job done.
Its no coincidence that my first management position coincided with my hair falling out.
Are you sure you want to go down this route? I would advise caution.
As I said before, I already disclosed them the diagnosis and I became an untouchable. Sure as hell my chances of getting a promotion are about 0%, this is why I want to move to a different company.
>your autism will not affect your ability to work but the social aspect (which isn't really essential)
That's simply not true. I have seen how people are chosen for advancement, and it is 5% tech skills and 95% social skills.
Judge Dredd said:Have you ever worked in a corporate environment?
32 years in banking, tech and football.
For the last third of that I was an IT manager which were the toughest of my life - only at the very end I was diagnosed and that explained a lot of the struggles I went through.
Have you ever worked in a corporate environment?
Judge Dredd said:The HR accused me of "not being a good cultural fit"
I would give HR a copy of your diagnosis and ask for you to be recorded as disabled if you have already done this - this will stop them from being able to act on that as has happened to me before.
It may be worth writing to your manager and explain that your autism will not affect your ability to work but the social aspect (which isn't really essential) is a challenge for you and you would prefer to avoid this is at all practical.
There will inevitably be some interaction required so chosing to mask is inevitable, but by reducing the frequency of these events you should be much more able to tolerate them before needing to recharge after.
This is an area you can work on if you are interested - here is my recommended reading list:
Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism - Grandin, Temple, Barron, Sean (2017)ISBN 9781941765388
Social Skills for Teenagers and Adults with Asperger Syndrome - A Practical Guide to Day-to-day Life - Nancy J., Ph.D. Patrick (2008)ISBN 9781843108764
A lot of us can work much better when we understand the rules that are intuitive to neurotypicals so these guides help fill that gap and let us play the game on a more level playing field.
Hi Iain, thanks for the answer.
My issues were pretty standard autistic issues: I can function pretty well in a standard work environment, but I cannot perform in the required social environments for a corporate job. I can spend entire days without saying a word, I have no interest in socializing, and going to a "networking" event is just out. As you probably know, corporate job entails a lot of "networking" (brown nosing the right people). The HR accused me of "not being a good cultural fit", while some of my colleagues described me as "scary" even if I never spoke or interacted with them.
Not only are you not required to disclose The average HR department would prefer if you didn’t disclose at least not in your CV or interview. You absolutely cannot be sacked for not disclosing your disability, but not disclosing your disability may limit your ability to rely on certain protections if you have a discrimination lawsuit down the line.
in my personal opinion it’s best to disclose soon after you’ve got the job.
reasonable adjustments can include: