Five tips for mentoring autistic employees

January is National Mentoring Month, a time to “celebrate the power of supportive and meaningful mentor relationships.” We’re taking this opportunity to share our experience around successful approaches to mentoring autistic employees.

As a majority-autistic company, we’ve seen firsthand how our colleagues benefit from meaningful support and mentorship in the workplace. We also know that autistic and neurodivergent professionals benefit from a tailored approach to mentorship that takes into account each individual’s style of thinking, communicating and working. The goal of this approach is to help the employee thrive and not to enforce compliance with a pre-existing set of workplace rules.

Typical workplaces can often produce barriers for autistic people, resulting in unduly high unemployment rates. Some of these workplace challenges include:

 

continue reading »