How to work with colleagues with novelty and spiky profiles

This post is written by Helen Jeffries, Deputy Director, Refugees at the UK Department of Health and Social Care and autism advocate.

• The problem: Non-disabled people make assumptions about what “should” be easy and hard for disabled colleagues.
• Why it matters: Once a disabled person has found something that “should be easy” difficult, colleagues imagine everything is too hard for them.
• The solution: Listen to what disabled colleagues say and ask for. Really believe that what’s easy and hard for them may be different to what’s easy and hard for you.

Autistic people struggle with change, so changing jobs must be a nightmare - right? Well, yes and no. I’ve recently moved roles from a very challenging, fast-paced, high profile and enjoyable job on Covid in the UK Cabinet Office to an equally challenging and enjoyable job working on refugee healthcare in the Department for Health and Social Care. When I talked to a colleague about my impending job move, they were immediately kindly concerned about how the change would affect me. A shift of department, subject matter, taking on new responsibilities, meeting new people – that must all be hugely difficult for an autistic person? Making the move certainly had some difficult and scary moments, but not necessarily the ones you (or they) would have expected. Let me explain…

As an autistic person, I have rather heightened senses – I’m easily distracted by noises, lights, smells and unfamiliar surroundings, and sometimes I can’t tune out those things enough to be able to think clearly. To me, a full, noisy, open-plan office can be as difficult to work in as a nightclub or a Premiership football match might be to you (I imagine: I’ve never been in a nightclub or a premiership football match, as I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to bear it!) As an autistic person, I also have a heightened startle reflex – I’ll “jump out of my skin” much more easily than most, so I value predictable surroundings without surprises. The importance of my sensory surroundings makes me want to control my environment as much as possible.

Finding solutions

In my old job, I had a fixed desk in a quiet area with my back to a wall, so that I wouldn’t be distracted by people moving around behind me. Changing jobs, I was extremely worried about where I would sit. Being in the middle of a bank of desks would be quite physically distressing, but uncertainty from day to day about what my surroundings would be like if I were hot desking would be even worse. Luckily, when I explained about my disability to my new colleagues, they were very kind and helpful and arranged for me to have a fixed desk in a quiet corner of the office. I’m still distracted when the office is packed but it’s the best solution that’s available. Having that certainty of physical location sorted out dealt with the single biggest cause of stress I had in changing jobs.

Having that certainty of physical location sorted out dealt with the single biggest cause of stress I had in changing jobs.

I explained what I’ve just said to my colleague – yes it’s scary to change departments, but getting my fixed desk sorted was a big breakthrough and a huge help. The colleague then looked even more concerned – surely if desk location (something that’s really not very important) was a huge deal for me, then having to learn a new job must be almost impossible? That was a great moment of realisation. For a neurotypical (in this context = not autistic) person, there is a fairly well-established ranking of how much stress something will cause. “New boss” and “new responsibilities” rank much higher than “new desk” or “new office”. I also have my personal ranking of sources of stress but it’s not the same. All autistic people are different from each other but there are some themes, and unpredictable, unfamiliar surroundings are generally not good for us. On the other hand, many of us can use our visual thinking, good memory for information and deep concentration to learn a new subject fairly quickly. So for me, I would much rather change role than change desk. It seems mad doesn’t it, but it’s true.

The autistic brain

Why have I gone into all this furniture-based explanation? Because I want to highlight the point that autistic brains are different and we honestly can react quite differently to neurotypical people. Something that’s easy and unimportant for you can be hugely challenging for us, and vice versa. It’s all too easy to make assumptions about what someone can do from one data point – Helen can’t do X easy thing, so she’s really unlikely to be able to do Y difficult thing. But that doesn’t hold good for autistic people.

Autistic brains are different and we honestly can react quite differently to neurotypical people.

We have a thing referred to as a “spiky ability profile”, meaning we have spikes of ability that aren’t consistent. One autistic person might be a highly skilled professional but completely unable to run their personal life, or a brilliant communicator at work and speechless down the pub. It’s all too easy to write us off when you’ve seen something we’re bad at because you assume we’ll be consistent with that inability, but we’re not. Imagine a chef who couldn’t boil an egg – they’d be a pretty rotten chef, right? Not necessarily. They might be able to produce a brilliant cordon bleu meal, and they might work in a kitchen where they never actually needed to boil an egg. Autistic professionals can be like that with unexpected peaks and troughs of ability that they’ve learned to work around.

So when an autistic person tells you what they need and it seems incredibly basic to you – don’t assume that all their needs will be on that level. Give them what they need to function (in my case a fixed, quiet desk) and they may be able to do extremely sophisticated and effective things for your organisation.

👋 You can create a post like this one! Share your thoughts with a community of public servants. Learn more

(Image Credit: Unsplash)