Panel discussion “Autism at Work” with Thorkil Sonne, Founder of Specialisterne Foundation (Social Enterprise HQ in Denmark), Moish Tov Founder CEO and Chairman of JoyDew (USA), and Jose Velasco, Program Director, Business Process Intelligence and Autism at Work Ambassador at SAP.
The Spring Institute 2022 was supported by the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies.
Transcript
Rob Austin (IVEY business school)
Thorkil Sonne is the founder of Specialisterne in Denmark. He founded it in 2004 and the Specialisterne Foundation in 2008. I’ve already
mentioned Specialisterne in my opening remarks before you arrived Throkil. Actually SAP and JoyDew as well.
Thorkil has done a lot over the years I think in cooperation with companies like SAP and Microsoft and so forth, to promote the cause of neurodiversity employment. You know he’s working to with the U.N to transform markets to become inclusive, for the target is one million Autistic or neurodivergent persons to enable their inclusion and Educational Systems in in the local communities. Thorkil is the chairman of Specialisterne Foundation a world economic Forum, Schwab Foundation social entrepreneur, and an Ashoka globalizer fellow honored with the autism prize by Autism Denmark. The I.T prize by Danish I.T industry named European of the week by art a r t e Rave thinkers by the Atlantic magazine and intelligent optimists by Owen magazine, currently chairing Denmark’s efforts on corporate responsibility and sustainable development goals from 2018 I guess not currently then, and also the author of a number of important papers.
Moish Tov is joining us as well. Moish is the founder and executive chairman of a company called JoyDew. I’ve mentioned JoyDew already Moish, and the way described it I think earlier is that you are one of a number of very impressive companies that are working on what I think of as the problem of Dipping Deeper into the Spectrum, which means enlarging the number of people that we can impact by developing special approaches and techniques that allow the activation of talents of people who historically haven’t been seriously considered as employable. We look forward to hearing from Moish about that. He’s also got a distinguished business background. He’s currently the chairman and managing director of Intelligent Holdings, a company that finances Global projects to build Next Generation life models. He’s the founder of Skila a software company that provided a global product launch software for biopharmaceutical companies and is the proud father of two wonderful boys with autism.
And then, like I said just randomly here on my, Jose Velasco is program director and business process intelligence at SAP, and he’s an Autism at Work Ambassador. But from 2014 through 2020 Jose led the SAP Autism at Work program at SAP. His 30-year Information Technology career spans private and public sectors companies ranging from startups to Fortune 50 Enterprises. During his tenure of 23 years at SAP he’s occupied a lot of different organizations he’s been a panelist at the United Nations World Autism Awareness Day, testified before the U.S Congress on the global challenge of autism, and coordinated on the topic with corporate social Innovation at the World Economic Forum. Jose and his team have been featured in more than 1800 publications, including the Wall Street Journal, CBS Sunday morning, NBC. Fox Inc, Forbes magazine, and others. He also launched the Autism at Work Summit which is a conference series that has been happening annually, and now in many places I think around the world geographically. It’s not it’s not just in one geography anymore it’s happening across the world.
So what I’ve suggested that we would do for the panel to the to the panelists is maybe ask them to each make an opening statement and then we can just have a general discussion. Perhaps as some of the issues that I know there were some hands up when I started with the introduction so we can circle back to those. And again I’ll just I’m now going to go I’ve closed all of my bio documents so I go into order that people are randomly chosen by zoom on my screen, and maybe this is the opposite order almost anyway.
Jose you’re at the top right of my screen. Do you want to start off here?
JoseVelasco – SAP
Yeah, absolutely. Maybe I can share a little bit of background about this network program, a little bit of history motivation, and just a little bit more detail and color into the program. So, in 2013 our senior executives at SAP stood obviously with our friend portal sunny stood in front of an audience at Sapphire, which is our marquee event for customers. There may have been fifteen thousand customers that learn about the launch of a program that we call out this network.
From a personal perspective, I was vice president of the products at the time I did not have a participation in the program. I became involved in it when I heard about it. I have two adult children on the autism spectrum, and we were going through a transition period where we did not know what’s going to be on the other end of high school for them and my wife and I were really, really concerned about their future and what would happen when we were no longer here.
So, when this announcement came up, I raised my hand and I reached out directly to our chief diversity officer on Kavitenberg and said I would like to pitch in and see if I can help and solve capacity to this program. I joined as a volunteer first and as oftentimes happens in life, your mission finds you, not you find your mission.
