Autistic-friendly workplaces

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Here, in the thread Building the autistic community?, KenG called attention to the following:

* Ocate Cliffs

Yep we need more autistic-friendly workplaces, of as many different kinds as possible. I totally agree with the basic philosophy expressed on the above page:

On their "Solutions" page, they say:


I agree with this idea, but with the following caveats:

1) I'd like to see more for-profit cooperative businesses, not just nonprofits.

2) I think it would be fine, and in many cases probably necessary, to have some NT's involved in running these businesses. It is preferable that at least some autistic people be involved in running them too. Nevertheless, business management inherently has aspects that are very difficult for the vast majority of autistic people. Ditto for sales and marketing. So it will be difficult to find autistic people who can do a good job of all aspects of running the business. But we certainly need more businesses that make a point of creating an autistic-friendly work environment, regardless of who runs them.

3) In order for as many such businesses as possible to be started as soon as possible, most of them will need to be much less capital-intensive than Ocate Cliffs.

4) In order for such businesses to function well, we'll still need social skills training of some kind, though not the kind that tries to make us act exactly like NT's. We need the kinds of social skills that will enable us to get along with other autistic people of various kinds and with autistic-friendly NT's, but without requiring us to do things like imitate NT eye contact rhythms or imitate NT body language generally, or pick up on subtle hints, or socialize with our co-workers more than we need to or want to beyond what's necessary to do our jobs.

I'll have more to say about what I call "autistic-friendly social skills" in another thread.

Also, sometime later, in another post here in this thread, I'll post a list of other autistic-friendly workplaces I've accumulated info on so far.

Roses for Autism teaches workplace oriented social skills. If you want their job training you can't eat lunch by yourself.

Roses for Autism no longer exists apparently; its website now says:


Ability Beyond is an organization I should read up on; they have offices in Connecticut and in Westchester County, New York.

Some autistic-friendly workplaces mentioned in other recent Wrong Planet threads:

- Fashion company that hires autistics: quotes the Autism Parent Magazine article Autism Warrior: Angeline Francis Khoo Luxury Designer Empowers People With Special Needs With Training And Jobs, about Rosie On Fire.

- Company makes clothes for Autistics: quotes a since-vanished news article about Spectrum Designs.

See also the thread An alternative employment model for autistic programmers?

Here, in the thread Autistic-friendly social skills vs. blending in with NT's:

Actually I wasn't thinking primarily in terms of large corporations and government, although they would be important parts of the picture. I was thinking primarily in terms of an ecosystem of small businesses, similar to the ecosystems of small businesses that exist within immigrant enclaves and within insular religious communities and other large subcultures. These would include:

1) Small businesses founded by parents of autistic children, to employ their children and other autistic people.

2) Small businesses founded by autistic people, possibly with help from NT relatives.

Regarding large corporations: They're an important part of the picture, with appropriate incentives from the government, plus the knowledge that many HFAs excel at some kinds of tasks. There are already corporations that have such programs, and there's already a bunch of consultants out there advising companies on what they consider to be "best practices" for hiring autistic people. Some of the larger autism parent organizations are promoting these initiatives too. Although this is important, it's not my personal main interest; I personally am more interested in the small-business side of things.

As for government, another important area is civil service. See the separate thread on Civil service jobs.

I think an important step toward the creation of autistic-friendly workplaces would be for some people in the autistic community to build (with help from parent/family organizations) groups for autistic and autistic-like people in particular professions or job categories, or who aspire to same. For example:

(a) A group of programmers and aspiring programmers.
(b) A group for people who work, or want to work, in health-related professions.
(c) A group for people who work, or want to work, in civil service.

The existence of some of these groups would make it easier for autistic-friendly workplaces to recruit the kinds of workers they are looking for, and would thereby also make it easier for the groups' members to find work in autistic-friendly workplaces. The groups could even facilitate the creation of some autistic-friendly small businesses.

The proposed groups could also function as a support network for those members who have, or are seeking, jobs in traditional NT-dominated workplaces as well. In some cases (e.g. the group for civil service workers), the groups could collaborate with any disability-related support services offered by relevant labor unions, and/or could perhaps aid labor unions in the creation of said services.

Got it...so autistic affirmative work spaces...for social skills
1) Assertiveness (without being aggressive).
2) Active listening.
3) Giving and receiving constructive criticism.
4) Conflict resolution.

I would add

5) Basic written communication skills (grammar, punctuation & spelling)
6) comprehension
7) business writing skills (for example writing concisely)
public speaking
9) empathy and rapport
10) problem solving
11) emotional regulation
12) resilience to adversity

These would be, in my opinion, absolutely essential in all autistic-friendly workplaces. Given that many of us are bad at picking up on subtle hints and will always be bad at that no matter how hard we work on it, we need clear, explicit (yet tactful) communication.


All of these written communication skills are essential in many workplaces but not all, depending on the job. (For example, they probably aren't, or shouldn't be, required for TSA baggage screeners.) Nor would they be essential for car wash workers.


