Accommodation as a relational concept

>>> Dan Samosh: Welcome to our IDEA Social Innovation Lab webinar series. My name is Dan Dan Samosh I'm in Employment Relations Studies at Queens University and also part of the IDEA team. uh Today we have a webinar with Val�rie Martin. uh Before getting into the webinar, I just want to share like a little bit about how the webinar works. uh First off, captions should be available, uh if you have any questions or concerns if something isn't working or whatever else it might be uh please type into the Q&A function and we'll aim to you know address uh what comes up as soon as possible. uh This webinar will be recorded and posted online as well; uh it'll be posted on the IDEA website uh so you can look forward to that in case maybe you missed something or you can't stay for the whole webinar, uh and the slides should have also I believe been shared with you before the talk so you have access to those um so, thank you, Val�rie as well for for doing that for us. uh In terms of the structure of the webinar, uh I'll give this brief introduction and then most of the session will be Val�rie speaking and your questions. uh So at the end we'll do a Q&A, during that Q&A again, please use the Q&A function uh and just ask us anything uh that you need I will end up relaying the questions and repeating them out loud to our speaker.
So, we have for today, we have Professor Val�rie Martin. Val�rie is from the Department of Organization and Human Resources at the Universit� du Qu�bec � Montr�al (UQAM) uh and this research draws from your doctoral dissertation uh and I hear those take a little bit of work uh so I'm excited to to learn about all the work that you did and all the effort that you put in, and the title of our talk or part of that title is "Accommodation as a Relational Concept". So that's it for me, after you.

>>> Val�rie Martin: Thank you very much Dan for inviting me to to this web series. So, I will share my screen now...So let me know if it's good I think it is, yes, it's a okay thank you. So, yes, I will be discussing today uh about the topic I'm passionate about. This is what I did my uh PhD uh thesis on and is the um employment support services for autistic employees uh which led me to reflect on accommodations as a relational concept. So first I'll discuss a little bit about autism and employment, and then employ... about employment support services for autistic individuals, and then I will go more into the relationship between the worker and his or her supervisor, and then about accommodations and relationship. So the Canadian survey on disability from 2017 uh showed that that there were uh 58,209 in the work age population so it's a proportion of 0.2%, but if we look at the younger uh age, so 15 to 24 we see that it's 0.7% so we can expect this proportion to grow uh with time. We also know that autistic individuals have an employment rate well below the general population. So, the Canadian Survey on Disability lumps together uh every um type of developmental disability and they report that 25% of people um in that category are employed versus 61.6% of adults without a disability. We don't have good Canadian data that I know of about duration of employment, but a US study showed that autistic individuals in their study, their participants, average four to five jobs in a duration of five years so there's quite an instability here. The Canadian survey tells us that that among autistic people in employment 44% work full-time, so there's a lot of underemployment here. Quantitative underemployment means working less hours than you would wish for but there's also qualitative underemployment meaning that you work in a job that is below your educational level. uh Finally we know as well that co-occurring mental or physical health conditions can create additional barrier in the workplace.

I won't uh expect you to be all an expert on autism, so I'll give a little bit of definition. We can have a medical definition of autism saying it's a diagnosis in the DSM5 uh that is a a neuro as a neurodevelopmental diagnosis, but I prefer using social vocabulary to discuss social phenomena and leave the medical vocabulary to the doctor. So, when we discuss employment or everyday life, we're more into a social phenomenon. So a social view of autism would be uh defining autism as difficulties experienced in social interactions, atypical cognitive functioning and behaviours, and sensory issue that can interfere with everyday life including employability; and there's this uh term by Milton in 2012 where autistic researchers are saying that we could define autism as a double empathy problem meaning that difficulty experienced by autistic people are due in part to a lack of mutual understanding. So, most autistic people struggle to understand and empathize with non-autistic people and non-autistic people also struggle to understand and empathize with autistic people. So, it reminds us that communication is bidirectional and a shared responsibility between the two-communication partner. Most of the literature about autism and employment focused on the difficulties of autistic individual, so really people-oriented research and what they experience in the job market. There was much less research on obstacle in the workplace when I started my thesis in 2013. So, what we knew was uh discuss a little bit about prejudice in communication, inflexible uh organizational culture, in adaptive supervisory practices, organizational organizational policies that are not adapted or unflexible, or unsuitable physical environment. Since 2013, there's more and more research and a growing literature on in the organizational behaviour and management uh literature but there's still need uh much more research on what are the obstacles and what needs to change in the workplace to be more inclusive. In the same way, uh research has traditionally focused on autistic individual but there's also a call to shift a focus to how environmental factors can enable better employment outcome including uh the provision of more inclusive uh educational services and uh specialized employment support services. So, the social value will lead to better public policies to give those environment factor more funding and to be adapted.