I became engaged with the program on a full-time basis, so what started as a six-month volunteer indeed where they ended up being as US Route 76-year participation from a full-time basis with the support of our senior executives to SAP. So, I had an opportunity to transition over to a completely new field. This was done in in 2013, and 2019 I got a knock on the door and saying you were going to be gone for six months. It’s been six years in a way that you can come back and support us on the business side again so there was a transition back, but I continued to support the program as I was a smart work Ambassador.
The program today exists in 16 countries your employees approximately 225 people over the life of the program we have program and provided more than 600 opportunities for autistic individuals ranging from high school enterprise exposure opportunities to internships, contractors, apprenticeships, full and part-time employment. Again in
16 countries today we have approximately 20 different types of positions where we employ individuals on the outside spectrum they range from individuals who are in human resources department, folks that are graphic designers all the way to people that are designing and supporting the creation of the next generation of technology products for SAP. The diversity within the autism spectrum present at SAP is vast. We have approximately 15 to 18 of women on the Spectrum are representing the program and in age we have individuals that are 8:21 anywhere between early 20s to 16 plus years old. So that’s a little bit about the program. Happy to be here, thanks for the invitation.
Rob Austin (IVEY business school)
Great to have you here Jose. Next on my screen is Thorkil.
Thorkil Sonne – Specialisterne
Thanks Rob. Great to see you again Jose and Moish, and Rob as well. Like Jose and Moish, I also have an autistic child is now a young girl, young man and he made me a social entrepreneur because the more I learned about autism after he was diagnosed, the more unfair I thought the world is to those who are not typical in the labor markets. Now we have a term for it…Neurodiverse, you know, the divergent. So, I started Specialisterne on it with this Danish for the Specialists back in Denmark in 2004. The purpose is to make room for those who are not generalists,
but specialists in the labor market, with a vision of a world where people are given equal opportunities in the labor market. It resonated and I received emails from
people in more than 100 countries and when parents or other family members
contact me, I cannot say no when they ask for my help. I can say be patient. And in 2008 when I founded a non-profit specialist and foundation and set a goal
of 1 million jobs and by 2030.
As Rob mentioned, we are associated with the UN, so this is very much a sustainable development goal eight initiative in the framework of
sustainable development goal 17 partnership fellow goals number eight is this work and economic growth, and this is exactly um where we have to find the balance between the well-being of the individual and the well-being of the companies. They’re working in 13 countries and operating in about 30 countries with companies like SAP. We’ve been working with SAP throughout the world I think in very many places, but also very many other companies Specialisterne and Foundation in the statutes autism is not mentioned.
We had at that time in 2008 tried to describe what today is defined as New York African persons, so those with a profile like autistic people who can benefit from us breaking down the barriers based on creating workplaces where autistic people thrive. We believe that places where autistic people thrive will be good places to work for people who have similar challenges but also people who don’t have challenges. Both neurotypical and your divergent people will thrive better.
We have experienced in a lot of job roles from cyber security to pig farming and the pig farming is actually one of those that I’m most proud of. We find the interest and motivation from autistic people. Very many like animals and like to be and work with animals, but have not seen that as a career opportunity. Well now there’s one
in pig farming, as an example. So we’re trying to find the strengths and motivation and be become aware of where they need support. Then our main effort is really to create environments where autistic people and everyone else can thrive better.
Rob Austin (IVEY business school)
Thank you Thorkil. And Moish, I wonder if you could talk to us a bit about what you do there at JoyDew.
Moish Tov, JoyDew
Good morning everyone from the cold freezing New Jersey. Thank you Rob for inviting me and if I can take a moment before I start to talk about JoyDew, I do want give a big thank you for a very special person, Thorkil. I met Thorkil in a small cafe in Berlin a while ago and that was the first time that I started to see a clear direction into what we have to do. And I thought I didn’t have a lot of chances to thank you, but I really, really thank you and think that you are the pioneer and the one that paved the way to a lot of us so thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks and as the CEO and founder of JoyDew autism we could also have autism 2.0 company. By autism 2.0, we try to define a new paradigm which has a few, very important characteristics:
Number one, we presume competence. So, we believe that anyone on the
spectrum do have some kind of strengths. And when you find the strengths,
you can develop it and you can get this person to be part of the workforce and part of the community.
The second is we’re looking in the spectrum in a different way than what I call autism 1.0, which is no functioning to high function. we’ll complete as multiple spectrums that any person can be very strong one,two or three of those and less strong on the others.
