WORKPLACE

A lot of people with dyspraxia go onto Further Education but most of them don’t find jobs connected to their degree. Unfortunately office jobs - whether doing clerical or call centre work can be as difficult for dyspraxics as working in a manual job. (What might be termed Blue Collar Dyspraxia is an under-examined field and we'd like to hear of any fellow dyspraxics' experiences of trying to follow in a family trade or who has been able to learn skills as an electrician, plumber or the like.)

Here are some signs of dyspraxia that may manifrest themselves in the workplace:Here are some observable characteristics we adult dyspraxics can exhibit a work, at home &, in social situations (again, not all may be immediately apparent): obsessional characteristics; co-ordination, balance & posture difficulties – affecting home maintenance, learning to drive; tendency to spilling drinks, bumping into things etc; lack of manual dexterity; losing files, untidy desk; receiving unexpectedly poor appraisals; difficulties in filtering out background noise in order to concentrate fully on work; inability to keep still in our seats;untidy & rumpled personal presentation; poor handwriting; low self-esteem; being bullied; unrealistic expectations; difficulty remembering instructions, directions etc; inability to learn from written instructions; avoidance & reluctance to perform tasks which require sustained mental effort; inability to complete tasks quickly & properly, just not able to get the hang of some things: whether work-related or leisure activities - from book-keeping, bar duties, cleaning to shuffling cards, playing pool;a tendency to be chaotic, forgetful & disorganised, despite our best intentions; difficulty in refocusing after interruptions; difficulty making decisions; inabilityto converse with colleagues by relating jokes, anecdotes or descriptions that require a degree of sequencing; appearing not to listen when spoken to directly; difficulties with retaining jobs.

Not everyone with dyspraxia has exactly the same strengths & weaknesses so while one dyspraxic may find working with computers daunting another may take to computer work like a fish to water, imbued with the relief that the ability to cut & paste & not having to write longhand can bring. However, despite variations, organisation is a common tendency amongst us, so here are some tips regarding seeking - & holding onto – work.

Before you start your day’s work it can be a good idea to plan your tasks & prioritise them. Ask your employer for plenty advanced warning of deadlines.

Organise your work into two main piles: urgent & non-urgent. Tasks and projects are easier when broken down into manageable chunks. Large projects are really a series of small tasks which can be finished in sequence and rewarded by a short break to renew concentration. Try to make sure your employer understands the reasons behind this modus operandi. Ideally they will understand that with the right support you can be a determined & effective worker.

When using computers, mouse speed can be reduced in order to make it easier to use.

Basic mind & body relaxation exercises can help you reduce your stress levels. Often information overload can lead dyspraxic employees to seek solace in peace, quiet and a good book on their break rather than socialise with colleagues, who may also share different interests to someone with dyspraxia. It's easy to become isolated - sometimes it's what you want, sometimes it's a wall you'd rather not have built. Assertiveness training may help you with more effective communication in the workplace.

Job Applications

Only apply for jobs you feel you can do –it may be your dyspraxic determination has sharpened your writing, photographic, broadcasting skills. Traditional “steady” jobs may be beyond you, & you may feel slightly inadequate about your lack of adaptability, especially if you come from a background where working with one’s hands has been a source of family pride & a breadwinning necessity, but today’s job market does have something to offer the dedicated, focused dyspraxic candidate. Caring for the elderly, for children, for animals as well as “hobby”-based professions such as photography & writing seem to suit some of us. If you are prepared to do voluntary work in the area you’re interested in, your dedication may pay off when it comes to applying for paid employment.

Prepare your typed CV

Seek assistance from the Disability Employment Adviser at your local Job Centre Plus. You can get free assessment under the Access To Work scheme, & funding for equipment & training. Workstep - or Supported Employment as it used to be termed - is a possibility for those with severe Dyspraxia who would find it hard to gain and maintain employment without assistance.

If possible, download the application form & type your answers.

