According to a recent study by Drexel University, 58 percent of young adults with autism are unemployed. And yet, many of them have skills that businesses are looking for. “This program leverages the skills that people with high functioning autism often have: looking at data, dealing with mathematical concepts, attention to detail, the ability to focus over long periods of time, and looking at large bodies of information and spotting anomalies,” explains Lori Golden, EY Abilities Strategy Leader who led the pilot program. Right now, EY’s program has four employees who work as accounting-support associates.
EY recruited the candidates, and adjusted its training and onboarding processes to become more comfortable for individuals on the autism spectrum. In addition to regular training, Golden says that EY provided hands-on training during which employees in its neurodiversity program could watch work happen in real-time as part of job training. In turn, the program has also resulted in some thoughtful reflection from the company’s managers. “One thing that happened that I thought was really interesting was that, as our supervisors went through training these individuals everyday, they stopped and asked ‘Can this be improved? Are we communicating the right way?’” says Golden. What EY found was that having colleagues with autism challenged the office’s status quo, and made it easier to broach questions about whether or not communication and management strategies were effective and logical.
“It’s a relatively new thing … but I would say it’s gaining momentum,” says Rob Austin, a business school professor at Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario, of the growing interest in recruiting neurodiverse employees. “One of the things that companies are discovering is that there are benefits that they did not anticipate.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member