The third one is we are taking people from I want to close the Spectrum and I would say that according to the numbers that we see in U.S., between 50 to 60 percent or people on special that will not speak. About another 20 are the ones that are have some kind of language, and then there are 20 that do you have the full ability to speak but don’t always speak about what you expect them to speak.
The approach that we took is to get all of these people together. Looking through their strengths we developed a tool that allows us to identify strengths and attach these strengths to what we call the 21st century type of jobs. Then we start to train them.
Our model is different. Besides job training, we provide academic enrichment as well as what we call business social, and we are training as well as employing the people that come to us. We provide the services to different companies.
We are young. We are only four years old and we focus right now on five different jobs. One is Radiology – early detection of breast cancer which working with major medical center in the U.S. The second one is pattern recognition, which we apply to different type of jobs. The third one is Big Data integration. The fourth one is contact management. And the fifth is robotics.
All the things that we do is technology and allow to be delivered virtually. Having the community of people on spectrum that are coming from different backgrounds with different types of skills and strengths. They’re going to be the one most important things that give us a giver. We call them members because sometimes they are students, sometimes they’re employees. We give them a Community of Their Own,
and when they have Community of Their Own, we see a major major opportunity to tap into untapped Talent. That can bring very high results in multiple kind of jobs.
Rob Austin (IVEY business school)
Thank you Moish. I think at this point I know there were some hands before, so I think you know we’ve got a good half hour or so here. Where if there were things people are interested in. You could ask a question. I, of course, have a question or two if no one wants to ask a question, but I’d rather go with yours. So first of all thank you all so much for those introductions and without trying to put you on the spot, but I remember Gregory you had your hand up before work went into introductions. Gregory, are you there?
Gregory
Thank you very much. So, thank you very much for that and it’s been to us there’s been a million things that you’ve mentioned during your sort of discussions that have resonated with me. I’m somebody who interviews appallingly, and I just got a job with the like the Civil Service after about 25 failed interviews because with the the same it was like a real star analysis structured interview, which is really terrible for like ADHD. It’s a really difficult one because I think there’s so much variability within you know within even sort of ADHD autism. This lecture and stuff like that and I started at the same time with calling you who are some also as ADHD and we are we are literally poles apart you know they’re quite impulsive whereas I’m quite, I guess, to a certain extent regulated. But I think what I have noticed over time is that as my awareness has increased probably so is my introversion. Just because I’m afraid to probably say what it is that I want to into like maybe formulated the right words or and if I do come out and say something then it’s, I’ll probably be thinking about it for about two or three days later thinking “Oh God, did I like make a complete like fool of myself?” and I’m just wondering like how much in that self-awareness journey that needs to be sort of taken place. Because they also need to be kind of a bit of like positive kind of reaffirmation about like just trying to let things go wrong and ruminate them but at the same time with that auto and that person who had who was quite direct in our communication. How others can kind of maybe accept that as part of the process I mean I don’t really know if any of that makes sense, but it’s I don’t know I just think it’s a really complicated area I think from getting the best out of somebody but also and allowing them to be the best self but allowing facilitating somebody on that journey.
