Note: This post was published in October 2025 as part of a new web design but the work was completed in summer 2025
Background:
One of the potential barriers to autistic people being successful in employment is a lack of ‘reasonable adjustments’, which employers are required to put in place according to the Equality Act.
To help us and others understand exactly what’s going wrong in the workplace, we designed a survey to explore which adjustments autistic people have asked for, which adjustments have been successfully made, and what the main barriers are to different adjustments.
How this work empowered people to make more of a difference:
This piece of work was to help our neurodiverse team finalise a draft survey.
By being involved in this work, panel members were able to share their views about whether the survey reflected their experiences asking for adjustments in the workplace. Contributing to the final survey in this way helped to make sure that it asked the right questions and didn’t miss out any important factors.
What did we ask people to do?
We contacted members of the panel who identify as autistic (at the time 634 people) about reviewing our draft survey. They were asked to complete the survey with genuine answers and to tell us if the questions were written clearly, the order of the questions made sense, and if anything would make the questions better.
39 autistic people reviewed our draft survey.
How we used suggestions/responses:
- Explanations were added to some of the questions and definitions added or changed for some of the adjustments. For example, some people explained that employers might agree adjustments but then don’t make them, only make them some of the time, or don’t make them in a way that helps. To capture that, when asking if employers have successfully made an adjustment we added ‘This means the employer has agreed the adjustment and successfully put it in place.’
- Some specific questions were added based on direct suggestions, including asking about workplace passports and whether people have worked for an organisation that is ‘disability confident’.
- Throughout the survey, we included more answers specific to each adjustment or to account for different experiences. Most of these answers were from the ‘other’ responses that were given by those reviewing the survey.
- The survey was changed to take into account previous answers, for example we made sure it didn’t ask a follow-up question if the person answered ‘no’.
- Some of the language was changed to be inclusive of different experiences and preferences.
- The survey was made more consistent in its use of tenses (no switching between past and present tense).
- Definitions were changed to a smaller font, rather than the original italics, to make them easier to read.
After each block of questions, we asked if the questions were in a clear order and written clearly. For every block of questions at least:
- 87% of people agreed the questions were in a clear order.
- 79% of people agreed the questions were written clearly.
This gave us confidence that with the suggested improvements, the survey would be well-received by people we ask to complete it.
What’s next?
When we have space in our team calendar, we will email autistic members of the panel who haven’t opted out of employment communications and launch the survey publicly so that we can get as many responses as possible.