If this is not possible, photocopy the application form & have a go at a rough draft, thereby ensuring that you send in a form that is as neat & well-presented as you can make it.

Interviews

If possible get a friend or colleague to give you a mock interview

Make a list of questions that it’s likely you’ll be asked

Prepare in advance a question you can ask at the interviewabout the company or organisation.

Because clothes that are not “broken in” can be especially uncomfortable for Dyspraxics, ensure well in advance that you will be comfortable as well as smart in your interview clothes.

Disclosure

It’s difficult to advise on whether you should tell your potential employer about your Dyspraxia on the application form or in an interview situation. Despite many employers’ stated commitment to be positive about disabilities, not everyone in a position of hiring new employees is as altruistic as they profess to be. Perhaps you reckon your dyspraxia won’t have a major impact on your potential new job. Even if you think it may affect the way you do the job, there is always the chance to “come out” to your line manager later, or to keep your condition private. A situation may simply arise where you can mention it quite casually, almost in passing: your inability to open or close venetian blinds, perhaps. It’s not an easy decision to make although if you feel it won’t sabotage your chances of landing a position, disclosure could be a good way of establishing your identity – not forgetting the strengths you’ve developed – from the start.

In the work environment it can often be difficult to cope with background noise and it is often preferable to work in subdued lighting. Work brings out the inability to filter noise, the inability to remember verbal instructions. Pens, papers and equipment are often mislaid. Not only can it be hard for us to find our way around, but our processing differences can lead to difficulties learning specialist language, acronyms and abbreviations, and they may find they get lost when trying to find their way to a new building or department. Starting a new job can be particularly daunting to those of us with dyspraxia.

Dyspraxics tend not to be "office animals", chit-chatting all day about last night's Reality TV or what we'd do if we won the lottery, while working steadily through reams of paperwork. We are by nature individuals. We have no choice in the matter.…The workplace is designed around the needs/features of the Neuro-Typical: e.g. open plan offices (without screens to reduce distractions), and an expectation of organisational/administrative skills and an ability to multi-task.

Background cackling in an office would tend to irritate a Dyspraxic more than a NeuroTypical person. The dyspraxic mind tends to “riff” on people’s remarks, examining the implications of what they’re saying, honing in on cliché, like a habitually zealous customs officer – waving very little through unexamined.

Conversely, precise details seem to evade us in meetings or when following instructions.

Shops can be nightmares to work in – presenting the complexities of till operation, counting out the right change, not banging into the stock & knocking stock over… but for the purposes of this site we’re mainly dealing with office practice. In future we’d love to expand our focus and hear from people with experiences of working in shops, on site, anywhere..

For the present, though, let’s get back to that striplit, open plan office, the radio blaring on in the background & impenetrable jargon being bandied about all around you. For a start, as Mary Colley’s Living With Dyspraxia notes: “The untidiest desk in the office will be yours”. Also, the intricacies of office politics may be beyond you & you’ll feel outrage at what you see as hypocrisy, pettiness & injustice. Of course, not every office is like this but, like classrooms, many share similar characteristics.

Initially, the prospect of work in an office may seem a relief to a young adult dyspraxic after the rigours of school: no P.E., no more bullying, the prospect of a settled future.

Unfortunately, the workplace can be a minefield for the Neuro-Diverse! And the bullying doesn’t always stop at school. Certain colleagues can detect a “difference” in you &, like a school bully, exploit it. You may find yourself “picked on” by supervisors who seem to let others get away with misdemeanours and open flouting of the rules.

Here's a telling quote from Living With Dyspraxia:

“Every organisation has its own unwritten rules & procedures. There are those who really have the power & there are those who are only nominally in charge. Try to make sure that you do not get on the wrong side of your office’s inner circle.”