So, this leads me to uh my uh my thesis uh I wanted to uh reflect on specialized support employment services for autistic individual and I partnered with a Montreal community-based organization that provided those services. uh The first thing is that we didn't know much� didn't know much about the profile of autistic individual looking for employment in the regular job market but still needing support services. We have a kind of stereotypical view of autistic employees being a young male programmer highly intelligent with but with little social skills and, but we know that there's much more variation with that. So, my first research question was uh what is the profile of autistic individual requesting employment support services and how useful are those services? So, in my study I recruited the 37 clients of uh the organization five of them being women, their average age was 30 years old but they ranged from 19 years old to 49 years old. Most of them were single but there were still people that were in a couple, had kids, or be be were single parents; and regarding housing, half of them were living independently, 41% with family, and and a little� a little percent in supervised or supported housing. This is important because it means that a lot were socially isolated. I could I could see it in their files or were living by themselves with little support in their everyday life, which can be okay but can also be more difficult when you're experiencing or struggling in the workplace. The cultural ethnicity or background was comparable to the Montreal population. Regarding their social professional characteristic uh in education 46% had some form of high school education or high school degree, uh 30% had a college education, and 24% had a university degree. So again, we see the really wide variety of profile of autistic uh clients looking for a job and asking for support services. I also measured work self efficacy. So self-efficacy is a concept that described the confidence someone has towards their ability uh for some form of specific activity. So, regarding work, uh people uh the participant had moderate confidence but it was more uh for uh social skills their self-confidence was lower but there was a wide variation from participant.

As well because I did my thesis in psychoeducation, I had to use a more validated tool to describe my participants. So, I used the social responsiveness scale which is a tool that is used to assess social behaviour, communication uh skills, and and social interaction patterns that are associated with autism and can also um uh evaluate the extent of the difference. So I saw that my participant uh were in every category even uh the "normal" category so not reaching the threshold to be qualified as autistic but really close to the threshold which is something that is expected for people having really good adaptive behaviour, but still there were people in the category of mild difficulty, moderate difficulties, or severe difficulties. I also use another tool which is the ABAS so it's a tool that evaluate adaptive behaviours and skill uh meaning uh behaviours in everyday life, ranging to crossing a street to doing laundry, making taking� a small repair on an appliance, or looking for medical support when you have an injury. So, in my sample uh 62% had an average or above average uh adaptive behaviour but there was still 38% that might need more support in their everyday life. 62% had a co-occurring condition, so ADHD, anxiety, depression but some physical health difficulties, and what was really striking was uh the prevalence of anxiety. So general anxiety and anxiety toward work was really elevated and this is really different than normal working age population. So, we can see there's a really wide variety when we look at the profile of the clients.

Moving on to the impact of services from this organization to help people find and maintain job. uh We see that um 70... uh 57% uh did find a job of those 16% was a job with a subsidy so in Quebec there's a program called the (French word/name of program) where an employer can get a partial salary subsidy if the job coach evaluates that the person has a lower productivity or a higher need of supervision then what would be expected in this role; so it needs to be evaluated each year and the person can either uh um rise or um or or or or be lowered uh uh over the years. uh 14% uh were oriented towards a job training or integration program. So those programs are to learn a trade or a work skill in a more structured way without the pressure of a productivity that would be associated with a a regular job. 8% went back to school and sadly 19% did not find a job during my observation period. The challenge was really with employment duration. So 35% were still in employment when I finished my study, 6% at a limited term contract or program, so the contract was ended and then they went to look for another job, sadly 35% were either fired or resigned so the average duration for them was 3.6 months they were either in regular employment or in a program. Seven of those it was their first work experience and it it kind... and can be a normative experience. I know I was fired from my first job in a video store, a video club store, and one case was someone that was experienced harassment at work so resigning from that job is still considered a a good outcome I would say. So, we see really that uh staying in employment is really a challenge for uh autistic people needing support services.

