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Employers not understanding my autism

Creativemum

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.

Parents
  • Creativemum said:
    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.

Reply
  • Creativemum said:
    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.

Children