In some offices, supervisors & managers may seem hard to respect & take seriously as they try to impress their superiors, power dress & pepper their sentences with jargon while still being keen to be “one of the lads”, displaying a juvenile attitude to supporting football & a tendency to resort to casual racism, sexism & homophobia which may upset & irritate you. Attributes, such as good grammar, which may seem important to you and which are strengths in some dyspraxics may not seem important to them. The juxtaposition of jargon-peppered vocabulary and careless grammar may prove especially irksome to you. You could end up feeling superior in certain ways to your superiors which in turn leads to more frustration as you imagine that if you only had their organisational skills you could do their job a lot better and more fairly than they do. Of course, you don’t have to be dyspraxic to recognise the role-playing & stereotypes that exist in today’s work environment (TV sitcom The Office did this brilliant to comic, often cringeworthy, effect) and you certainly don’t have to be dyspraxic to feel frustrated in a work situation. Colleagues who share your views may sympathise but say: “I keep my head down & just get on with it”, advising you to “Cover yourself "– i.e. "Don’t stand out". Unfortunately not standing out & “just getting on with it” aren’t at all easy for dyspraxics.

Over the years, dyspraxic office workers have found themselves with a constant need to rewrite letters & reports till they’re legible & presentable. Thankfully, computer packages have largely alleviated this problem, though filing by hand can still be problematical and result in heaps of papers surrounding you & a half-open filing cabinet and an urge to run away overtaking you.

If you’re dyspraxic, you may find that attempts at carrying out practical tasks tend to get you noticed in the wrong ways – double-sided photocopying, adjusting blinds,etc. can leave you feeling useless and embarrassed and you mail fail to understanding how & why various processes take place in the office. You may also have problems with:

Remembering instructions & carrying them out correctly in the right order; achieving deadlines; taking messages accurately & remembering to pass them on; writing letters & reports longhand without having to copy them out again; sitting through meetings & taking in what’s being said without your mind wandering. Practically everyone would say their mind wanders while they’re in a meeting but dyspraxics tend to be in a different league; staying in your seat & not “going for a wander” too often; relating to colleagues. The Dyspraxia Foundation publishes a leaflet called Dyspraxia in The Workplace For Employers.

It is certainly worth considering “coming out “ to your supervisor or line manager, giving them information on your strengths & weaknesses & clarify what dyspraxia means generally & for you specifically. It can work wonders to explain your strengths and how you can maximise these, although some supervisors may not understand why you flinch at the prospect of balloons festooning desks or why you would like to wear an MP3 player to create a personal aural space in which you can work while at the same time you object to a radio being on constantly in your or a neighbouring section.

Flexi-time can help if you are able to do paperwork when the office is quiet at either end of the working day. You may find, though, that the radio blares out even louder for the benefit of other early or late workers while you’re attempting to write your report or study the figures in front of you. Often for reasons outlined in this section, many dyspraxics find themselves unemployed/unable to attain the posts their skills and abilities would suggest they should be employed in.

Call Centre Dyspraxia

Call centre work is often described as the last resort of employment in the modern job market. In addition to a high level of background noise in open plan call centre, it can be hard to decipher information given by customers who may possess a multitude of accents, especially against a background hubbub at both ends of the line. For a dyspraxics, it’s a challenge to retain info just given to you - National Insurance numbers, phone or account numbers, etc. Writing down helps but tends to slow down the frequently vital “Call Handling Time”. Also, continual rechecking with customers can irritate them. As we note elsewhere in this section, it’s often hard for dyspraxics to “stay put “ for long periods of time. This at odds with the policy of some call centre policies which insist employees remain online 90% of the time, timing tea, lunch and toilet breaks to the second. This monitoring extends to the work itself and employees can be in trouble if they spent too long on calls, trouble if they don’t spend long enough and, depending on the nature of the company they’re working for, be pressurised to sell, sell, sell whilst reading from a script and maintaining “compliance” and “delighting” the customer. Managers become more and more target focused. Stats appear every day analysing their previous day’s performance. Jargon such as “delighting the customer” seems to aggravate a dyspraxic mind more than a Neuro-Typical one.