So, I went on to look to my other question which was what are the key factors that will influence the integration process of an autistic employee when they receive employment services for him to move toward a positive uh employment outcome? I use the word integration to discuss the process, while inclusion for me is more the result of this process. Again, when I started my my thesis there were a little research that considered what was actually happening in an organization when a person with a disability is employed and what are the factors the events that can lead to positive or negative outcomes. For this study, I went on and documented nine case study of nine autistic workers that had been in in a job for more than three months. For four case I did an interview with the supervisor and the other five case I did two or three interview with the employee first and then with the supervisor and the job coach, and I also read the the file of the job coach. I tried to have a really wide variety of employees profile different job, different organization, and business sector, and employee that where the uh organization had a subsidy or not, and positive or negative outcome. So, I wanted by this variety to be able to pinpoint what was the the pattern or what was the commonalities.

I present to you, it's maybe a little bit busy as a slide, uh I try to map my participant according to their support needs and if they had success meaning positive employment outcome, so being still in employment or well having a good employment outcome but leaving the organization for a a normative reason like the schedule doesn't uh is not convenient for me anymore; or and people uh having failure or having uh negative employment and outcome. so Gabrielle, Jeremy, and William (participant names) they had low support needs for communication meaning that their communication style was not that different of nonautistic people, they can converse uh but uh like Jeremy said "you need to be clear with me if you're not clear, I will not understand you". um Gabrielle and William really had positive employment outcome, but Jeremy uh a programmer, at first had really different...uh a lot of difficulty in his work. He ended up being fired but his manager called him back weeks later because he really needed them and then they work with the job coach to make sure that things were going better and eventually there were a merger in the organization and all of Jeremy's colleagues started leaving their job so Jeremy ended up being the most senior in his department and the new management gave him, um the management uh role so it was just too stressful for him so he decided to quit. uh Travis and Alex they both had high support need for communication so uh they don't uh use elaborate language they will do very short uh sentence it's not always easy knowing if they did understand you when you talk to them. For Alex there was a communication board with images to make sure that he could convey if they he appreciate or like the task that was given to him to him or not, and he needed a picture to know like which how to cut the vegetable when asked because it was different like cubes or or or or or um sticks let's say for carrots but still both manager considered that it was a positive employment outcome; and in the medium support need for communication, there was really a wide array of um of challenges. So, Martine had a college degree but when I interviewed her she was doing really short answer and couldn't answer really question about what she like what she thought about other people still when she continued chatting with me afterwards and by messenger she was much more articulate. uh She had a first job that went well in the organization but when the work was finished they moved on moved her to another department where it was a really bad experience and they they fired her, but the organization really wanted to uh keep her so they found a third department and there the manager invested herself a lot and they asked support from a job coach, and then she went on and uh when I I think now she even got a promotion. So, she's still there. Thomas was a college student but still the manager said if you ask him a question, he doesn't know the answer he will just stay there and not talk so it can be destabilizing. um Arno was really the one who's had really a a a bad experience. So, Arno is very um articulate when you speak to him, but he really doesn't measure the impact of his words on other people. So, he will say things that will be felt very harshly or will naturally uh discern the intention of other people. So, when I interviewed him, he was in a new job, and I asked him, so how is it going? He said well, it's going well it's just the manager asked me not to change my clothes, uh in um to change into my work outfit in front of the girls in the lockers, but I told him I don't mind it's not a problem. So, he didn't really pick it up that even if he doesn't mind to change his work clothes in front of his girl co-workers women co-workers, they might uh be um not appreciated and the supervisor telling me that is an instruction not to do it again. So, you could see that he might run into additional problems in the future.

So I try really to look at what could explain those successes, those failures with the different characteristic of the organization and the people, and what really struck me is that the the one thing that was the same in all the cases was that the success or failure of the integration process dependent on the relationship between the manager and the autistic employee; and this is not surprising because it really fits into a theory that has been around for more than 50 years, called The Leader Member Exchange Theory or the LMX. This theory says that supervisors develop different relationship with each of their subordinate and a high-quality relationship uh will uh is associated with higher supervisor support and coaching, higher employee satisfaction and performance, and a lower uh turnover rate for employees. um This theory is in the broader theory of the social exchange theory, so this theory says that our everyday social interaction are characterized by reciprocity, and we exchange uh economic or tangible outcomes and social emotional outcomes. So social emotional outcomes can be a signal that will meet uh someone's need of a social need or self-esteem need uh that will send a message that someone is valued or treated with dignity or trusted.