someone from the panel I’d like to add something thank you for sharing Gregory. I can relate to your experience I remember my first job I must have applied to about 70 jobs and it was in the painful days when we read the newspaper and we cut things with scissors and we selected the jobs that we wanted to apply to and we sent the paper resume or faxed it right, and then waited until somebody responded and it happened. It happened to me. I remember when we had the Savings and Loans crisis in Austin and well, instead of Texas where I live rejection was really bad, but then I got a job and I got started. Things were really really great after that but one of my colleagues came to me who was on the Spectrum came to me and said I applied for 50 jobs and I got rejected and it then it kind of clicked with my own experience and I started checking with other people neurotypical or not that what was their experience and a lot of them actually went through applying for 30 or 40 so jobs before they got their first job. So there’s an element of human experience here I think that is fairly common. But this doesn’t negate the fact that other people that are neurodivergent have it even more difficult time in getting to the job. As far as the your experience with ruminating things for two or three days
check I consider myself neurodivergent and I always go through that as I should have not said that when
I am in an event like this and I say something I could have said this other thing instead so that’s that’s part of a
certain I mean level of normalcy I would say or a typicality I guess that a lot
of us go through okay do I have a technique for for maybe mitigating
that personally I just think back to myself I’ll do it better next time okay
but colleagues of mine that are on the Spectrum also have told me that they ruminate a lot on these things we have a
lot of moments where anxiety creeps up okay and then they ask for the same
thing is there a technique there to mitigate that anxiety it does we you know refer them to somebody that can
help them or professional with more detail but again thanks for the question Greg and um I hope that the answer helps
a little bit yeah thank you and if I may comment
Gregory you are left with a problem that is not really yours and that we have to
change because um the traditional recruitment process
doesn’t really work um here in Denmark it’s it’s well known
that the traditional recruitment talks and interviews at different layers
does not work and if you want to know how it should be
then read Rob Boston’s article about the dandelion principle in mit’s room
management magazine because we need to change the
environment where these interviews take place if we want the interviews
what we’re doing right now in in the city where I live in Denmark is we we
have recruited 10 companies through
Denmark’s largest Chambers of Commerce who wants to work with us to find new
ways to fill the gap between all the vacant jobs and all the the
people who want a job but cannot get it because the recruitment process is
broken we are teaching inclusion Agents from these companies of
how to how to manage and communicate within
your favorite persons we have four values that we used throughout the
specialist and the first is respect and it means that you have to respect that
people are different you cannot anticipate that everyone can follow your humor or logic or something but don’t
impose your own problem to the one you are interviewing you have to find a way
where the interview is respectful it’s accommodating I also know of of
autistic people who would rather go to the dentist than go to a job interview
and I can hardly think of anything more scary than going to the dentist
and it should not be. So what we are doing is we are teaching them the
the four values respect accommodation make sure that people are in the comfort zone otherwise
you won’t really get to know them set expectations clearly
make sure if they have questions or concerns that they can address them
28:09
but you really should find a way to make people show instead of of tell if
28:17
they’re good at and that will also work better with non-verbal persons and I’m sure Moish
28:24
has a lot of experience in this field but um
28:29
but there are many job interviews is based on a job
28:35
description which is a snapshot wish list from someone some situation a
28:43
month ago before it it started all the formal processes in a big company to be
28:50
approved all over the place and this is not how you should recruit
28:56
you should recruit on finding the kind of profiles
29:04
realize that you need a diverse team to to manage all the
29:12
situations that can occur in a knowledge based market economy and Rob can talk about two hours of what
29:20
is the need in a knowledge-based global market economy it’s a problem if
29:26
everything is the same so why are you why are you why are your recruitment
29:33
processes targeted on someone who are the same as the ones you hired last time
29:4
so we prefer not to have job interviews at all we ask the employers to
29:49
trust our experience on finding the the best possible neurodivergent
29:57
persons for the job and build the comfort zone and when we we have when when we believe that the
30:06
match is right then then we introduce the employer in a matching meeting and
30:2
if they also agree that this is right then we’ll start on boarding but before
30:8
that they would have gone through training of how to communicate and manage
30:24
neurodivergent persons because it should not be your problem Gregory
30:30
it is the employer’s problem
30:38
we look on the world and we see the reality that you see Gregory
30:46
[Music] you have to go through a lot of
30:52
barriers when you look for a job so we took a very different approach
30:59
and the approach that we took is that people that coming to us
3:07
going to be employed by us and by doing that we overcome all of the
3:5
HR issues and other issues that exist within working the company
3:22
so someone coming to us is working within the community that you
3:28
feel comfortable to doing the job they’re doing the job with us they’re
