Creating a diversity climate in the workplace: A mixed methods study into knowledge of autism and attitudes toward hiring autistic people in the United Kingdom

1 Introduction

Unemployment among autistic 1 adults is identified as a ‘crisis’ in the United Kingdom and beyond (Romualdez et al., 2021 : 2). This is even more pronounced in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, which exacerbated pre-existing economic inequalities for this group (Taylor et al., 2021; Goldfarb et al., 2021). Estimates suggest that 80% of autistic people worldwide are unemployed (Ki-moon, 2015) and the total employment rate of autistic people across the European Union is reported to be as low as 10% (Bunt et al., 2020). In the United Kingdom, the Buckland Review of Autism Employment (2024) confirmed that autistic adults have the lowest employment rate of any disabled group, with only 29% in work (ONS, 2022) and autistic university graduates consistently experiencing the poorest employment outcomes of any disabled group (Vincent and Ralston, 2023; AGCAS, 2024). In the United States around 38% of autistic adults are reported to be in paid work (Roux et al., 2016), in Canada rates are only 14.3%, and in Australia this is just 28% (Nicholas et al., 2019). Even in nations with greater emphases on social inclusion, like Sweden, only 56% of autistic people are in employment (Black et al., 2019). Such figures are even more disheartening given that evidence suggests that many autistic adults have both the requisite skills to work, including cognitive, spatial, and artistic ability as well as personal characteristics including honesty, reliability, trustworthiness, and persistence (Krieger et al., 2012; Perreault et al., 2011; Taylor & Seltzer, 2011) and a strong desire to work (Anderson et al., 2015).

Various studies identify deficits in employer knowledge of autism as a primary external factor underpinning poor employment outcomes (Black et al., 2019; Davies et al., 2023; Diener et al., 2020; Johnson et al., 2020; Mai, 2019; McMahon et al., 2021; Scott et al., 2019; Teindl et al., 2018). Dreaver et al. (2020) report a need for increased knowledge among line managers and colleagues, particularly with respect to two-way communication, providing instructions, adjusting work environments, and allocating tasks and roles that make use of autistic employees’ unique skills and abilities. Evidence suggests that employers tend to focus on the repetitive or negative behaviors rather than the individual’s potential and capabilities (Hatfield et al., 2017; Johnson et al., 2020; Mai, 2019; McMahon et al., 2021) and hold more negative perceptions about the costs involved in employing autistic people (Scott et al., 2017). Mai’s (2019) study of N = 212 hiring agents serving medium-sized organizations (50–249 employees) across the United States reports that these professionals tend to believe that autistic employees would embarrass the organization when interacting with the public or co-workers and are less productive and dependable compared to non-autistic candidates. Similar findings are also reported in the UK where 50% of employers admitted that they would not employ a neurodivergent person (Institute of Leadership & Management, 2020).

There are, however, strong associations between previous experience of hiring disabled people and greater interest in future hiring (Anderson et al., 2015; Flower et al., 2021; Scott et al., 2019; Teindl et al., 2018) and there is evidence of successful employment experiences in healthcare, retail, hospitality, warehousing, education, and government departments although this work tends to be low wage and shorter-term contracts (Austin & Pisano, 2017; Frank et al., 2018). Large multinationals in technology and finance, including Microsoft, SAP Software and Solutions, Deutschebank, and JPMorgan Chase, have also recognized the potential of autistic employees and launched specific recruitment programs to draw on this talent pool (Johnson et al., 2020; Skibell, 2017). Studies report that where companies do employ autistic people, the impact is typically positive (Nicholas et al., 2019; Pfeiffer et al., 2018) and that these employees can make novel and creative contributions to the work environment and improve workplace morale (Scott et al., 2017).

2 Materials and methods

To date, much of the evidence regarding knowledge and perception of autism in the workplace has been reported through qualitative studies (e.g., Dreaver et al., 2020; Bury et al., 2021; Nicholas et al., 2018; Vincent 2020) and case studies (Johnson and Joshi, 2016). These important exploratory studies, however, invite further data about organizational contexts using validated instruments (Vogus and Taylor, 2018) and mixed methods (Bury et al., 2021). To this end, an exploratory sequential research design was adopted in this mixed methods study (Creswell and Plano Clark 2011), where the quantitative strand occurred first in the form of an electronic survey and was followed up a qualitative strand, by way of semi-structured interviews among a subset of participants. The survey and interview schedules were developed in collaboration with an advisory group, which included autistic and neurotypical people.

Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Institutional Ethics Committee at the first author’s institution at the time. All participants provided informed consent by choosing to agree with the information about the study prior to beginning the survey and no identifying data were collected. All survey data were collected through Qualtrics and then downloaded and stored electronically on a password-protected drive.