So when I looked at uh what the manager were conveying to me they talk about like the economic outcome so they said that they were giving extra time and effort to their employee and they would receive the work performance according to their expectation, but what was also said in every instance that is that they were receiving social-emotional outcomes so being proud to help contribute to society, seeing their employee grateful or happy to have a job or simply seeing their employee grow and flourish as a result of working with them. They also talk about the recognition that they were getting from the management or by family members because they had an employee, and they had this experience. So things that were said in interview was like, "what impressed us was we brought out his strengths" or it's I think "we're proud of that at the end of the day we help a little in in the community", or another manager said "it's still gratifying I liked it, even if there were some clashes".

uh This theory talk about the antecedent of the relationship so what are the ingredient that will be conducive of setting a good relationship. uh Perceived similarity, positive emotion and liking, trust, or positive expectations are likely to conduce to a good relationship; and that would explain why uh people that are were already familiar with autism, that that had a personal relationship with an autistic person, or had a motivation to hire someone different were really predisposed to creating a good relationship with their autistic employee. This theory also discussed how the development of the relationship is done by a mutual process, so the trust will develop as a result of a mutual trusting process, and when there's a positive result, um answer to this test then there's increasing trust. So a a a testing process might be I give you a task you perform it well, I give you something a little bit more challenging you do it well, I give you a special permission and you don't take advantage of it, I give you a sensitive information and you treat it with care. So, everything will create trust. On the other hand, when there's disappointment it will lead to a low-quality relationship. so here um Arno's manager said to me, "not to have a disabled employee honestly I'd be unhappy, but he stayed closed, he really stayed closed, he closed after a week and then he stays closed. So, he didn't see his employee progressing um or an employee uh being demotivated. So, Felix's manager said this "the motivation and the fact that he has really really started to focus on other things at work no employer can accept that" so in Felix's case at first even they had to put a lot of work to uh adapt communication, uh Felix was really doing well and they were really proud and they were prepared to give him a permanent job, but then Felix changed really his behaviour they didn't know really what to do, uh and he was demotivated and he didn't want and he really clearly said that he didn't want to do this job anymore, so they were really really disappointed and they asked him to uh leave.

The second finding the other thing that was striking when analyzing my data is was that the quality of this relationship was influenced by the action of the job coach, who facilitated the communication between the manager and the employee. So, the job coach uh really acted as a way to uh to strengthen the LMX relationship which is associated to uh positive result for every employee. So, he influenced the relationship by raising awareness about autism, uh by facilitating mutual understanding, by adapting the means of communication, or by shaping expectation and of course it was very different depending on the profile of the employee, the supervisor, or the type of job. So, to raise awareness uh he could reassure the future uh supervisor or help him to understand his employee. So, we talked a lot about everything psychological his profile, uh at the same time his limitation and his personality. So, we see that's antecedent of the LMX relationship, so predisposing someone one to uh be less unfamiliar, uh have more� uh be having a better understanding of what autism and this employee could be like. Regarding communication, the job coach could demonstrate how to give uh instructions or how to communicate with the employee. so the job coach, one job coach told me "I was trying to explain a little bit how things should be presented to him so that it be clearer", or the manager said "when I saw how the job coach was talking to Martine (participant name) and behaving with her during those three days, well that allowed me to loosen up a little. This change was positive and did affect Martine now things are said, and Martine isn't more anxious than that either", and finally uh facilitating uh mutual understanding can be really uh important when employees have unexpected behaviours that can generate rejection. So again, Martine's manager said, "when it's lunchtime we're eating in the cafeteria and we start talking and people don't know what to do because Martine will say the same thing 10 time the pasta is good, the pasta is good, they're good". So, the manager really uh didn't know what to do, and she saw that other employees started to avoid Martine and go eat somewhere else in the cafeteria. So the job coach really explained that this was the way Martine was trying to engage the conversation with others and she recommended that if they are annoyed they just so they they could just tell her please stop repeating yourself and then ask her a question about something else or give her information or start a conversation simply and that that should change the pace of the conversation. Finally, the ma� the job coach could um shape expectation so said well you know your employee is good at black and white stuff he very efficient very quick at doing this clearly and precisely. Can we just give him this task and delegate the gray rules to someone else? So when he does this he predisposes the manager to uh have a positive performance per perception of performance of his employee by really showing what the employee is good at and explaining to him why the employee is good at those tasks and explaining why those other tasks might be more difficult; and this and we know it's important because the LMX relationship quality is more related to perceived performance then objective measure performance. So, if we can shape expectations uh we can really foster a better relationship. The job coach can also develop the relationship by capturing subtle social clues that the employee might not be able to detect or interpret, but that could only be done if he was on on site, and it's particularly important for autistic employee that have difficulties uh um observing and interpreting uh other people's behaviour. The job coach can also make social-emotional outcomes more visible to the manager. so highlighting the employee progress over time underlying the employee uh appreciation of their job, of their workplace, um make sure that the manager is recognizing� have recognition. and it's more important for employee that will have more um will not discuss about emotion or some autistic people also have a face that doesn't show emotion in a neurotypical way. So, they they can't communicate that they're happy to be there or they they appreciate uh the communication.