Also not required in all kinds of jobs, though certainly useful in some jobs. And some autistic people do happen to be much better at public speaking than they are at, say, cocktail party chit chat.


Yes, with the caveat that many autistic people may tend to express empathy and rapport in ways somewhat different from the ways NT's express them. (More about this later, in another thread.) In autistic-friendly spaces, including autistic-friendly workplaces, a variety of different ways of expressing empathy and rapport should be recognized and understood.


Definitely necessary in many jobs.


These are areas of weakness for many autistic people. While these are things we should individually try to improve, possibly with help from therapists, an autistic-friendly space, including an autistic-friendly workplace, needs to meet us halfway by making a point of being aware of, and accommodating/avoiding where possible, people's sensory overload triggers, information overload triggers, etc.

Examples of ways to avoid sensory triggers common among autistic people: (1) The workplace would NOT be a large open office. (2) The lighting would be something other than fluorescent. Probably some type of LED light would be adequate for most of us. Also, if possible, different rooms might have different intensities of lighting. (3) Workers would be asked to use unscented deoderant/anti-perspirant and not wear perfume.

Yeah I agree with your points.

The additional ones are still useful in terms of generic soft skills rather than hard core specialised skills that might be specific to particular job types.

What's interesting is that some sectors like the IT industry are becoming less concerned about paper qualification and more interested in capacity, job ready skills and task competency. This should be advantageous to autistic individuals who are unable to attend college but have these type of skills because of special interests....

But keep in mind that autistic people are more likely than the general population to have various learning disabilities, e.g. dyslexia. Hence, in an autistic-friendly workplace, it would be important not to discriminate against people who lack skills that aren't actually relevant to the specific job. For example, there's no good reason to require good writing skills for a job in which writing isn't actually needed.

It depends on i) the level they work and ii) the size of the organisation. Ad a general rule of thumb the higher you get promoted and the larger the organisation you work for the more likely you will have to produce i) instructional documentation and ii) memos iii) briefs iv) reports

Even a low level "grunt" working in IT requires the ability to i) communicate concisely ii) with precision and iii) comprehend garbled messages from a boss (many of whom don't want to explain things twice)

The latter iii) is basically the application of business writing which is to deconstruct a message and reformulate it in your own words (whether it be done on paper or in your head)

In my experience the software world at least has been moving partially away from this. I got my first programming job in the nineties after growing up with computers, and I'm still writing software professionally a dozen jobs later. My experience agrees with your description that college degrees aren't strictly necessary and people can sometimes get by on special interests. But I've found work environments have been getting progressively less and less accessible. Businesses can save money on open floor plans without any walls, so they're much noisier and visually busier than they were, with less protection from overwhelming distractions. Additionally a lot of new technologies make it easy to prototype a system but not any easier to build a solid, high-quality system. A lot of businesses don't know the difference, and prototypes are much less expensive, so a lot of businesses end up expecting very quick turnaround on vague features, constantly shifting priorities, and low-quality hacked-together systems that need a lot of interruptive emergency maintenance. It can be pretty frustrating and exhausting if you just want to focus on a complex system and make it work well.

Maybe others have different experiences. If so, maybe let me know where you're working and if you're hiring

It's not my field, although my brother's a software engineer, his big issue with the job market is outsourcing. Basically somebody in India can do his job for 1/5 of the cost. The way he stays employable is maintaining exceptional communication skills (written and verbal) with clients and with bosses. Client relations is the only thing that keeps a lot of Australian IT companies from completely off-shoring or outsourcing



Good luck with the job hunting

Some other examples of an autistic friendly workplace are described in the following threads:

- British Hotel for Autistic guests with Autistic staff, about The Vault, owned and operated by the St. Camillus Care Group.
- Two Wellington Hotels Seeking Autistic Staff - for some reason the hotels themselves (in New Zealand) are not named in this news story, which does mention Altogether Autism and Specialisterne Australia
- Not Your Typical Deli - Autistic staff, about a deli named Not Your Typical Deli, apparently in Arizona.
- The firm whose staff are all autistic and Auticom - Recruitment firm for Autistic talent, about Auticon.
- Alberta firm Meticulon selling autistic job strengths

Another relevant thread about the basic idea: Autistic-only or primarily autistic firm.

A good, relevant thread from back in 2010: Why we need to start and promote autism-friendly businesses.

An interesting thread just now popped up: Specialisterne. Several other threads about Specialisterne are linked at the bottom of that page.

Hmm. What would you call a company which specifically hired autistic people because of their particular strengths - not for psuedo-jobs or to fill quotas or get some PR-friendly articles out of it, but because there were genuine specialist jobs which AS people were, bluntly, more profitable at?

If such a company could simply point to raw numbers and say "Well of course we're going to tweak the physical workplace and the whole working experience to retain these people because Finance says it's worth it to do so," would that be merely autistic-friendly, or would a better description be something a little more aggressive like pro-autistic or autistic-focused?