The survey consisted of four sections. The first section queried participants’ demographic background, professional responsibilities, and experience of or diagnosis of autism. Following other studies, the second section began with a self-assessment of knowledge of autism (McMahon, Stoll and Linthicum, 2020; Vincent and Ralston, 2020) and in this case used a scale of 0–100, where 0 reflects poor levels of knowledge and 100 reflects complete knowledge of autism. Next, with reference to RQ1, the Autism Stigma & Knowledge Questionnaire (ASK-Q) was used to measure multiple subdomains of autism knowledge using four subscales: (i) diagnosis, (ii) etiology, (iii) treatment, and (iv) stigma (Harrison et al., 2017a). Following Nicholas et al.’s (2019) recommendation for more robust instruments, this 48-item measure possesses high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.88) and strong reliability for each of the four subscales (range: 0.93–0.98) using a reliability metric similar to test-retest derived from Diagnostic Classification Model (DCM) analysis (Harrison et al., 2017b). As well as knowledge of autism, the ASK-Q includes a stigma subscale within which each item is considered complex and related to each of the knowledge subscales to indicate stigmatizing beliefs. Each correct response is scored as one point, with the following cutoff score ranges reflecting adequate knowledge for each subscale: Diagnosis/Symptoms 11–18, Etiology 11–16, and Treatment 10–14 (Yu, Stronach and Harrison, 2020). The stigma endorsement subdomain was reverse-scored such that higher scores (3–7) demonstrate more positive attitudes and lower scores (0–2) indicate stigma endorsement. The third section of the survey responded to RQ2 and included items on hiring attitudes and the final section, focused on RQ3, in eliciting information about the nature of professional settings through open-ended questions. At the end of the survey participants were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview.

A purposive sampling strategy was employed to recruit UK-based industry professionals through online mailing lists, social media platforms, and UK-based industry networks including the Chartered Institute of Professional Development and Chambers of Commerce. In total, N = 139 survey responses were received, however, N = 38 responses were excluded either due to incomplete data or being resident outside of the United Kingdom.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted by the first author among nine professionals in the United Kingdom. Seven identified as female and two male and represented a range of industries including management consultancy, environmental science, tourism, retail, the charity sector, data analysis, education, and journalism. Seven out of the nine had some responsibility for recruitment and hiring decisions and four participants had previous experience of hiring an autistic person. One participant identified as autistic and one was a parent of an autistic adult, which also reflects the range of experience from the survey. It is recognized that the sample is likely skewed towards those with an interest in supporting autistic people. Interviews lasted between 60–90 minutes and specifically sought to investigate RQ3 and RQ4 in seeking to determine what participants perceived as the barriers and solutions to employment for autistic people. Interviews were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed.

All quantitative analyses used SPSS version 26. Data were pro-rated to deal with any missing values. The dataset was checked for linearity using scatterplots and distribution normality using the Shapiro-Wilk test. This revealed the ASK-Q total scores and all four ASK-Q subscales were not normally distributed (p < .001), therefore non-parametric tests were used throughout. However, a one-way Analysis of Variance was still considered appropriate as ANOVAs are typically robust to violations of normality (Schmider et al., 2010) and a Levene’s test for this analysis indicated equal variances (p > .05). The dataset was not checked for outliers because they were likely to reflect the experiences of autistic participants, as 11% of the sample identified as autistic. Therefore, it was decided that all outliers would be kept in the analysis. Where multiple correlations were run, an alpha level of.01 was set as an attempt to avoid any Type I errors.

The qualitative data analysis followed the principles outlined by Fereday and Muir-Cochrane (2006). After thorough reading of transcripts to identify meaning and patterns within the data, the first author identified initial codes and pertinent concepts at the semantic level, guided broadly by the research questions. Following this, the first two authors discussed the codes to reduce potential bias and generated higher order categories; this involved the grouping together of recurring codes and assigning to these succinct phrases to describe their meaning. Through consensus, categories were clustered into four themes which were scrutinized by both authors to ensure clarity and coherence in relation to the dataset in full. Finally, data extracts were selected as illustrative of the themes but also as authentic representations of the rich accounts elicited from the participants (see Table A in the Supplementary Materials for the categories and themes).

3 Results

Table 1 shows the main demographic and employment characteristics of the sample.

4 Discussion

Together these mixed data provide depth and breadth for understanding workplace knowledge and perceptions of autism in the UK. The quantitative element, based on the ASK-Q, provides important evidence regarding levels of knowledge using a robust validated measure and so offers more concrete evidence in this regard (Nicholas et al., 2019; Dreaver et al., 2020; Vogus and Taylor, 2018). The qualitative data complement these with rich accounts of the perceived barriers and opportunities that exist in a range of large and small companies across the UK. Rather than specifically targeted at employees with prior experience of hiring autistic adults or involved in specialized employment programs (Bury et al., 2021; Harkry et al., 2022; Hedley et al., 2017), these findings reflect knowledge and attitudes of professionals in typical workplace settings and so might inform employment practices more generally. The sample was not large, however, and perhaps under-representative of various sectors often associated with autistic employment, including science, technology, and engineering (Vincent and Ralston, 2023) and, thus, conclusions can only be made tentatively.

