It is the reason why about a-third of people with autism are unemployed, and nearly half are "overqualified" and "underchallenged" in their work.
University of Otago management lecturer and researcher Dr Dana Ott has come up with a solution — the Autism Employment Playbook (AEP), which provides real-world-ready practical resources to help people with autism into meaningful and sustained employment.
"It's a resource for autistic jobseekers and employees, for organisations, for disability employment service providers and anybody else who is engaged in supporting autistic jobseekers.
Dr Ott said she spent more than a year working alongside two University of Queensland researchers to create the AEP, which was based on people working with disability employment services providers in Australia.
The research was inspired by concerning statistics which showed very low levels of employment of neurodivergent people, she said.
One study from 2018 showed autistic individuals in Australia faced an unemployment rate of 31%-34%, which was significantly higher than other disabilities and the general population.
Another study from 2019 revealed more than half the autistic population had never had a paid job.
And of those who did, 54% were seeking a more challenging role and 45% felt overqualified in their role.
She said a 2022 survey by Diversity Works NZ showed a third of neurodivergent respondents reported their condition had negatively impacted their career advancement, and more than 60% of neurodivergent employees said their employers did not know about their condition because they were actively concealing it.
"About five years ago, I started doing some initial research looking at neurodiversity in organisations, and I was quite shocked about just how bad the statistics were around employment opportunities, active employment, as well as what is referred to as underemployment of people with autism.
"There are people in jobs where they're definitely overqualified — they have the skills to make a bigger contribution, but they are being underemployed within organisations.
"And so from there, I’ve worked with collaborators in Australia, and we've looked at opportunities to gain a better understanding of why that's happening, and to educate employers and organisations about how we can address or make organisations more neuroinclusive.
"On a broader level, I hope the launch of the AEP will help combat misinformation about autism that persists in the community.
"There's a great need to stop focusing on what we think autistic people can’t do, and show what they are good at — like problem-solving, attention to detail and innovative thinking."
Dr Ott said the resource was already being used by the Australian Disability Employment Services and now she aimed to get similar organisations in New Zealand to pick it up, too.
"It would be great if it was a resource that becomes more widely available to organisations here, but also I think to individuals as well."
She plans to reach out to organisations and human resources individuals to share the research about neurodiversity and make them aware of the simple things that could be done to make organisations more neuroinclusive.
