Maria Ashworth, Brett Heasman, Laura Crane and Anna Remington (2024)
https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330241249266
This study addresses a really important issue – the gap in autism knowledge among employers, which often hinders employment opportunities for autistic individuals. The research evaluates the effectiveness of an online training programme developed by Ambitious about Autism, “Understanding Autism in the Workplace”, on changing employers’ autism knowledge and commitment to inclusion in the workplace.
📚 Background
The employment rate among autistic people in the UK is 29%, compared to 75% in the majority. This desperately needs addressing. A lack of understanding has been identified as a key barrier to employment, so addressing harmful or unhelpful stereotypes and stigma through training might be helpful to improve understanding. Previous research has only looked at group changes in measures such as autism knowledge after training, but this study looked at group and individual changes to employers’ autism knowledge and commitment to inclusion in the workplace to assess the training’s impact.
👥 Findings:
Participants: 129 employers from 22 organisations across the UK partnered with Employ Autism (a supported employment initiative that offers paid internships to autistic adults).
Training: The training was co-designed through a collaboration with autistic people, a neurodiversity consultancy group, and autism trainers. It aimed to improve employers’ knowledge about autism and neurodiversity, and show employers how they could make their organisations more inclusive. Both autistic and non-autistic trainers led the training sessions. )
🔍 Results:
There were no differences in employers’ scores depending on if they had an autistic or non-autistic trainer, possibly because the training was co-designed and benefited from autistic expertise. Post-training, there was a notable improvement in the groups’ overall average autism knowledge and commitment to inclusion. However, at an individual level, results showed the training was more effective for some employers than others).
This suggests that while training can be beneficial, it should really be part of a broader strategy to remove employment barriers for autistic people.
“Evaluating the impact of an online autism training on changing employers’ autism knowledge and commitment to inclusion in the workplace” by Maria Ashworth, Brett Heasman, Laura Crane, & Anna Remington (2024)