Wanted: People with autism

Wanted: People with autism


We tend to think of disability as just that: a reduced ability at something, for example mobility issues or in terms of mental illness, a reduced ability to think “normally”. However, German multinational software firm SAP has taken a different view point. It announced on Tuesday that, following a successful pilot scheme, it will actively be seeking to recruit individuals with autism because of the particular mental skills these individuals tend to have.

SAP spokesman Hilamr Schepp said: “What we saw [in the pilots] is that people with autism have fantastic strengths in IT-related matters, software development, testing and quality assurance. We found that they can focus on specific topics and are really eager to find mistakes.”

Autistic employees also demonstrated a strong ability to simplify complex problems. “If you’re working within app development, you really have to focus on easy-to-use interfaces – one or two clicks to get to the results,” Mr Schepp said. He explained that it was an essential survival skill for people with autism to simplify the complexity of the world around them: “it is in their own natures that they have to do this, because otherwise the world comes tumbling down.”

Whilst it is very clear that SAP still needs to make adjustments in the workplace to assist these employees (for example providing a single point of contact to assist them throughout the day), it is quite clearly a different way of viewing disability than we are traditionally used to. As researchers at the University of Montreal have found, in some contexts, autism should be thought of as an advantage, and employers have, in general been slow to consider this. Although we are unlikely to see a general recruitment drive across all industries for people with autism as SAP have done, its public announcement may encourage other employers particularly in IT and other technical industries to think differently and creatively about how people with autism and other disabilities can help business become more profitable.