Employer case study – Investment bank

We spoke with the manager of a tier 1 investment bank, about their recently initiated internship scheme specifically for autistic people who are looking for employment.

Their skills balance the team, they cover a gap in cognitive thinking

What is the background to your autism internship scheme?

Over a year ago, our managing director became interested in launching our internship scheme after listening to a radio programme about employing autistic staff. Since then, we’ve worked with over twenty autistic interns in our bank’s many worldwide offices. Currently, each office has its own approaches to the initiative, but we plan to unify their methods in the near future. As a part of our programme, interns have the opportunity to experience what it is like to work in an office environment, interact with co-workers and go through a typical workday. This is a great opportunity for autistic people to practice their skills and prove their capabilities. We’ve had demonstrable success in helping autistic people build their confidence in the workplace. The two interns who have worked with our London office have both gone on to find permanent employment, one of them was offered a permanent post after their internship.

What is the structure of the internship?

The internship spans twelve weeks. We extended it from an initial ten weeks and are currently discussing whether to lengthen it even further. The internships presently cover only technical roles, but there is the possibility for expanding into other roles in the future. Despite this technical focus, the skills the interns develop are transferable and applicable to other positions and fields. Our internships are based in a single department, but the interns have the opportunity to shadow co-workers in other departments, go to meetings and engage with shareholders. The internship is used as a work trial and interns are recruited to specific vacancies. There is no guarantee of a permanent role although this is a possibility. All interns will have valuable experience of a work environment which they can apply elsewhere at the end of the internship.

How do you recruit your interns and how were adjustments made to the process?

All our candidates have had anxiety about work. We give them exposure to the office, meeting people, the working day. Work experience has given them the understanding of what work is like and gives them more confidence about being in the workplace.

We’ve worked to improve our hiring process for autistic applicants. In line with recommendations for reasonable adjustments, we’ve removed unnecessary required skills from our job descriptions, for example, we no longer require ‘stakeholder engagement’ for junior analyst roles. We’ve also determined that the existing corporate recruitment process is inappropriate for our internship scheme, as it would reject many valuable candidates during the initial screening phase due to issues like gaps in employment. As a consequence, we use a specialist agency to filter through CVs and sit in on interviews. We also eliminated the telephone interview, shortened the in-person interview and provide candidates with the interview questions in advance. The revised recruitment process consists of two interviews of up to fifteen minutes each, the first focusing on technical knowledge and the second is an HR interview. The interview panel is reduced to two hiring managers, who have been briefed in advance, so they can adapt their style.

What other working adjustments were made?

We’ve made several other reasonable adjustments for our recruited and hired interns. We do not require our interns to hot-desk, they each have a fixed workplace. We also allow them to work remotely and with flexible working hours. When learning new tasks, we give our interns extra time to grow confident and be comfortable with the task. The London interns both used ear defenders, to cut out the usual office noise. We worked with HR in advance to agree quite a list of potential adjustments that could be made as a matter of course, but most of them were not taken up. Individually, interns can discuss other adjustments on a personal basis with their manager. We make reasonable adjustments to enable all interns to meet standard performance requirements, and managers have reported that making these adjustments have given them new perspectives and a more open mind

What qualities did the interns bring and has the experience changed how you work?

It forces you to manage people in the way that you would be taught to manage people on a course.

This initiative doesn’t only benefit our interns, we have found that every intern we work with brings valuable skills to the company. These skills include attention to detail, focus and the ability to investigate and evaluate quality assurance. Data analyst interns were able to identify problems, understand nuances and check minute details better than the rest of the staff and therefore fill a gap in team. This initiative has also benefited our managers, demonstrating first-hand the importance of approaching all staff-members as individuals with individual needs. Our managers have learned to be more effective and specific with their communication, speaking more literally which is helpful for everyone. In short, the internship scheme has functioned like a practical education in leadership and management and it’s forced me to think about whether I am getting the best out of all my employees.

Will the scheme continue and what are your recommendations to others?

Colleagues have said ‘I want to be involved with this.

I’ve heard from a lot of colleagues who are now interested in getting involved with the internship scheme, I’d say it’s been very popular with our staff. To these colleagues, I recommend they strive to be patient and come to all employees with an open and cooperative mindset. I find that training new interns is one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. It is important to hire people who are different and diverse, as any associated risks are outweighed by the numerous benefits. Not only is this morally right, it is also good for business.

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