Back Universities found that autistic students and graduates often struggled in gaining employment or work placements. This led to the development of the ‘Aspie-Friendly Company Charter’, developed by 20 French universities. The charter works with both public and private sector employers and has so far been joined by more than ten companies, including Microsoft France.
NB: The word “Aspie” refers to Asperger Syndrome and is a commonly used French term to refer to autistic people. It is widely accepted by the French-speaking autistic community.
What does the charter offer?
The charter offers support to employers in the form of autism specific training, which has been found to improve the employers’ understanding of autism. This training means autistic employees feel better understood, they can focus on their job, make requests for environmental changes e.g. lighting or a quiet environment and generally concentrate on their jobs better.
The charter also connects autistic students and the employers, identifying the positions that the students could apply for, offering support to students with the recruitment process and offering them support once they have been recruited.
Reception of the charter
Companies were eager to join the charter, as they were able to understand that innovation comes from diversity, and although there may be some barriers when employing autistic people, these can easily be overcome with understanding, mentoring and the right working environment.
The development of the ‘Aspie-Friendly’ charter has received praise from both employers, who have had great pleasure from working with autistic colleagues, and autistic people who have managed to secure work (in one case, someone who had never been employed before despite completing their PhD 20 years ago!).
The future of the ‘Aspie-Friendly’ charter is promising, with the hope to develop training materials that are easily accessible for anyone who wishes to recruit an autistic employee and to work with the national administration in France to improve the recruitment of autistic graduates.
Tips for current students and graduates
- Don’t “mask” your autistic traits as it can be really exhausting and have a detrimental effect on your health. It may also give other people a skewed impression of who you really are.
Tips to share with lecturers
- Inform yourselves about autism. Access training opportunities offered by national or regional autism organisations (see the resources section of the Good Practice Guide for Employers).
- Seek out and make industry links with employers who are eager to have a neurodiverse workforce – create opportunities to link these employers to your neurodiverse students and graduates.
Tips to share with employers
- Inform yourselves about autism. Access training opportunities offered by national or regional autism organisations (see the resources section of the Good Practice Guide for Employers).
- Reflect on how your organisation is functioning, especially your recruitment process, and check whether an autistic person has the same chance of being employed by you as anyone else.
- Don’t think about inclusion as a constraint; inclusion will improve your work
- Diversity is an advantage, a diverse workforce can be facilitated in a number of ways e.g.
- Posting job advertisements in different places e.g. diversity specific job websites
- Highlighting your commitment to diversity on your company website
- Having a diverse interview panel
- Training recruiters on unconscious bias.