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A Comparison of the Experiences of Autistic and Non-Autistic Individuals Participating in a Corporate Internship Scheme.
Autistic individuals often face significant challenges to obtaining and maintaining meaningful employment – more so than other disability groups. Aside from the economic impact of this gap, failing to get autistic people into work likely has a negative effect on quality of life in a group of people who commonly have unique and valuable skillsets. In addition, those autistic individuals who are in full-time work are often in poorly paid, low-skill jobs that do not reflect their competencies. The UK autistic community has identified that understanding effective employment support is one of their top ten research priorities. Consequently, employers are beginning to offer paid work placement opportunities for individuals on the autism spectrum.
Objectives:
Our previous research examined the experiences of autistic employees and their co-workers on one such British scheme implemented by Deutsche Bank, a large global banking and financial services company. The research highlighted autistic interns’ meaningful contributions to the workplace, but a number of challenges to address. The question remains, however, to what extent these challenges are autism-specific or are inherent in starting a new role for all individuals alike. In the current study, we conducted a direct comparison of autistic and non-autistic individuals on the 2017-18 internship programmes at Deutsche Bank UK.
Methods:
Semi-structured interviews were carried out with intellectually able autistic (n=16, 1 female, 15 male) and non-autistic (n=15, 7 female, 8 male) interns (aged 18 to 36 years), and a subset of their hiring managers before the start of the programme and again immediately after its completion. Before commencing the programme, interviews focussed on previous employment experiences (interns) and expectations of the upcoming programme: opportunities, possible challenges and how they might address these challenges (interns and managers). Following the internship, interviews with both interns and managers focussed on their experiences of the internship: aspects that went well, issues that arose, and ways they were overcome.
Results:
Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and resulting data was analysed using thematic analysis. Analyses are on-going, however preliminary results suggest a number of differences between the experiences of autistic and non-autistic interns. For example, autistic interns more frequently raised the issue of anxiety in the workplace, compared with their non-autistic counterparts. This is supported by higher levels of self-reported mental health difficulties in the autistic interns when they entered the programme. Commonalities were also found, however, with all managers identifying that carefully matching job roles to intern skills is crucial for scheme success. In addition, all managers were enthusiastic about the schemes and willing to partake in future iterations.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that there are indeed autism-specific challenges, but that these may not surround core aspects of the condition. Instead, aspects such as mental health difficulties should be a key consideration for line-mangers looking to create more enabling environments for autistic employees. Further, while outcomes were overwhelmingly positive for autistic interns involved in this study, it remains to be seen if this would be the case for autistic employees recruited outside of a dedicated scheme.