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Lived experience, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2023
Open plan offices pushed one autistic professional into business
In short
At the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium, a panellist described open plan work as hostile to their thinking, and the conversation with their department that finally named the problem.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
A panellist’s route into entrepreneurship began with a building. The panellist told the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium that they had come to understand they did not suit open plan work environments, and that there had been a trend towards them, particularly in professional services. “I found it was completely hostile to my way of thinking”, the panellist said.
They explained the mechanics. In a building where a good 2,000 people are working at the same time, the panellist said, your brain is trying to filter out all the different conversations. Later they called it a bombardment of sensory stimuli. The difficulty they described lay in the processing load the environment imposed on them.
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Sources the story draws on
- Physical workplace adjustments to support neurodivergent workers: A systematic review (opens in a new tab), Applied Psychology (Clara Weber, Beate Krieger, Eunji Häne, Joanna Yarker and Almuth McDowall)
- Embracing silence: Creating inclusive spaces for autistic employees (opens in a new tab), Industrial and Organizational Psychology, vol. 17 (Cambridge University Press), Joanna Maria Szulc
- Why your brain has to work harder in an open plan office than private offices: study (opens in a new tab), The Conversation (Elizabeth J Sander, Bond Business School), record on Bond University Research Portal
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