3:34
doing a job as a friend and they don’t need to go through too much of a training in
3:4
how to be someone else it just can be
3:46
themselves um someone that come to our company
3:55
we’re not interviewed who actually 75 percent of our criteria to accept
32:03
someone to our program it is we interview these parents of
32:08
Guardians and the criteria for us is that the
32:3
parent or Guardian believed in this individual and if they do we take them because we believe that
32:2
each one of them will have some kind of skills that it can contribute to the community
32:29
that we create and that will create much better
32:35
productivities and accuracy within the job
32:4
so yes we I know that there are people that want
32:46
to work in a job place not working in place like
32:52
with us and the thing that one thing that is very very important
32:58
for all of us to think forward is that they need to be multiple type of
33:03
employment models that enable people to choose how
33:0
to go into it some of the numbers that we see that
33:6
and and just like talking about numbers the numbers in the world of autism are
33:2
very scattered and
33:27
it’s very hard to find like a very good number but clearly we see that
33:36
only about 10 percent of people on Spectrum are employed and the average
33:42
employment time is six months not for six months for one reason or the
33:49
other and mostly As It worker said because of the employer not because of the
33:54
individual they have to leave the place and they have to go to someone else another reason that we said okay
34:03
we created a place for them and that the place that you can be
34:09
yourself and yes I we have the values and
34:14
total number one values exactly as yours respect they have to respect each
34:20
other they have to respect the place but again what we see we see that with
34:28
people on the middle of the spectrum
34:33
that still need guardianship or a parent the number one thing is do the parents
34:41
or the guardian to believe in them because they have to get the exactly the same message that we’re sending them but
34:47
we believe in you we think that the sky is the limit you can do everything is up to you we’re going to be facilitated
34:54
we’re going to help you but it’s up to you and you have to go and do it they
34:59
have to get the same message at home and I will say that the channel that we see is that
35:07
there are very big group of families that for one reason the other that I
35:14
don’t know and I don’t want to get into it don’t believe in the kids
35:19
and that create the another challenge
35:25
so beside the child of like getting into a job in a company
35:32
you have a challenge when you’re coming back home or you come back to the place that you leave and you get very
35:38
different message into solution for that in my mind as I said
35:43
is developed as many possible employment model
35:49
it will take time to the corporate to understand it I think the corporate
35:55
today aware that there is a lot of talent within people on the Spectrum
36:00
but they have a challenge how to
36:06
change the culture internally and get to the point that they can actually employ
36:11
people it will happen I believe but it will take time a lot of time
36:17
and that the reason that we do different types of model but again I want to say
36:23
it is not that I’m promoting only this model I promoting multiple employer
36:29
models and any model that were supposed to be available so I
36:35
believe in choices
36:40
thank you so much to also your view for this really insightful answers
36:45
um yeah I would like to go next
36:57
and I know that Moana has definitely had the question shall we
37:03
hand over to Joanna yes I thank you so much for sharing um I’m like Anika one
37:10
of the people that have taught the specialist during a case so this is a a wish come through thank you rob for
37:17
for bringing her to edorkel to us today um thank you so much
37:22
um it is my closing case this year as well in the social Enterprise class I
37:28
have been a fan of the dandelion model and I think of it as a pivot in the
37:34
teaching and learning experience in my own classes because it is a model of
37:40
stigma reversal and we as academics are just beginning to see research and
37:46
models on how we can identify the layers of stigmas and reverse them but the
37:52
dandelion model does that so seamlessly and so gently and universally and it’s
37:59
so translatable in my own experience to any disability so my first question I do
38:06
promise I have a few more questions if the group allows me but the first
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question is is we push on this Frontier of new abilities of
38:18
normalization of integration of proportionalizations of multiple disability as we are coming out of the
38:26
pandemic and it’s not only one in five individuals but many of us that start identifying
38:31
with multiple mental health challenges as many employers struggle to navigate
38:38
this new frontier board what can we Translate from your respective experiences with
38:47
bypassing stigma reversing stigma changing frames changing mindsets that
38:54
you feel it’s most poignantly important at this moment in our classrooms in our
39:00
workplaces in our lives
39:08
today so
39:14
I agree with you that stigma is one of the major challenge that we have to work
39:20
about and and it’s difficult to get almost and
39:28
there are different ways that need to be done in order to overcome the stigma
39:36
[Music] but the most important thing that we understand was stigma come from why it
39:43
comes from and then try to address it in impactable way
39:51
[Music] um the way that we overcome the stigma is that again we create community of the
39:58
home so there is no Stigma their friends
40:03
they’re working together the learning together between themselves there is no Stigma
40:10
but the stigma is exist outside and the stigma is going back even to the parents
40:18
and it’s going to a lot of establishment all the establishments schools
40:26
