What's so good about work?

Annie had a job at a PC superstore, but hated it: the manager shouted at her. She is hypersensitive to noise - shouting creates out of control anxiety in her, as well as attacking her confidence.

Colin works for a bank and despite being promised a change of shift that will bring him another £500 a month and reduce his very high stress levels, it has not happened yet. He gets to work two and half hours early to ensure he isn’t late, so has had no leisure time for years.

Ed worked in a play scheme until he left because he didn’t feel that he could fit in with the staff team. He has since applied for jobs on regular basis and doesn’t get interviews. He is planning to buy a house in Poland and move there, though he will lose his benefit income if he emigrates and has no form of income except earning.

Phil works in a computer game development company and feels that his contributions in meetings are never given enough attention. He lives alone, and is lonely, finding it hard to create intimacy

Gordon is in a company that is restructuring and is finding it difficult to find a place in the new structure, and so might lose his job. He is in danger of becoming unemployed, which would threaten his mortgage.

Harry is training as a bookkeeper but not finding work, not least because his benefits would be threatened if he were to begin earning. He is doing some voluntary work and continuing to live with his mum.

All these people have Asperger’s Syndrome. I know many others who just don’t work, of course, and yet almost all of them aspire to a conventional life in which they go to work every day.

So what’s good about work?

As you exit education, you are expected to get a job. If you do not, you are marginalized from social contact, economic success and the experience of making a contribution and achieving something.

Unemployment is not a good experience generally. What to do with all that spare time, whom to talk to, why bother getting up at all? Unemployment rates are linked to suicide rates. This seems to be linked to disappearing self-confidence, and it easy to see how employment gives you self-confidence.

One of the features of Asperger’s Syndrome is low self esteem, and of course it is easy to see that having a routine, regular people to mix with, tasks that you work though and complete and a sense of being linked in with a greater community and playing your part in its life are all factors that can bolster your positive feelings about yourself.

And yet (says the National Autistic Society) unemployment amongst people with autism generally stands at 94%, against a national rate of 2%. Many of these will have autism rather than Asperger’s, of course, and these figures only deal with those who are diagnosed – there are many people with this condition who have been miss-diagnosed or not noticed at all, so all figures are low estimates. Some of these people will have been left unsupported for so long that they will have suffered a breakdown and entered into the realms of those with mental ill health, and so will be very unlikely to be counted as Asperger’s. Others will just be unemployed for no reason, whilst others will be living at home, wondering why the world is passing them by. Also, of course, some will be working, without the understanding offered by a diagnosis, and may well be wondering why they don’t get promoted, why they just stay stuck in the same old job, underachieving under-earning and slowly losing their self confidence.

Of course it is not impossible to get or to keep a job, even if you have Asperger’s, but many do not manage to achieve this, and often this is for invisible reasons that may not be apparent even to the employers: the Aspie just doesn’t quite fit.

If Annie didn’t turn up at work because her boss had shouted at her the day before, she would be the one to blame. If Colin is unable to find the necessary assertiveness to go and see his supervisor and explain how stressful it is to be promised and let down and to spend all his waking hours connected to work, nothing will change, except his stress will accumulate. If he has time off because of this stress, it will be recorded in his personnel file. If Ed never calls to find out why he is not short-listed nowadays, he will never learn what he could change in his applications. None of this would appear to be the company’s fault, of course, but would, I think, be their responsibility.

Schools are required to differentiate the curriculum and its delivery to meet the special needs of each pupil – different specific strategies are required to ensure that a pupil with special needs is given access to the curriculum. Similarly, the spirit of the UK Disability Discrimination legislation is that employers should pay 'due regard to the promotion of equality for disabled people in every area of their work’. It is unlawful for employers to discriminate against disabled people for a reason related to their disability.
They must not be treated less favourably because of their disability. Employers are required to make reasonable adjustments to working conditions and the environment, and of course employees must not be victimised. The Act covers:

• Application forms
• Interview arrangements
• Proficiency tests
• Job offers
• Terms of employment
• Promotion, transfer or training opportunities
• Work-related benefits such as access to recreation or refreshment facilities
• Dismissal or redundancy.

