Workplace coaching for autistic people
What does work-place coaching for Autistic people look like?
Back in 2014, in my first academic job as a researcher, my work computer got updated to Windows 7. With this update, I lost several accessibility features, the most important being able to change the background colour of the Microsoft applications from a harsh white to the aqua blue shade that helped me with reading. I asked IT repeatedly for help for almost six months but didn’t get any. I also worked in an office with two other researchers, and there were frequent phone calls and virtual meetings happening around me.
At this point, I still only had a diagnosis of Dyslexia. I tried and tried to get my work done, doing more and more in the evenings, until eventually my brain gave up and I literally could not make out the shape of letters on a page or screen and could not read at all after a very short time of looking at a book or screen. As someone who got paid to read and write, this was incredibly stressful. I took two weeks off sick and somebody must have recommended I contact Access to Work, but I can’t remember who.
On my return to work, when my boyfriend (now husband) fixed my computer, as IT still wouldn’t help me, I got moved into an office by myself which was bliss; I had the silence needed to be able to think. I also had my Access to Work assessment. I think the assessor may have been an educational psychologist by background, regardless she had real expertise in neurodiversity. Talking to her was so affirming; she understood the issues I was having and even suggested some things that might be difficult for me which I’d never have considered complaining about (hello, it’s Autism calling!), but which really took up space in my brain, reducing my ability to work. One of the suggestions, was ‘neurodiversity coaching;’ I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I was so petrified of breaking my brain again that I decided I’d do anything she asked.
A professional coach will listen to a person, assist them to identify their goals, and help develop an action plan to achieve them.
As a short side note, when the recommendation for my accommodations arrived, I was asked by the manager of my department which of the items “were really essential” as they “couldn’t afford all of it” as it was over £1,000. I pushed back and did get all of it, but how easily I could have ended up without the coaching which was so helpful to me, because of a bit of penny pinching from the enormous university I worked at, and where the cost of employing me for a week or two would easily have outstripped that £1,000. Anyway, at this point, I got my coaching! Over the years I’ve had three different coaches, which I’ll tell you about below.
It turned out that the neurodiversity coaching I received was generally external to the organisation I was working for. This is important when discussing sensitive situations – like managers who agree to reasonable adjustments but don’t put them in place – and allowed me to speak freely, without having to carefully navigate work-place politics when talking.
I mostly worked one-to-one in a private room with a coach, or online via zoom. The sessions themselves involved identifying challenges I was facing in the workplace related to being neurodivergent, and trying to find solutions for them, including how to describe my needs and suggested solutions to managers and even support workers. During one coaching session, my line manager came to the last coaching session I had, with the idea that they would learn about the strategies I needed to use to do my work. The qualifications of my coaches varied, with the most qualified having a doctorate in psychology, and I’m not sure if the others had particular qualifications in neurodiversity or coaching, but I guess they must have had something.
The first woman, back in 2014, was an academic and psychologist by background. We did lots of chatting about challenges I was facing – this included me having almost papered the entire wall of my office with summaries of research studies that I was desperately trying to combine when she first met me! Her approach was calm and gentle but we got to the important stuff.
When things were difficult for me to discuss because I wasn’t sure why things were difficult, she’d have an idea for an exercise we could do together to help me get to the answer – at one point I remember writing on post it notes and sticking them on different walls of a meeting room to help me get clarity.
The second coach came to me at another point of crisis, when I’d had a lot of discrimination in the workplace and felt very ostracised. When I reapplied to Access to Work, they unfortunately were not keen for me to use the same neurodiversity coach. I found the second coach’s approach a bit awkward; the handouts would have been equally suited to someone with a much lower reading ability and it felt like he was doing what he would do with anybody, rather than tailoring to the person in front of him. I also felt a bit like he didn’t believe me about what had been happening at work, which made it difficult to open up to him. I didn’t use all of the sessions I had available with him, because they did not feel particularly useful.
Moving to a new employer, fresh from a grievance about Disability discrimination, I was not in a good way when I met coach number 3. Unfortunately, similar to coach 2, it felt a bit awkward perhaps because I met her, and had my first meeting with her, alongside a HR rep.
I did not feel that she was able to understand or advocate for my now much more complex needs, as a wheelchair user with severe allergies as well as being Dyslexic and now diagnosed as Autistic.
This may have been because my employer was paying her organisation, who they had a long-standing relationship with, rather than her being funded independently by Access to Work to support me. This job ultimately failed too; the employer had agreed to a range of reasonable adjustments in place a few months before I started, but when I arrived to start work they weren’t put in place, and in over a year they never did manage to put in the adjustments they agreed to before I started the job; the entire experience was awful and coaching could not save it.
Again, in a rather fragile position, I moved to my current employer, Swansea University. Prior to starting, now understanding the process of how to get coaching, I put in an Access to Work application and requested to have coach 1 support me again. Fortunately my assessor agreed, and the coaching was again very useful for me. This was particularly important as I had a massive struggle with my new Access to Work funded support worker, who wasn’t able to meet my needs, and it was a very difficult situation to navigate. Again feeling very fragile, and worried about things going wrong, my coach supported me to write a job advertisement to find my next support worker, which fortunately went extremely well.
Without her support I think I would have given up and lost my funding for a support worker, who really is invaluable in negotiating the bureaucracy involved in working within a large organisation.
I’ve now been in this job for over a year and have a secure job for at least another 8 years, which has reduced my anxiety about needing to negotiate a new employer. I’ve also put in a request to Access to Work to fund some more coaching, as I start a new project in the autumn with a new team of 4 researchers to manage.
So, based on my experiences, I thought it would be helpful to write some tips to help you get the most out of coaching:
- SCOPE have clear guidance on how the Access to Work scheme runs and how to apply.
- If you are initially rejected for Access to Work – as I was at first as they incorrectly said I needed a new diagnosis of Dyslexia, when mine was diagnosed as an adult aged 23 – this is not a final decision, and it is worth trying again. The Citizens Advice Bureau can help you understand what additional information is needed and you can talk to them online (between 9am and 5pm) , rather than having to phone them.
- When you receive the paperwork from Access to Work which awards you coaching, it will usually recommend a few suppliers. I recommend asking for short meetings with each of the suppliers and picking the person who feels best suited to your needs (if they are not the cheapest provider, you may need to justify this to Access to Work). It is important to have someone who can see beyond your impairments and neurodivergence to your accomplishments, and who could easily envisage you building on those accomplishments, so you may wish to prepare some information about the challenges you are having or the things you would like to get out of coaching in advance.
- If none of these coaches feel like a good fit, you are able to find an alternative coach as long as they fit within the Access to Work budget. To be on the safe side, I recommend telling your Access to Work advisor about the provider, as new providers will have to complete some paperwork before they can get paid.
- If you aren’t finding the coaching valuable, it may be worth seeing if you can swap to a different coach. Many coaches claim for payment directly from Access to Work, so they would only claim for sessions that they have already undertaken.
- If you’ve run out of funding for coaching, but found it valuable, you can ask Access to Work for more coaching. You will need to say why, so prepare a reason, such as a change in your job; including different tasks, new people in your team, or anything leading you to feel dysregulated at work.
Dr Aimee Grant
August 2022