service providers Etc [Music]
40:31
I think that one thing that is people to change
40:37
is the Academia view on the table and forgive me that I’m getting back in
40:44
Europe [Music] there is too much
40:50
on too many Academia papers research whatever you want to
40:57
call the telling us and telling her kids
41:03
why they’re not worth it and just think about it that
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meaning at least in the US all the agency that looking working with
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the people on the spectrum they call themselves they have two D’s in the name
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already because they connected between developing disorder and intellectual
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disabilities and that made itself it’s still another stigma
41:36
that’s coming for Academia is about behaviorism
41:43
the Spectrum people on Spectrum come with behavior that is not true
41:49
if you give them to to communicate and you accept their body language
41:55
I think that they have different body language that we have you’re going to reduce
42:03
a lot of the issues that someone else tried to fix so why do you want to fix something that
42:11
may not broken into in all I think that if we can somehow
42:21
get people from Academia to look into this issue and stop talking about what
42:30
we know that is not working and it’s not really the
42:36
choose about this individual that will be a very important
42:42
step and the thing that I like about this panel and working with
42:50
Rob is that this is the first time but actually I’m working with someone Academia to come to the business school I’m not the psychology
42:57
and that they tell me all the time okay no they have social informed okay
43:03
two different type of movement that we have to fix it and all the behaviorism
43:08
become to be like one of the largest business in the world getting people to
43:14
work with Aba to change them did you change the idea so we have to accept the identity and
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the Academia need to be getting into now the the issue over here in my mind is
43:28
money because the stigma is good for people making money the government pay for
43:35
these kids the government will pay for this for all the life and there are people that said okay this is a great
43:40
business I will just Warehouse them someplace get money from the government
43:47
so why do I want to change this thing I want to give them the way that they are they are
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so the academy is the most important place that need to change into it and tell you
44:00
the truth I tried I’m trying I’m meeting with a lot of
44:06
them and there is very big gap between reality and between what
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come out to the Academia what we can do is the one that create employment is trying
44:24
to work together and work and find the right partner in the Academia so we
44:30
actually can put good signs other
44:36
and start to work on the real issues rather than to figure
44:42
out that if someone is steaming this is not good and you have to fix it
44:50
so again I think that as person said it’s not your issue it is the issue of
44:56
the corporate it’s exactly the same over here the stigma coming from the other people and
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we have to find a way to do it the way that I see it on our model we have to prove to the corporate that the talent
45:11
that we bring them is getting them a lot of value and by short of the value
45:17
they’re going to start to look on this differently and truthfully I try to stay away from the
45:26
Academia and from all the different type of argument that going about what are
45:33
these people and what about they do it foreign if I may Rob her thanks first of all
45:40
Moise thanks so much we could talk for an hour we should meet again in Berlin
45:45
or somewhere but and thanks so much suana for
45:52
um for referring to to the deadline um and I I actually think if we talk
45:59
more about dandelions and about um disorders and disabilities that would
46:07
help because the point of the deadline is the question is this a wheat or is
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this an herb and for those who don’t know much
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it’s it’s a weed probably for garden owners
46:25
but for for people who who know how to
46:30
appreciate the value of plants or Etc and you can make a living out of
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growing it as a farmer but the very strong messages that
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the answer lies in each of us it it is us who decide is this and purpose is a
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weed because in the right settings it is a nerve in The Wrong settings it’s a
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weep but it it’s we can only get access to the virtues if we treat it as an herb
47:06
and I think 10 lines are unknown around the world and we are getting into the
47:13
campaign season where dandelions are blooming and seeds are spreading and if
47:19
we can ask everyone go around showing deadlines and ask people this is a weed
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and then start a discussion about the population that we care for on that basis that would help
47:33
a normal fingers we had we have to play more because when you’re
47:39
playing you are forgetting about the barriers you are you are in your Zone
47:45
and you can do things with others that you cannot do if you’re not comfortable
47:51
and then we actually we’ve been working with the Lego foundation for a number of
47:56
years so to to promote inclusion and learning
48:02
through play and I can tell you it works and we have to get away from the all the
48:09
sickness of many families or parents may feel ashamed if they have a
48:17
family with members who who may have autism spectrum disorder in combination
