I was going through a bit of a difficult situation earlier in the year: I was facing the threat of redundancy. Fortunately, I was redeployed into an alternative role which so far seems to be going well. However, there was a time of great anxiety and uncertainty.
Of course, there is always the concern about having a lack of money but that's not something I want to address as its pretty much universal to most people in some form. I am thinking about redundancy for those who are autistic.
I work for a large organisation and I would like to think that they generally do try to play fair but are sometimes faced with tough choices. I don't think they are the kind of employers who deliberately and callously screw people over. No one is perfect and some business decisions can be cutthroat but it is not the place that's in and out of employment tribunals.
The redundancies are not about willfully hurting anyone but based on business. I realise it can feel personal but a decent and legally-sound employer should approach redundancy as removing posts, not people, whilst keeping a sense of humanity too.
Sometimes making people redundant is a good thing, at least for the organisation to stay financially stable. Of course, it isn't for the employees involved sometimes if they have no other employment to go to but it can be financially and/or structurally necessary for the organisation. I am objective enough to appreciate that cuts have to be made sometimes when times are difficult and rationalisation of the staff are needed to protect the future of an organisation. No employer, public sector or otherwise, can operate indefinitely with financial difficulties.
But for autistic people, redundancy can be particularly harsh and I will address why I think this is so. A favourite statistic of mine comes from The National Autistic Society (NAS) where they ascertained that in the UK 16% of autistic adults are in full-time paid employment and 32% in some kind of paid work (NAS, 2016).
We can take from that statistic that autistic people are underrepresented in the workplace. There's still a lot to be fixed to get those percentages up so when an autistic person gets that dream job and is happy, motivated and doing well, its a crushing blow to find oneself on the receiving end of a redundancy notice. It's not just about losing one's source of income but losing so much more.
Whilst I was thinking about my financial side, I was concerned about losing my routine and my social circle. It was a seriously big worry that if I had no job, I would essentially lose my purpose in life.
I find that an often asked question in small-talk is, "what do you do?". It feels like my whole self-worth is connected with how I fill my week. And it's got to be something of use when I answer that question. It's no good saying that I lay in bed to lunchtime and then watch a bit of telly.
No job? One answers by referring to the last job.
Now retired? What did you used to do?
A mother bringing up children? What did you do before kids?
It never ceases to amaze me how much value is placed on one's economic contribution to the economy in trivial conversation.
Without my job, my identity fades and so does my schedule. I have my little system and all my days are mapped out with what I am doing and it is all nicely timetabled. I feel secure and comforted by my daily structures. Take it away and I have to start all again and make new routines. That amount of adjustment is hard. Real hard.
But it's more than routines as I also lose my social connections. People always say, "keep in touch" when someone leaves a place of work. It rarely lasts. It is never the same and being the one now outside of the organisation, people can drift apart. I find making friends through work beneficial because it gives a structure in which to form the friendships. Employment gives us a reason to converse.
I think too that some social connections only exist in a vacuum. Move it from the office and into the pub and it doesn't function so well. Conversations that were once centred on moaning about Terry from Accounts or that damn printer that keeps jamming no longer have any meaning and ceases to be relevant. We would have to find ourselves that 'out of the workplace' identity to rely upon or hark back to the 'good old days'. It's all very challenging and I don't particularly have the energy, more so if my chums are still employed. It begins to feel a little bit too raw as the gap between us widens.
When I have been out of work, I have found the lack of external forces to get me going to be a huge problem. Why bother to get out of bed? Why not just sleep and let the horrors of unemployment wash over me? The stress of being thrown on the scrap heap makes my tolerance to sensory overload very poor and the last thing I am fit for is being dynamic and engaging in a job interview. Everything irritates me and I want to hide up so that I don't become so self-destructive and yet the hiding up is self-destructive too as I am not trying to get myself out of a rut. My enthusiasm for job hunting diminishes as time goes on. It can become quite the damaging cycle.
Some years ago I went through long-term unemployment. It did my mental health no good at all. As time ticked on, I was losing my motivation and just giving up, embracing my fate of being nothing because I couldn't handle change and I made my own safety in the comfort of my bed. I had no structure, no drive and no purpose and it wasn't a good place. I was scared about my situation but scared too, to change it. I was worried that I would end up in a job with unpleasant colleagues with work that was either too hard or incredibly unfulfilling. I was scared by so much upheaval and I picked up negative habits of not getting dressed until lunchtime. It went on a while and I wasn't getting far with finding the right job. Whilst I managed getting plenty of interviews, the rejection hit me hard.
One day I decided to make a bold move during one moment of courage. I applied for teacher training. I am not suggesting becoming a teacher is the answer to all autistic people's unemployment problems but it helped me get my routine back. I had a purpose again and my beloved structure. I felt that the longer one is unemployed, the harder everything is to get back into work and this isn't something that's purely a problem for autistic people. However, if you know that would be the case, I suggest have plans made ahead. Think contingency plan. So before one gets to that point where all hope is lost, find that something that puts some routine back because that's what starts to add purpose to the day. It helps push the darkness away. Structure made it easier for me to cope with the changes in my life that I couldn't control.
So I figured I would think of some things one can do to create a routine:
- Do a college course (yes, I know some aren't free).
- Volunteer somewhere.
- Join a club.
- Go see a friend/family member regularly to have things to do on set days.
- Do the food shopping early in the morning so there's a need to get up. Go buy some food cheap and cook something amazing.
It doesn't necessarily have to be anything that costs. It's the getting out of bed at a good time and fitting in an activity that could form part of the new routine that's important. Going for a walk may be enough.
There are so many other things that we can do but we have to be proactive to establish that new structure for our days before that depression hits. Get that routine back by creating a new one. Find a purpose to get up and job hunting will become easier. This was it helps guard against self-pity makes job hunting all the more futile.
I know it's scary. I've faced redundancy a number of times but each one terrifies me a little less because I have in my mind a backup plan. In my case, it's education as my fallback for purpose, structure and stability, although I appreciate that everyone has differing financial limitations. Here, my tolerances to life are better and I am less likely to give up on meaningful job searching as my week is filled with positivity.
Well, this is what I am telling myself if another redundancy happens. I realise it's not going to solve every problem by keeping myself occurred, such as by making inexpensive soups or tending to the garden. It's about finding that little stable thing to cling onto when so much has been taken away. It's about finding strategies to right yourself when there's no one else to assist.
We know that this isn't the solution to all our problems. I realise too that this doesn't make the actual workplaces kinder places for autistic people but it is about establishing small areas of control in one's life. Raise the tolerance to all that sensory overload and heartache and use it as a breather to be more effective in light job hunting. should, I hope, shorten the time out of employment.
I know job hunting can be a particularly difficult thing to face as an autistic person, that's not even addressing the minefield of interview techniques. It's not only about being chosen as the right candidate for a job but for the job hunter to feel comfortable in that work environment and culture. It's why when an autistic person loses their job, it can be in many cases a tragic situation because they might well take longer to find an organisation in which they really fit. Of course, there are exceptions.
No wonder autistic people are underrepresented in the workplace but I believe that some of us are able to mitigate some lose of routine. If you can do that, I urge you to; it may shorten that period of unemployment.