Dyspraxics who don’t have dyslexia may find themselves far more literate than their bosses which, when having to issue or respond to queries about letters issued by your company or department in less-than-clear English, can be a further frustration.

Goalposts can be constantly moved and a call centre job become intolerable. At least when taking a call centre job you may have an idea of what you’re letting yourself in for. Nowadays it’s possible to apply for a standard clerical desk job that can mutate into yet another call centre posting in the space of a few months. As thousands of employees - regardless of their neurological wiring - can attest, it’s hard to switch off from a day working at a call centre. You can find yourself picking up the phone or even answering a door entry intercom with your call centre greeting.

The often excessive levels of stress typical of in a call centre environment are often exacerbated by feeling of being “shot by both sides”. In other words, management puts high demands on its employees and may be providing a service employees themselves feel is substandard which, despite having no say in, they have to take the flak for from abusive customers who are all the more aggravated after having waited for often considerable periods of time in a telephone queuing system. Some customers feel they have carte blanche to insult you and abuse you while you are taking personal insults because they are angry at a system you are representing but have no control over. You are the messenger and you will get “shot at”.

Sometimes you may throw your hands up in horror and wonder what in God's name you're doing in a place that's proven to be so unsuitable for you. Along with taking the recommended step of contacting your supervisor, here are a few additional pointers that might help you in the workplace:

When shown a new task, repeat the instructions back to the person demonstrating it you. Ask for summaries & key points rather than full report, Remember, too, trades unions have policies supporting disabled staff.

The Disability Discrimination Act

The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 requires authorities to demonstrate that disabled customers can access their services without difficulty and that there are no significant differences in the ways that disabled and non-disabled employees are affected by internal policies and procedures.

Promotion and enforcement of the Act is the responsibility of the Disability Rights Commission, working with the public sector and developing practical guidance. If a public authority fails to comply with its specific duties under the new Act, the Commission can issue a compliance notice.

Since December 2006, all public sector authorities – from local councils to hospitals to Government Departments - have had a ‘General Duty’ to promote disability equality under the terms of the new Disability Discrimination Act.

Authorities now need to consider how they will eliminate harassment of disabled people, how they will promote positive attitudes and how they will encourage disabled people to participate in public life.

For the first time it is not be enough for public authorities merely to issue a statement of commitment for treating people fairly. The Act requires them to build disability equality into the way they run their businesses and, as such, it is likely to have a significant impact on the way many of them operate their services and their policies.

Some public authorities (including all Government Departments) will have a further, ‘Specific Duty’ which will have three key components:

1.Involving disabled people: with evidence to show how disabled people have been involved with action planning and how they have influenced the development of the scheme.

2. Measuring progress: with an assessment of impact of existing and proposed activities on disabled people and a means of measuring progress towards disability equality.

3. Assessing impact: with arrangements for reviewing progress and updating priorities and action plans.

LINKS

Disability Employment Advisers

DEAs help the disabled jobseeker overcome obstacles that can prevent them from gaining and maintaining employment and can help dyspraxics identify how their condition has affected their previous employment experiences and consider what services, such as work placement, might be appropriate to their situation. DEAs deploy counselling techniques to boost self-esteem and emotional confidence in the jobseeker, encouraging them to suggest their own solutions. They also play a role in educating employers in understanding disabilities and what simple steps can be taken to accomodate the requirements of the disabled jobseeker

Workstep This employment programme provides support to disabled people facing complex barriers to getting and keeping a job and also offers practical assistance to employers.

Remploy Supports employment through the Workstep scheme

New Deal For Disabled People

After16 provides information on employment and education options for young people with disabilities and learning difficultties

Association Of Disabled Professionals assists disabled people in finding and retaining work.

Employers' Forum On Disability

Employment Opportunities Edinburgh

Part of Employment Opportunities, the national charity dedicated to creating routes into employment for people with all disabilities and medical conditions.