48:23
to the attention deficit High by activity this disorder and maybe obsessive competency disorder on top of
48:31
that it can scare the hell out of people but you can also play and if you play then you’ll you know
48:39
what this individual can do when the individual is in the comfort zone and
48:45
everyone can be proud again so play is important but I think
48:51
the way to to reach the the one million job that I
48:58
I need to figure out how to do before I can retire my my data in the center 2030
49:06
where the sdgs will be evaluated um
49:11
we had we we have to really um use the power of the Grassroots all you
49:20
you you see some parents here in the panel and you you can see what what we have
49:27
done we are just could you say ordinary parents
49:33
we we have we have not studied for this but our kids have made us social
49:40
entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurs or whatever you can call it and we have
49:45
really made our Mark in where where we work and if the two percent of the population
49:52
that may be autistic then it’s have two parents and maybe siblings and
50:00
cousins and uncles and neighbors and wow probably most of the world’s
50:07
population would would respond positively if you came to
50:14
them and and asked for them to engage in this and so to
50:20
play tell them about the dandelion tell them about yeah whatever
50:25
um but I I think um to reach the potential here we we need
50:33
to combine yeah I think the initial question before we we started was how do
50:40
you combine this um emotional thing with the professional
50:45
thing that is actually all new to study
50:52
please figure that out how do how do you combine the heart and the Brain the
50:59
emotions the the professional skills
51:04
I mean I’m here well now in perspective you started I think all the emphasis was
51:10
on on bias let me share with you an experience that I’ve had at sap when we first launched the program
51:16
in 2014 the United States we were hiring our first five autistic colleagues
51:22
starkill and I were working very very closely in making sure that the program got off
51:28
the ground very very well in in Newcastle Pennsylvania we were so
51:33
excited about what was happening and I remember that as part of the
51:39
support Circle that we created for employees on the autism spectrum we had a number of different roles one
51:45
was of course the manager we had a team buddy somebody that would work with our colleagues from the Spectrum in the
51:51
day-to-day activities not too different than when you and I had our first jobs right telling us how to how to do the
51:56
job right and then there was a mentor okay the mentor was a role was designed
52:02
not to be somebody who was inside of the team it was somebody who was from the sap Community but you know Metro would
52:11
be a friend basically that’s what it would be somebody who can maybe tenure at sap that that was a network or
52:19
somebody that could connect our colleagues to the Spectrum that could maybe go to lunch with them Etc establishing those relationships right
52:26
so we had a call at the very beginning to announce the program and that was my
52:32
first surprise my first surprise was when we had send out an email to about 18 000
52:38
employees and I thought that we would have maybe 20 30 40 people that would join the the call learning about how
52:46
this network and what was this program was about very first call we had 180 people join
52:52
in okay I was waiting with the surprise the second surprise was winning that same
52:58
College took an opportunity to ask for mentors because I thought you know if I can get maybe for the five first
53:04
colleagues maybe two mentors that we can split them in one person may Mentor two
53:10
people that would be great at the end of that call we ended up with 28 volunteers out of which 90 of them had no
53:17
experience whatsoever had never met an autistic person before for the elemental bias in my opinion is
53:25
one that and sometimes in some cases
53:30
it’s not a hundred percent understood to be honest I think that there is such a
53:36
strong willingness from people to help other people that sometimes it’s it’s underrated and I think that
53:43
the turkey’s point we need to tap into people’s well-being in the community the power of community that makes work okay
53:51
I see the issues of the adoption of these things in a more pragmatic way in
53:57
a more what I would call the issue of systemization okay let me give you an
54:02
example if you have a hundred but I’m going to start a step back by saying that I’ve
54:08
talked to a lot of companies over the last six years hundreds of companies and we have shared experiences with many
54:15
many companies of the caliber of Microsoft all the way to car washes all the way to you know financial sector
54:24
non-financial sector I.T Etc et cetera companies and in those conversations what I have
54:30
found is that their guests there gets to be a point in the life of these programs
54:35
because that’s another important thing to to highlight that these are initiated as programs in companies okay in
54:41
programs are agents of change as something bigger in a corporation they are meant to change the processes
54:49
and the best practices but they are not meant to be permanent fixtures necessarily in companies
54:55
so if I look at a autism hiring program I don’t see it necessarily as a permanent feature the objective would be
55:02
for it to disappear practices to be embedded in the DNA of the company and to become durable and
55:09
sustainable practices because one day Jose and torquilin and Moshe would retire and and if we are not there maybe
55:17
if we didn’t create the right practices then things will fall apart okay we need
55:22
to be able to embed these things in systems okay and that’s not a to
55:27
moisture’s point something that can happen overnight this needs time transformation needs time this not these
55:34
are not necessarily diversity and inclusion efforts necessarily or exclusively in my opinion they are
55:40