Finally, the failures that I saw in my uh my study was really when um the manager and the employee did not request any support. So here is here is Arno's job coach saying "well, when I was calling him, my client would say it's going well and the the supervisor well he misunderstood his employee behaviour he said in the employee in the employee lounge he didn't mix with anyone, he didn't talk with anyone, nothing you know it was really he was really closed off. I don't know why." So he saw is he saw Arno arrive two hours earlier than his work shift to hang out in the employee lounge because but because he didn't smile or talk to anyone he didn't understand that well Arno is feeling good in the employee lounge, because he comes here even if if he doesn't have to, but because his face or his communication wasn't showing him he could he did not understand that behaviour and believe that Arno didn't want to be there. So, after that he decided to fire Arno and say well, I can see myself telling him trying to reprimand him. uh You know these people don't deserve that I don't think we're going to get anywhere. So instead of trying to understand and find ways to communicate what was the expectation to Arno and make him understand what was not going well he preferred to just fire him. Of course, there were other contributing factors in different cases. So, the behaviour of other workers was important, the co-workers, colleagues, uh organization that had flexibility of rules or policy. as well were facilitating for positive job outcomes. For some employee the wage subsidy uh was an important� was a part as that it played a part as well to positive employment outcome; but in every cases, I saw that there was the important role of the supervisor as the one who opened the door, uh as the one who set the tone as well for the team, and the one that enables the implementation of role and policies in everyday life; and that's especially true in small or medium organization where there's not that much rule or policies and it's the manager that make the rules as he goes.

So, this study led me to think about accommodation as relations... uh as a relationship concept uh in different way. So, first like I just discussed, uh we see that importance of a good supervisor employee relationship for is important for job retention, employer support, job performance, and job satisfaction; and it's a challenge then when there's a new supervisor and can destabilize the situation especially if the autistic employee doesn't did not realize the importance of this relationship and didn't think of making an effort to building a new relationship. So, being aware of this relationship as uh the accommodation uh strike us to think about building a new relationship when there's new rel... uh partners in the relation. Another thing with autistic worker is a lot of accommodation takes place in the relationship, in the everyday communication, and it can be a challenge for the nonautistic partner because it means adapting their everyday communication daily in most situations. Something that they might not be attune or you know uh if if they're not sensitized or don't have the the attitude of being inclusive; and I wanted to pinpoint a wonderful new publication. It's a guide on facilitating neuro mix communication in the workplace. Only in French and is by the (French name) which is a working group um that uh look at uh inclus... uh inclusion of disabled individual in workplaces or in school.