Our survey data uncover autism knowledge scores judged to be adequate overall with a lack of stigma endorsement. In this way our data concur with that of Nicholas et al. (2019) who also report inclusive attitudes among their sample involved in a Canadian job readiness initiative although in the case of this study, our sample was drawn from those without specific experience of supported employment. Importantly, the workplace was recognized as a significant site of contact for gaining knowledge of autism compared to social networks and is in line with wider evidence that suggests that improving levels of knowledge among managers and colleagues can promote positive disclosure experiences, foster understanding, and lead to greater acceptance of autism (Davies et al., 2023; Dreaver et al., 2020; Flower et al., 2021; Harkry et al., 2022; Nicholas et al., 2019; Romualdez et al., 2021; Teindl et al., 2018). However, our interview participants draw the important distinction between knowledge of autism and understanding, recognizing gaps in the latter that often lead to poorer attitudes and fewer employment opportunities. Similar to Mai’s (2019) study, some participants reported stigmatizing and, at times, dehumanizing attitudes which served to actively exclude autistic people from the workforce. Such responses reflect the ‘double empathy problem’ (Milton, 2012; p.885) which posits that ‘disjunctures in reciprocity’ occur in ‘cross neurotype’ interactions between autistic and neurotypical people. The ‘empathy’ problem is bi-directional where – in this case – the neurotypical hiring manager fails to understand the autistic person as much as the autistic job candidate may struggle to navigate the socially-mediated context of the job interview.

Our data found significantly higher levels of autism knowledge where participants (or their companies) had knowingly employed a person on the autism spectrum compared to those who had not. This finding is in line with wider evidence that suggests that improving levels of knowledge among managers and colleagues can promote positive disclosure experiences, foster understanding, and lead to greater acceptance of autism (McMahon et al., 2021; Nicholas et al., 2019; Dreaver et al., 2020). At a more practical level, disclosure can also provide legal protections to autistic employees and open up access to adjustments such as flexible working hours and changes to the physical work environment (Romualdez et al., 2021). Qualitative data in our study reflect what Vogus and Taylor (2018) describe as a ‘diversity climate’ where under-represented employees are better integrated and valued in the workplace. This was represented through examples of championing autistic people in the workplace, seeking out opportunities to offer additional support, and developing positive discourses among the non-autistic workforce. Frazier et al. (2017) argue that transformational leadership such as this is instrumental in creating inclusive environments which can increase work engagement and the psychological safety necessary for interpersonal risk-taking in the workplace. However, future studies could investigate more longitudinally whether increased understanding of autism and greater inclusion improves recruitment rates for autistic applicants.

Finally, we identified perceived barriers and drivers with respect to employing autistic people. The main perceived barrier was the job role itself. Social challenges, such as difficulties around social interaction and implicit communication have been highlighted in other studies (Bury et al., 2021; Davies et al., 2023; Waisman-Nitzan et al., 2021). However, perceiving inflexibility or unexpected change as job role barriers may undermine their capacity to act as strengths for some autistic employees; for instance, through excellent detail-oriented memories and high levels of persistence, loyalty and precision (Brinkert and Remington, 2020; Remington & Fairnie, 2017). The second most frequent barrier was lack of knowledge about autism or workplace adjustments. This is interesting, given the positive levels of self-reported and measured knowledge through the ASK-Q and might reflect the aforementioned disjuncture between awareness of the clinical traits related to autism and understanding of the best practices to support autistic people in the workplace (Nicholas et al., 2019; Vincent and Ralston, 2020). It is likely that the perceived risks that hiring managers face stem from this lack of understanding. Our findings, thus, suggest that workplace training, informed by autistic experts-by-experience, and delivered at all levels is crucial for identifying the strengths of autistic employees, removing recruitment barriers, implementing workplace accommodations, and increasing understanding of autism.

5 Conclusions

This mixed methods study indicates that adequate levels of knowledge are not enough to lead to inclusive employment. The qualitative findings unpack, through more nuanced discussion, how hiring autistic people can be beneficial for developing understanding among organisations, recognising neurodivergent strengths, and increasing the likelihood of future employment opportunities. The findings, thus, invite us to consider how more routes into employment, including funded placements, internships, and initiatives that actively recruit autistic people, might be generated for autistic people in order to showcase their skills and capacities. This notwithstanding, barriers persist in relation to training needs to make job roles more suited to autistic people and developing greater empathy among colleagues to create a ‘diversity climate’. The findings, overall, signal that knowledge of autism is necessary but not sufficient and ought to be expanded alongside the development of more inclusive workplaces and society.