business transformation programs okay and we transformed the mentality of a
55:46
lot of people along the way going to your point wanna earlier we need to
55:51
transform the points in the perspectives of people even for those that may have a
55:56
bias on mental health and other you know situations to make it make it a normal in the organization and that’s one of
56:04
the great bright products of programs like autism Network we have been able to to make some great discoveries but let’s
56:10
let’s get I guess a little bit on the pragmatic side on the systemizing side
56:16
if I have a hundred employees that are on the autism spectrum very Divergent and
56:21
at the very beginning of the call we’re talking about this sustainability Rob was talking
56:27
about how often do you do conversations with your colleagues this is all for a
56:32
moment that you have one hour of conversation per employee okay per month
56:38
whenever it’s really not a whole lot okay and if you have 100 employees that’s 100
56:44
hours and if you have an external individual organization that is supporting you in
56:49
those conversations you start running the numbers and if you if they charge for 150 an hour
56:55
then at the end of the day it’s going to be a hundred and eighty thousand dollars just to talk one hour per month to 100
57:02
it doesn’t solve any job coaching issues it doesn’t have risk any any challenges
57:08
that people make okay the issue that I see is that if you
57:13
compartmentalize from a cost perspective and again this is a very pragmatic on
57:18
the implementation of these programs you start showing up in somebody’s Excel spreadsheet the more that you scale the
57:25
program so the problem with today’s programs is that they have a very limited level of capability and
57:30
sustainability over the long term the only way to mitigate this sustainability
57:37
in normalization of such programs in companies to transform the DNA of the company if you’re able to lift and shift
57:43
the practices that you created inside of the program and transfer them to them run maintain
57:48
parts of your organization that’s the heavy lifting this example that I was giving you about the cost
57:54
associated with with 100 employees is completely unfair because it only
58:00
targets the colleagues that are on the autism spectrum or the neurodivergent but the reality is that
58:06
I bet you a dollar that a lot of people that are not neurodivergent will also need to have those conversations as well
58:12
how things are going for you right the minute that we lift and ship that’s correctly that practice from built is my
58:19
work program which is a great lesson where they are in normalized across the entire organization it’s gonna cost you
58:24
four dollars per employee per year and that’s how the systems work today
58:30
where you have benefits organizations that buy programs like this what what we
58:35
need to do is think in terms of how do we live this practices where we learn so
58:40
much about about accommodating for human okay in the organization how do we take
58:46
them and how do we transfer them to those organizations that can scale and sustain I think that when that happens
58:52
and I think it is happening either way we’re going to be able to see a boom a
58:57
real real boom because they support structures that allow for the scalability of these things that allow
59:03
for many people that don’t have either an unconscious tapping to those services by consumption of the very services that
59:09
are offered I’m gonna say oh my gosh we are really we’re really meeting a need of our employee population
59:18
all right well I think I want to thank our our panelists I think we’re at the the end of our time I I do Jose I
59:27
love the this last comment because I think that’s the natural Focus that we have in places like Business Schools
59:34
right we want to make figure out how to systematize this how it works how it um and one of the things I’ve heard
59:40
repeatedly in other companies is many companies is if it doesn’t make sense
59:46
from a practical standpoint then when we have a recession or whatever it’ll it’ll
59:52
lose support and we don’t want that to happen so that’s a very important Dimension
59:58
um one of the things we said at the very end Alana told me when we start talked about this session is that we should end
1:00:04
with a call to action and although I did not orchestrate that at all I think that’s exactly what we’ve just seen so I
1:00:11
want to thank mosh torkel and Jose each for you know spending the last few
1:00:16
minutes telling us what we still need to do to realize this vision of um you
1:00:22
know opportunity for everyone there’s moist who said it there’s there’s skill
1:00:28
everybody has something to offer and I you you all weren’t here when I said it at the beginning but the the flip side
1:00:35
of that in my view is the world needs all the help it can get right it needs all the talent that we can access so
1:00:42
um anyway I want to thank you all and thanks to everybody who’s joined us for this panel as well so over back over to
1:00:49
Annika and Ohana we thank you so much Jose
1:00:58
um but especially Rob for bringing you all three to us today for having such an
1:01:06
inspiring conversation the room the community the spring Institute and the
1:01:12
greater vision of All of Us coming together is to change the frame so
1:01:18
that we can see the abilities and we can see the possibilities in the future we
1:01:23
thank you for your time on a Saturday we thank you for your continued inspiration and we cannot wait to continue this
1:01:32
conversation with half Rob will be guest hosting one of the days of the
1:01:38
spring institutes at IB on March 25th of the conversation will continue to bloom
1:01:45
Inspire and Mentor the next generation of Scholars working in this area and
1:01:51
teachers working in this area thank you all so very much thank you thank you thank you
1:01:57
thank you thanks for the opportunity thank you thank you
(N/A for this piece. As far as I know, we did not release on social media at the time)