uh when I talk about accommodation in relationship, I'm I'm thinking as well about an an a coworker, an autistic coworker who share with me her difficulties with accommodation. So, because of her sensory issue during Zoom meeting, the use of an image background will be very distracting for her you know, when we move the the images shifts a lot, or it's the same when it's a blur; and for it's really distracting uh disrupting or even painful if she's really tired or if it's a a meeting where she really needs to focus. Also a microphone that will rub on clothes or other surface will do a lot of noise and again it's really disrupting for her. So, her accommodation is asking people not to use a background, image background, or use headphone, or a a a microphone with a flexible cord, or not use a headphone at all. So, it's an accommodation that needs to be included in everyday social interaction and depends on the fact that everyone else remember in every meetings that she has, to stop their microphone or be mindful uh their stop their background or be mindful of their microphone. So, for this colleague she told me it means a lot of extra work to ask again and again uh when people forget, and she feel it's her responsibility each time to ask this for this accommodation, and she feels that some colleague thinks that she's overreacting or she's asking just too much so here is really a way uh that the a situation where an employer can set the tone for the team and saying well this is what our colleague need and this is what I expect you to do when you're meeting with her or where you're doing a good a a work meeting; but it could mean also for the employer to adjust its policy. So, if they impose the the use of a background image for the image of the business or for the privacy of policy well they would need to retain that rule, or would they fund quality microphone so people have like a a head headphone with a u her hard uh microphone, instead of some an iPhone microphone. So, we see that in every day relationship with the colleagues, but also the way that um the the manager conveys the attitude toward the team uh the accommodation takes place or will or will not take place. A third way to think about accommodation as a a relational context is to move away to just learning a new task and think more about organizational socialization. So organizational socialization it refers to the process whereby a a new employee will become a fully accepted and functioning member in an organization so this process will both depend on organizational practice and the newcomer uh information-seeking behaviour. So, by those two uh ways uh the new employee will get a good understanding of what is expected of him, but also the culture of the organization and the team, what is valued or not including the implicit and unsaid rules and also gain acceptance from peer; but the the challenge is that some of those rule or some of that culture is really unset. So, let's say two different workplace that have a 35 hour a week's expectation that is written in the formal contract. So, for one workplace employees are expected to follow the exact schedule including the breaks, or colleagues will frown and say well if you start not taking your break the boss will expect us everyone else not to take their break. In another workplace there might be the same formal schedule of 35 hour, but most employee will stay to work later because they don't want to be tagged as unmotivated or unengaged. So, uh someone leaving exactly following exactly the work schedule will be frown upon saying because we won't understand why he �s not doing like everyone else. So, in both workplaces the explicit rule is the 35-hour schedule, but the real implicit expectation is very different and might only be communicated by indirect or sneaky comments and not in a formal way. So, over the initial months a way to become a member, a full member of the organization may be to ask question about the job, about one's performance, but also asking direct question about events, people to get a sense of the culture observing people's behaviour and noting the reaction of colleagues towards your own behaviour. So, again it's a really a challenge uh when you try in when you are in autistic non-autistic communication and social interaction, and as a job coach can help and pick up those social tasks; but organization can also be more inclusive if they formalize the way they socialize their new employee, but also by being more explicit about the real expectation towards their employee.

Finally, the last way we can see accommodations as a relational as a uh as a relational concept and seeing accommodation as a result of a negotiation. So, uh obtaining an accommodation is not something that is so simple that you say well those are my needs and then that's the change in the organization to provide you with that accommodation. It's really a negotiation and that comes from a Canadian um study where uh it and it's iterative, nonlinear, and it depends on a lot of social, relational, and political factors. So, we know that the social capital of the individual asking for an accommodation will be important. So, the social capital is like the employee reputation, its likability, uh the val... the the the value uh the organization perceive of his work, and this is a little bit disappointing because accommodation are needed to give a better work performance but people having a lower work performance will be less likely to get that accommodation.

So, when we look at accommodation as a relational concept, we see that organization that have inclusive leadership are much more likely to provide good accommodation for autistic individual because um inclusive leadership uh will foster many um many characteristic that are conducive to adapting relations. So, they would be um they they will be accessible for autistic individuals. So, inclusive leadership will foster employee's uniqueness, will strengthen uh belongingness with within a team, will make sure that they show appreciation for everyone's effort and contribution. So, there might more be con... might more uh recognize the contribution of autistic worker and how they they struggle to communicate with others. So, there's the reciprocity of trying as well to value this uniqueness and making an effort for inclusion.