These are all areas of employment that need to be dealt with clearly and fairly, and it seems that practice can fall below the aspirational level. The spirit of the law is that employers should do what they need to do in order to ensure that people with disabilities have an equal opportunity in their workplace, but it seems that this invisible disability can cause great difficulty to those who are affected as they strive to inhabit a niche in society.

Phil finds it hard to make his contribution in meetings, though he speaks – it is just that he feels he has made an incomplete contribution and could have said more. Maybe his colleagues could spend a little more time giving him space to formulate his thoughts.

Annie is dyslexic, as well as being hypersensitive to sensory information, and so written instructions are not the best way to direct her.

Gordon does not pick up social cues too well, and was interrupting people as they approached their publication deadlines in order to have an end of the day chat about his cats and the novel he is writing. Flexitime hindered him because not everyone was finishing their work at the same time as him. A simple conversation enabled me to help him in identifying how to spot a busy person (focus of attention, what was on their screen, papers on their desk, jacket still over the back of the chair) and the importance of leaving them alone.

Each person manifests Asperger’s differently, though of course they are all within the Triad of Impairment and can therefore be expected to have three sets of problems (communication, social and cognitive) which combine to create the syndrome, although some like Annie may have other conditions exiting in parallel to Asperger’s. It seems to me that we Neuro Typicals can be blind to many of these difficulties, and that the Aspies may either themselves be blind to the problem or too self-conscious to explore why things go wrong.

Of course there are many people with Asperger’s who have succeeded - I will never write an article like this without mentioning the positive side. Those we come across are the famous ones, and I would be sued if I mentioned Bill Gates, and disagreed with if I mentioned David Gilmore. However, Patrick Moore owns up, as I understand, does Thom York, and we can list a few who have passed on, such as L S Lowry, Andy Warhol, Einstein, Newton et al. These are exceptional people - perhaps Asperger’s can give you a greater ability to think outside the box.

This is an attribute that you could predict some people with Asperger’s would possess – unconstrained by social and emotional limitations that so many we NTs experience, they can become fearlessly creative (check out Robyn Steward at the links page). Also they are usually compliant with the rules - Colin gets to work two and half hours before he is due, has his breakfast close by and so ensures he is never late. He is also persistently accurate in his banking work because he is good at detail and will rise to the requirement that he gets it right.

If you need some bookkeeping, I have no hesitation recommending Harry, because he is so good with recording accurate detail. Also, given the right environment, they often have great concentration, needing to be reminded to take a break rather than being policed for hanging round the coffee machine too much. They are often more willing to take on repetitive tasks than the more distractable NT population and many of them understand computers as though they are family members.

So Aspies can be valuable employees with strengths in unusual areas, but many remain unemployed. The key thing that is missing so often is awareness. There is an assumption that people should be able to pick it up and just know what is expected of them, and a great resistance to being blunt and unequivocal. This works against the Aspie, who is likely to be low in self-confidence and overly eager to fit in, hence unlikely to assert his or her rights to support and differentiation. It also works against the employer, who is likely to overlook how working conditions and the environment could reasonably be adjusted.

I had a phone call with a mental health worker this week. The client has a sheltered job via learning disability services, which offers him occupation (albeit with people with whom he will not have much in common), and a nominal wage of a few pounds a week. He is developing a reputation for not following instructions and rudeness to the manager. The manager is turning down offers of training and support designed to help him to understand the client’s condition better, because he does not want to encourage the label of Asperger’s. I have no doubt he will find himself out of work soon. However, I also spent half an hour with Maggie, helping her to fold up copies of her CV so she could take them round all the theatres in London (lots!) in order to get a holiday job on a follow spot before she begins dance college later this year.