How Microsoft is helping other companies hire people with autism

Apr is Autism Awareness Month. Autism Spectrum Disorder affects one percent of the world's population, about three.5 million, or one out of 59 American births according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Autism Society.

Autism Spectrum Disorder encompasses a range of conditions that nowadays challenges with speech, social skills, non-verbal communication, and repetitive behaviors. On the flip side, many people with autism possess unique strengths in other areas that enable them to excel in certain disciplines.

Unfortunately, according to Easter Seals, 80% of people with autism are either unemployed or underemployed. Consequently, the skills and contributions that they would bring to many companies and to the products and services those companies offering are lost.

To address this untapped resources and to foster a culture of empathy and inclusion, Microsoft — on Autism Awareness Day in 2022 — established its Autism Hiring Program. This year, parallel to its commitment to open sourcing its technologies and tools to create a "Microsoft platform" that companies integrate into their businesses, the company is "democratizing" its Autism Hiring program. The goal is to bring more people with autism to the workforce then that they and the companies they bring together tin can accomplish more than.

Edifice Empathy into company culture

Microsoft'south Autism Hiring Programme was designed to circumvent the social interaction challenges of the traditional interviewing procedure that are a bulwark to many people living with autism. Rather than sitting with an interviewer for a ready menstruum of fourth dimension, the Autism Hiring Programme is a multi-faceted, multi-twenty-four hours process that allows the strengths of people with autism to shine. This hands-on academy focuses on team projects, skills assessments, and workability. Candidates come across hiring managers, various teams and they also learn nigh the visitor.

Initially, the program was most successful with bringing a range of engineers, analysts, and scientists to the company. Every bit the plan has evolved, however, so has the variety of skills that take been added to the company through the plan. People with autism are now being hired to more socially interactive roles such equally customer support.

Microsoft is making empathy a part of its culture.

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, inspired by his personal experiences raising a son with astringent Cerebral Palsy, has fabricated empathy, inclusion, and inclusive design an integral role of Microsoft. His passion for making all technology accessible to all people transcends Microsoft, however.

His cantankerous-platform app strategy, platform agnostic deject strategy, and open source development strategy address the technical side of making applied science universally accessible. Bringing to other companies what it has learned almost making the workplace and hiring practices more inclusive and diverse addresses the cultural side of making technology universally attainable. A workforce comprised of market representatives is better equipped to produce products, from conception frontwards, that come across the needs of all people.

Thus, Microsoft'due south Autism Hiring Program has not but expanded across its headquarters origins in Redmond, WA to pilot programs at its campuses in Fargo, ND, and Vancouver, BC, only to other companies looking to adopt the inclusion practices.

Democratizing empathy

Microsoft's Neil Barnett, Director of Inclusive Hiring and Accessibility at Microsoft, said of the Autism Hiring Programme expanding to its Fargo, ND and Vancouver, BC sites:

We look frontward to seeing the program grow in these regions and continue to expand.

To facilitate the goals of the program beyond Microsoft, the company has become a member of the Autism @ Work Employer Roundtable. This is a grouping of 16 organizations with potent autism hiring programs that are working "to aggrandize employment opportunities for individuals on the autism spectrum." The grouping also collaborated to create the Autism @ Piece of work Playbook to help other employers begin or expand their inclusive hiring efforts. The Playbook addresses recruiting talent, facilitating the interview process, career evolution, training and more than.

This work is complemented by meetings with hundreds of services providers, employers, and regime agencies throughout the year such as the Autism at Work Elevation that volition be hosted in Redmond, WA by Microsoft in May. SAP will host another later this in the Autumn.

Embracing everyone

Many Microsoft enthusiasts have criticized Nadella'south cross-platform cloud strategy that places Microsoft and its technology as part of a wholistic deject-computing platform rather than the exclusive platform approach that made it a success in the past. However, in a world that is "shrinking" and where calculating platforms and technologies increasingly overlap, Microsoft is making bold, forrard-looking moves. Its strategy to go the industry standard, and reference bespeak for inclusion does the same.

Not only does the cross-company inclusion attempt parallel its successful cross-platform strategy, but it pushes the message of empathy and of recognizing the value of people with disabilities. It also provides a structured approach to hiring and supporting people with autism and other challenges that other companies, like its aspirational Surface devices, utilize as a reference point.

Beyond the altruistic rewards, this level of inclusion has a directly impact on meeting the needs of a various market, thus beneficially impacting Microsoft'southward bottom line. Furthermore, the goodwill, garnered by being viewed as an industry leader for inclusion pays intangible dividends that may affect the company in various beneficial ways.

A vision materializing

Finally, Mary Ellen Smith, Microsoft's corporate vice president of worldwide operations said, "My promise for the future is that we won't see this as a program, just instead a natural way of recruiting fundamental talent in our organizations."

Nosotros may not be there yet, but as Microsoft "democratizes" its autism hiring practices to other companies, information technology seems to be well on its way toward her goal.

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