Thorkil Sonne is no ordinary entrepreneur. Today his company, Specialisterne, is case study at Harvard Business School[1] and a showcase for consultants with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) providing valuable tasks for the corporate sector. He tells his story to The People Bulletin
“When my youngest son, Lars, was two-and-a-half years old he rejected the other kids in the kindergarden and seemed most comfortable being alone on the swing.
The staff had great difficulties with Lars. He was a nice child who would never harm other kids, but he would not take part in the social activities. The kindergarden insisted that all kids should learn social skills – but this was not possible for my son.
Lars was a problem and had to be observed by psychologists. They told us that there was no doubt that Lars has ‘infantile autism’ – a lifelong pervasive developmental disorder, which can’t be cured. We only knew autism from the film, Rain Man – and it was devastating to picture our son as adult in a Rain Man like situation.
My wife and I were frustrated – how could we create a good future for our Lars when his social skills would never be strong enough to get a job in which he could be respected for his special personality and appreciated for his strong skills?
What we did about it
From my IT carrier I knew that there is a business need for people with a good memory, a structured way of working, a passion for details and loyalty. I could think of tasks like software testing, quality control, data entries and logistic tasks. As chairman of a local autism organisation I also sensed that new job opportunities would not come from the traditional players in the labour market. We had to try to make a change ourselves.
With the support from my family and a loan in our house I founded the for-profit Specialisterne (The Specialists) where people with ASD will meet the understanding and support needed to feel wanted and to excel. The core of Specialisterne is a five-month assessment program where candidates with ASD go through different exercises, tasks and work situations in order to prepare them for an active role in society.
Specialisterne employs people with ASD as consultants solving valuable tasks like software testing, programming and data entries for the corporate sector at market terms. Our customers are large and medium-sized companies and have included internationals like Nokia, Deloitte, Cisco, CSC, Microsoft and Oracle.
Going global
Autistic spectrum disorder is a global phenomenon which probably affects one percent of any population. In addition ASD affects the life of the families of the person affected. According to London School of Economics the cost for the UK society is £27bn per year.[2] A large part of the costs relates to the general situation by which people with ASD can’t fulfil a job and thereby contribute to the economic development.
I have been contacted by people in more than 60 countries who ask me to start up Specialisterne in their country. This has made me found Specialist People Foundation as a not-for-profit organisation which now owns Specialisterne.[3] The goal is to enable one million jobs globally for specialist people with ASD or similar challenges.
The strategy is to replicate Specialisterne as local showcases globally to make it attractive for the corporate sector to learn from our knowhow in order to hire and manage specialist people with ASD. The first international replication took place in the UK when Specialisterne Scotland was launched August 2010.
One million jobs – the HR perspective
Most of the consultants at Specialisterne work at the customer’s premises. Thereby we have proven that people with ASD can perform valuable tasks in main stream companies when given the needed management and physical accommodation.
This fact opens a great opportunities for HR managers. Imagine if the HR managers based on our experiences could be able to open their companies to make use of the skilled resources of people with ASD. In many parts of the world, we are seeing the results of demographic changes reflected in a shrinking employment pool, and many organisations struggle to fill the available roles with suitably qualified people. We therefore need to look beyond the usual sources of recruits to find the right people.
Autistic people tend to excel at jobs which require close attention to detail for long periods of time; they often like repetitive jobs which are very structured and which demand a good memory. They are superbly well qualified for these sorts of roles which exist in the high tech economy, in IT, in quality control and in many other commercial contexts. These are just the sorts of jobs which mainstream candidates may not be motivated to fill, and which do not play to the strengths of our more empathetic peers. Autistic candidates are a pool of intelligent and enthusiastic workers which is largely untapped and represents a significant missed opportunity for many organisations.
We have a great deal of experience in placing these candidates successfully in organisations and offer advice on induction techniques. We assess all of our candidates to establish their particular strengths to ensure we have the best candidate for a particular opening.
I challenge organisations in developed and developing economies to consider this under-used source of talent. Many organisations will find that they need to make very few changes to their systems and practices to accommodate workers with some form of disability. This is a win-win situation: companies find the labour they require; disabled people are empowered, benefitting both economically and in terms of personal fulfilment; social costs are reduced; and the economy is boosted.”
Note: Thorkil Sonne is a keynote speaker at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School Oxford which ran from 30 March to 1 April 2011. Further details about the forum are available from www.skollworldforum.org/forum-2011
[1] http://hbr.org/2008/09/entrepreneur-thorkil-sonne-on-what-you-can-learn-from-employees-with-autism/ar/1
[2] http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2009/05/MartinKnappAutism.aspx
[3] www.specialistpeople.com