Accommodation and Compliance Series: Employees with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Social Skills:

People with ASD may have difficulty exhibiting typical social skills on the job. This might manifest itself as interrupting others when working or talking, difficulty listening, not making eye contact when communicating, or difficulty interpreting typical body language or nonverbal innuendo. This can affect the person's ability to adhere to conduct standards, work effectively with supervisors, or interact with coworkers or customers.

• Social skills on the job:
  • Provide a job coach to help understand different social cues
  • Provide concrete examples of accepted behaviors and consequences for all employees
  • Recognize and reward acceptable behavior to reinforce
  • Review conduct policy with employee to reduce incidents of unacceptable behavior
  • Use training videos to demonstrate appropriate social skills in workplace
  • Encourage all employees to model appropriate social skills
  • Use role-play scenarios to demonstrate appropriate social skills in workplace
• Working effectively with supervisors:
  • Provide detailed day-to-day guidance and feedback
  • Offer positive reinforcement
  • Identify areas of improvement for employee in a fair and consistent manner
  • Provide clear expectations and the consequences of not meeting expectations
  • Give assignments verbally, in writing, or both, depending on what would be most beneficial to the employee (e.g., use of visual charts)
  • Assist employee in assigning priority to assignments
  • Assign projects in a systematic and predictable manner
  • Establish long term and short term goals for employee
  • Adjust supervisory method by modifying the manner in which conversations take place, meetings are conducted, or discipline is addressed
• Interacting with coworkers:
  • Provide sensitivity training to promote disability awareness
  • Allow employee to work from home when feasible
  • Help employee "learn the ropes" by providing a mentor
  • Make employee attendance at social functions optional
  • Allow employee to transfer to another workgroup, shift, or department
  • Encourage employees to minimize personal conversation or move personal conversation away from work areas
  • Provide telework, or work-at-home, as an accommodation
  • Allow alternative forms of communication between coworkers, such as e-mail, instant messaging, or text messaging