So, I've talked a lot so what are the main takeaways from my talk is that there are a diverse profile of autistic worker, and specialized employment support services are useful to find job, but workers and their supervisors still need support afterwards. Communication is a reciprocal and bidirectional activities in the daily life of an organization and both communication partner needs to make adaptation to uh communicate well. So adapting communication is a crucial accommodation for autistic worker, which will lead to a better employee-supervisor relationship and positive employment outcomes. Job coaches should focus on developing and improving this uh supervisor-employee relationship as much as they focus on professional task, tangible task, and support the negotiation of accommodation because this is a challenging process; and finally, uh fostering an inclusive leadership uh in an organization will really support the provision of relational accommodations. So, thank you.

>>> Dan Samosh: Thank you very much this was a great talk. uh Very much appreciate as well just this broader perspective. Understanding the relationship uh not just focusing on the individual or just focusing on the manager, co-workers, but everyone in that system. um Also as well, uh the reminder that the job coach can be there to train the manager and the coworker uh which I think is super important because often in this space people you know will talk about like meeting in the middle uh but they don't actually know where the middle is. So a job coach to be there to teach that manager this is you know how we communicate, how we can kind of work together I think is really important. um We have a lot of questions.
I want to make sure to everyone if there's someone who wants to ask a question maybe you came late though. um Please if you have a question uh you can type it into the Q&A at the bottom of the zoom screen, uh and we only have so much time we probably can't get to all of them so please remember you can always email us. (Dan's cat appears on screen) Oh, this is my co-host coming in my little cat, you might be able to hear her. (Val�rie Martin laughs in response to Dan's cat)

>>> Dan Samosh: So, I'll start off now going into our first question uh which is. "Is it best to suggest applying for contract jobs before going for a full-time job?" >>> Val�rie Martin: I don't think there's a definitive answer for that um what I can tell you is that I I remember one manager of a municipality told me that their um internship program uh really helped change the situation because the managers that were unfamiliar with autistic worker felt that there was less "risk" with an intern than an employee, and this internship was more more for the manager to get familiar and get more comfortable with adapting his way of um supervising an artistic employee than for the artistic employee of developing himself. So, I don't know if that could apply, but maybe a contract job is seen as a less, and and and it might be seen as a way for an autistic worker as well to get an understanding of the organization as well in a in a short dose.

>>> Dan Samosh: Thank you, uh and our next question is "given the importance of manager employee personality compatibility when it comes to neuro inclusion do you think there should be more flexibility for employees to have a say in who their manager is in larger teams where there is more than one manager who could be assigned to manage that employee?"

>>> Val�rie Martin: That would be wonderful if we could choose our boss, sometime it's possible and of course, and I remember when I was a a a student there were teacher where like I could easily understood why they what they were conveying and what they were asking their evaluation, another teacher that never got good grades. So, I went on and always choose that worker. So, of course if you can uh go towards the manager where it's easier to have that good communication. When it's not possible, one way would be to try to uh identify a colleague where you feel that you can get a better uh connection and that can help you maybe compensate for the lack of the supervisor and the way they convey information, and relationship building with your colleague is always important because you know when something's going wrong well you have somebody who can give an interpretation because they know you best and they they can better interpret maybe your behavior or or the way you understood things. So, that would be a way when you cannot choose your manager which is most of the time, >>> Dan Samosh: and uh the next question I'll actually answer we just got a few of these um people seem to really like your presentation and they wanted to know will this be posted online, uh and so yes, it will be uh it'll probably be on the IDEA website in 3 weeks to a month or so, and uh if you have any questions about that to please email us because we can give you more information after this. um

>>> Dan Samosh: One person asked you if you can clarify LMX, so Leader-Member Exchange Theory, so, that's the name of the theory.

>>> Val�rie Martin: So, LMX Leader Member, the X for exchange, and it's really a theory uh talking about a specific type of leadership because you have a lot of tyrion leadership and that's a specific specific type of leadership where the focus is more in the the didactic relation. So, the relationship of one manager with one employee, which can be different than the relationship of the same manager with another type of employee. So, that's what I refer to when I say LMX relationship. So, it's really the relationship but seen with this view, >>> Dan Samosh: and our next question uh is "I think racism plays an important role in perception of social capital uh love to have more perspectives of this study on black autistic folks was the participants in this study diverse?"

