The following are some questions from different employers I have received about adults in the work world with AS. While we know that there are adults with AS at many workplaces without the following problems (many in fact!), I thought I would share my thoughts on the following questions:

Is there an average work week that most AS adults are best suited to work?

People with AS are a really mixed group. They have different personalities, skills, abilities, etc., so your experience with this one gentleman likely will not be the same set of challenges you will experience with another person with AS. Some can only handle a 20 hour or so week and others are fully productive with 40. Read our article on the Social Thinking-Social Communication Profile. 

Job coaching seems to be a common practice with AS. Have you heard of this?  The person I am working with sleeps on the job and surfs the net, but we are told this is because he has AS?

Yes, and it is a good idea but only if the job coach has specific concrete strategies to use. I would recommend you explore www.timetimer.com to help  him recognize the amount of time he needs to stay focused before he can earn a break. Sleep on a job is not acceptable, doesn’t matter if he has AS..he has to be accountable to others…unless he is really aloof and can’t understand? There are many adults with AS who have no sense of urgency or time, but they are not our high functioning ones as compared to other folks with AS. Sometimes when students get diagnosed with AS  we let them be far less accountable to others because they have AS..but by the time they enter the adult work world they are held to the same accountability standard as everyone else!

Help your employee to break down his time and task requirements.

Teach the hidden rules is excellent (see the book, The Hidden Curriculum, by Myles et al)… his surfing the net or sleeping should earn him penalties. If the bar is lowered for him because of his AS he may just keep adjusting to try and lower the bar more…people with AS are only human and at times just as manipulative (knowingly or unknowingly) as the rest of us!

How much is job coaching used by a person with AS? For a short term of time or across their entire careers?

Usually a job coach is used more intensively at the start as they teach the person about the complexities of their work environment, how to problem solve, social expectations, hidden rules, etc. then their hours are faded as the employee becomes self-sustaining and they start to develop a relationship with a person who works in their company that they can problem solve with.

On the subject of job coaching, I've discovered that the Canadian government will pay for some job coaching are you aware of this in the US?

To my knowledge, only if the person has received money from the Dept of Rehab. and waiver or regional center monies, or is part of a job placement center that is set up specifically to help persons with disabilities, is there a possibility that someone will train or provide a job coach. Unfortunately, few people who call themselves job coaches are really trained in providing that service. Many people are hired to be job coaches with relatively little if any training and may be completely unfamiliar with the issues of Adults with AS, as they may have worked more with persons with cognitive challenges rather than more purely social learning challenges.

Is it advisable to communicate with a department that someone with AS will be joining the team? I am big on communication and yet when is it too much?

You would need permission from the adult to have this type of conversation. If you have their permission, I tend to explain to others more about what a person’s strengths and weaknesses are and as part of his or her weaknesses he/she has social learning challenges..and then explain the diagnostic label only if you have permission! You can only share a diagnostic label if the client gives you permission to share that confidential information. The most important thing the new team will need are strategies to help the person with AS maximize his effectiveness as an employee, a label itself offers no concrete strategies to help!

As for some of the following concerns, here are some very brief ideas:

•  Keeping him on task

Put him on a productivity monitor

• He falls asleep at the desk.

Provide clear expectations for how he should spend his time, how he can ask for help if not sure what to do, have your task broken down and then clear negative consequences, .all of these can be visual (written out) if possible.. which may include a  negative “write up” to go in this file

• He will use the internet more than he should.

Provide clear expectations for how he should spend his time, how he can ask for help if not sure what to do, have your task broken down and then clear negative consequences, .all of these can be visual (written out) if possible.. which may include a  negative “write up” to go in this file

• His time management... a fifteen minute break may turn into a much longer break.

Provide clear expectations for how he should spend his time, how he can ask for help if not sure what to do, have your task broken down and then clear negative consequences, .all of these can be visual (written out) if possible.. which may include a  negative “write up” to go in this file

Adults with AS can be very capable workers in the work force who are highly productive but struggle to relate socially. However, it is true we have many adults who have a poor sense of work productivity and efficiency; nor do they understand how they are being perceived by others. The truth is that we have a competitive work force and our students need to learn to be active, productive members of a team who also learn the social rules or relatedness in their work environments. We have our hands full with these requirements given the fact that we have very little information available at this point for persons with ASD in the competitive work world. I have been writing a book on the topic of Social Thinking and the Professional world of work, which with luck will be for sale soon. This is based on my years of experiences working with professionals who have social learning issues.

There is also a good book available for those trying to learn about counseling adults with AS, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adult Asperger Syndrome by Valerie Gaus.

©2012 Social Thinking Publishing - Michelle Garcia Winner  www.socialthinking.com