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1. Introduction

AchieveAbility, a registered Charity focussed on supporting neurodivergent adults into education and employment, sent an online questionnaire to hundreds of neurodivergent people through all our communication channels during 2018 as part of our Westminster Commission. The purpose of the questionnaire was to explore neurodivergent experiences of employment, including those who are autistic. We were aided in this endeavour, in particular by Craig Kennady, who is an active member of both the Westminster Autism Commission and AchieveAbility’s. Over 600 people responded to the questionnaire, including 96 respondents who declared they were autistic. Perhaps, the most striking feature of the responses was the overlap between all forms of neurodivergence. In this paper, the intention is to drill down into the Westminster AchieveAbility Commission report, “Neurodiverse Voices; opening doors to employment” (Cooper et al., 2018), with particular reference to autistic employees. However, it should be recognised that there are few statistically significant variations in responses to the questions asked, no matter the nature of the neurodivergence. This could be partially explained by the overlaps (Section 4). Where there are statistically significant differences relating to the autistic sub-group, they are reported in this paper.

This paper will, therefore, consider:

  • Background and literature review.

  • Methodology.

  • Findings.

  • Nature of the overlaps in neurodivergence for our sample of autistic respondents.

  • Common experiences in the workplace.

  • Catch 22 of disclosure.

  • Some key recommendations for enabling access to autistic employees.

  • Recommendations for further research.

  • Conclusions.

1.1 Background and literature review

Autism in employment has been a feature of a number of research papers and other publications, particularly since the turn of the century (Garcia-Villamisar et al., 2000; Hagner and Cooney, 2005; Hurlbutt and Chalmer, 2004; Krege, 1999; Mawhood and Howli, 1999; Muller et al., 2003; Roux et al., 2013; Schuler et al., 2003; Unger, 2002; Van Wierena et al., 2008).

Available publications fall into three main categories:

  • Peer-reviewed academic papers, mainly concerned with the comparative outcomes of employment data and effective support strategies in the workplace.

  • Surveys by organisations such as the National Autistic Society (2016) and Autistic Not Weird (2020), both of which include neurodivergent voices and large samples.

  • Online advice about inclusive employment (The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, 2020; Prospect Union, 2020).

Many...

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