>>> Val�rie Martin: um Yes, but I did not gather specific information on that, but absolutely uh we can take an intersectional lens as well to understand this, and I would say they would there would be additional uh challenge in the communication if you have a non-autistic, autistic uh communication but as well somebody who's autistic and also from another cultural background, or or another ethnicity. So, you have another layer of perceived dissimilarity, and we know that similarity, dissimilarity influence the relationship. So, that's why it's important to focus on this task because of course it can add, and� other challenges and lead to more discrimination for sure. And I also see in the question like isn't firing Arno on the basis of how he was uh in free social time discriminatory? Absolutely, and I I would say you know I I relay the quote as I heard them and I know that that would not be how I would speak about employees, and when you do interview you are always torn between well somebody just said to me something that's very racist, but then if I challenge him on that he's going to stop talking about what he thinks, and I need to know what he thinks if I want to analyze because what he thinks will lead to his behaviour. So, when you're doing interviews always very unsettling when people have discriminatory racist capitalist behaviour or or discussion and you know I I feel uneasy writing them but that's what led to their behaviour and their attitude, so I think it's important as well to understand that.

>>> Dan Samosh: Yeah, it's important to convey what happened. >>> Val�rie Martin: Yeah, for sure. >>> Dan Samosh: In in that regard, uh the sample was 37 people and five five identified as women, um that's a very a wide gap, wide difference, so is there is there a reason for that?

>>> Val�rie Martin: Well first that was representative of the clientele of the organization at that time so that was what I was the pool where I was recruiting from. We know that it's not all autistic people that will ask for employment support services, so there might be that women will not go to this organization for employment support services or will ask other type of organization for employment support services. They might try to do it at their own. So, my sample is really autistic worker asking for employment support services and we know that there are a lot of people that are outside of this narrow range of uh but this pool.

>>> Dan Samosh: Yeah, and do you... uh we have a few questions on like different organizations, Ready, Willing, and Able and also just job coaches in general uh in Quebec, Ontario, otherwise um do you have any kind of suggestions around organizations you've worked with or otherwise?

>>> Val�rie Martin: So, I don't know much about Ontario so I can talk about Quebec. So, in Quebec if you want to know more about employment support services uh I would suggest to go to the website uh Joseph so J O S P H .ca and this is the network of all uh specialized support Organization for people with any type of disabilities. So, in Montreal they they work with different clientele uh outside in the province they will work with any clientele and they're really the organization that have this mandate. uh For organization that work with (French word), so Ready, Willing and Able, they might uh it's not because an organization will work with Ready, Willing, and Able that they won't work as well with a specialized support service organization so you can still ask for this support and normally when you're already employed and you ask for help you're kind of prioritized to make sure that you don't lose the job that you already have, uh versus people looking for a new job.

>>> Dan Samosh: Thank you and so we only have a few minutes left so I want to make sure if there were any questions you saw you really interested in or if there are just like summary points you want to share.

>>> Val�rie Martin: Well, yeah, I I see one question about turnover, and I would say turnover could be detrimental to autistic worker because again when you always have new people that needs to understand your way of communicating and need to learn how to adapt, this is a lot of adaptation that needs to be done and then this can be very destabilizing so but then again if you have bad co-workers that leaving that might be a good idea so you you would encourage people that don't like being well to leave.

>>> Dan Samosh: Yeah, I guess it's truly relational in that way depends on depends on the people. Well thank you um I'm noticing as well just in case uh several people have asked questions about websites uh URLs in the Q&A um please if you don't end up getting the answers to those questions while the webinar is ongoing uh send one of us at IDEA an email it'll get to someone who can certainly answer the question for you.

>>> Val�rie Martin: My pleasure yeah thank you so much.

>>> Dan Samosh: um so yeah really Val�rie thank you so much for joining us for this webinar, for sharing about your research, I'm excited to see you where your work goes next.

>>> Val�rie Martin: And I I want to say hello to my students that I see in the the room as well. thank you, Dan.

>>> Dan Samosh: You're welcome on that note yeah hi to the students. We had almost a 100 people here today which is very exciting, very exciting uh and before we go I just want to share that we have an amazing team that makes all of this possible um specifically thinking of Eakam Grewal, Therese Salenieks, Sabrina Chaudhry, and both Emile Tompa and Rebecca Gewurtz. So thank you to them thank you to our wonderful presenter uh we're going to take off for the summer so you won't see us for a bit but please come back in September for our next webinar. So yeah everyone have a nice summer. Thank you.