Employers not understanding my autism

My daughter has a problem where the employer doesn't understand how autism impacts her drive to the office.

Traffic is unpredictable and often awful making my daughter late. She leaves plenty of time to travel  but can still have problems.

Employer has told her to check Google maps every day then chose different routes dependant on each days traffic. Also suggested using a mixture of driving and public transport.

All of this plus increases to required office attendance causes a build up of stress and anxiety.

I think all this is completely unreasonable. She's good at her job and valued in the workplace, but it seems there is a complete lack of understanding where ASD is concerned.

Can she get them to make reasonable adjustments like reducing office attendance, sticking to fixed schedules, and making allowances or enabling discrepancies in attendance to be made up at the end of shift for example?

I can't stand seeing her so upset, when she has such a good work ethic and hates confrontation.

  • You can ask for reasonable adjustments like different start and finish times and home working. By law the employer must consider. If they refuse, the employer must provide a valid explanation as a justification. If not they leave the door open for discrimination claims.

    It all sounds so easy but in my case has led to effectively ending my career and after a number of months and years still no further forward.

    Some employers are good but some are woeful. Even with the support of occupational health and employer can ignore their recommendations. The only recourse is legal.

  • I have reasonable adjustments at work. They're due to my bipolar rather than autism (because I've only recently been diagnosed autistic). I work adjusted hours 7am-3pm and only go into the office on Friday. This has been my work pattern for nearly 10 years and I kept access to the office all through covid. Suddenly post covid they insisted everyone had to be in 2 days. I simply got my manager to do a referral to Occupational Health who talked to me for about an hour then wrote up a recommendation that I keep the same work pattern I had pre-covid and they accepted it. Really easy!

    Re traffic issues, would an earlier or later start/finish time be a solution if they're wedded to office attendance?

  • What about the fact that when she was taken on there was less office time, and a new higher boss has now decided to change this?
    Can she legitimately challenge that aspect?

    The working from home situation was largely based around the covid pandemic so it was only ever intended as a temporary solution - this is the line the company will take unless it is written into her contract.

    All staff will be required to comply as well so it is not as if they are singling her out for this treatment which will make it harder to claim as discrimination.

    All she can do is carefully read her contract, work out what sort of solution would be certain to work for her and find a way to request this without it being seen that she is getting preferential treatment.

    The flexible working schedule is something she can ask for so long as she can do her job just as effectively. For example is she is part of a team and her absence for a few hours at the start of the shift would disadvantage the team then it isn't reasonable to ask for.

    In her shoes I would speak to the HR department and make sure they know she is autistic and ask for their procedure for requesting reasonable adjustments so you can at least draft up some ideas she can discuss with her manager.

    Keep it positive - i.e. highlighting the improved timekeeping, the reduced stress and (if working from home more often) what additional responsibilites can be taken on to compensate for the preferential treatment.

    Public transport could be an option but if there are multiple connections required then it probably isn't any more reliable. The trains also became so expensive that it may not be cost effective.

    I suspect relocating would be the only effective solution if there is no flexibility from the company, or looking for another job much closer to home.

  • You're right that's not what I had hoped to hear.
    What about the fact that when she was taken on there was less office time, and a new higher boss has now decided to change this?
    Can she legitimately challenge that aspect?
  • Can she get them to make reasonable adjustments like reducing office attendance, sticking to fixed schedules, and making allowances or enabling discrepancies in attendance to be made up at the end of shift for example?

    In a word, no.

    She can ask and they can consider this request but there is little legal backing to force them to do so. There is a good explanation from ACAS on how these work:

    https://www.acas.org.uk/reasonable-adjustments

    Their repsonse to her commute issues could simply be to say "move closer to the office and it won't be a problem".

    While this is mostly disheartening, they are not responsible for where she chooses to live and the challenges she has to get to the office so the law won't necessarily be on her side if she chooses to push for this as a reasonable adjustment.

    They are responsible for the working environment when she gets there and this is where the majority of the accomodations are made.

    Would she consider moving closer to work? It is something I have done a few times in my career when I really wanted the job.

    There is so much competition for position these days that I suspect they won't have a problem to replace her so I suspect she will need to be the one making changes to be in a better headspace to be productive when in the office.

    Sorry it isn't the answer I suspect you wanted to hear.