 Hi guys, it's Andy here from IndyAndy. Firstly I want to say a massive thank you to Tom for allowing me to come onto his channel today just to talk about some of the things that make us as autistic people great at being employable, making us great employees. Just to let you know as well myself and Tom also made a video over my channel talking about how to integrate autistic people into businesses and just our thoughts on this topic generally. So if you want to head on over after this video and you want a little bit more there'll be a link down below in the description box of this video. But of course it is great to be here so Tom why do you think autistic people make great employees? Thank you very much Andy, we're going to go over five reasons why autistic people make good employees. Number one, intense concentration. Now you may already know about the amazing ability of some people on the autism spectrum to get intensely focused and interested in a certain task. Maybe something that you didn't know is that a recent scientific study analyzed the persistence of thoughts or neuronal firing between a neurotypical person and an autistic person. What were the results? Well the neurotypical person had neuronal firing so their thought persisted for around three seconds whereas the autistic individual their thoughts, their neuronal firing networks occurred for about 20 seconds after trying to forget something. The real world applications of this piece of science could mean that it takes a little bit longer for us to get into our flow states. Now if you don't know what flow states are already they are basically that period of hyper concentration where you feel like you're not thinking about anything but your work almost like in a plane you know and you're an autopilot and you're just going through it and you feel amazing and getting being a productive boy or girl or something else. When we are in that flow state we can stay in it almost indefinitely. I'll give you an example when I was writing my essay when I was doing one of my pieces of work for university I was doing something that I enjoyed I was making a magazine I was using graphics and I was creating images and I started quite early in the morning and I decided to go over the whole day working on this project but one of the things that I didn't remember to do was anything but that I would not eat and this is sort of a marker of just how hyper concentrated autistic people can be in the workplace and that is a great thing because there is a lot of lost time that workers make just wasting time talking to people when they should be doing their work and if you're tired of that and you want to get the most out of your employees hire an autistic person oh by the way people with Asperger syndrome tend to have eight more IQ points than your average person. So the first reason for me why people like myself and Tom make great employees is just because a lot of us on the spectrum sometimes when it comes to explaining things need a bit more detail before going into things you know we ask a lot of questions sometimes to figure out what it is we are meant to do and for some autistic people in the world of work we really thrive on collecting information knowing all of the nuances of things in our job roles in our workplaces and because people like myself find out all of these nuances about our job roles it makes us incredibly efficient now I'm not saying that everyone else who is not autistic isn't efficient but I just feel when it comes to being autistic and stuff and just finding out all of the little details that make the job what it is you could compare it to a video game for example you know you could be on easy mode and you know you just go through it quite gently there's not really that much to it you know you don't find out the nuances of the game and you know how difficult it is but on the other hand you have hard mode which is a little bit more complex there's a little bit more thinking that goes into it you know you have to really strategically think about how you're going to progress forward in the game and really when it comes to autistic people I feel like we tend to do things on hard mode you know we want to find out all the nuances in how to progress which ultimately makes us more efficient and it generally I think it's a good mentality to have in any business and because we have this mentality and if a business was really cooperative with us and you know gives us those explanations it doesn't just mean that we're more efficient but it means that the quality of work that we produce will be higher so generally efficiency is just one of those things that I feel makes autistic people great at being in the workplace. Number three a strong sense of morality and justice. One of the common traits of being autistic is that we are very black and white and quite often if we are raised in the correct environment we tend to follow the rules to a T every single time any situation we like to know what we can do what we can't do and because of this we have a very strong sense of morality you don't want your employees being bad people you want them to be good hardworking citizens that are going to go there do the job get the pay leave just from my own experience of being on the spectrum and my experience of talking to other people on the spectrum going into schools teaching kids um with autism lying and doing bad things and not going straight to the rules and following them to a T isn't something that is common at all it's pretty much the opposite why not give those autistic people a go who knows that's cheesy the other reason why I think autistic people make great employees is this thing that I personally feel is a part of myself and that is outside the box thinking creativity taking something from a different pair of eyes or a different approach I should say and just running with it like Thomas said previously in the video autistic people when we are really fixated on something we have that concentration it is a great thing but I think if you couple that also with outside the box thinking and just having a different approach to things it can be really really beneficial for any business regardless of what it is because firstly if you're employing an autistic person it means that your workforce generally is going to be a little bit more neuro diverse there's going to be a bit more diversity within the team and what I mean by neuro diverse is basically someone who has a different way of thinking such as people on the autism spectrum for example and basically because autistic people can have a different approach to life and a different way of thinking outside the box thinking it can really open doors for your business's success and also it can help the autistic person thrive within your business because you're utilizing their own self their way of thinking for your business and that is an amazing thing and both sides win it's a win-win situation and also because you've got someone who is autistic in the team they may come up with solutions to problems that your business has that you may not have actually thought were an issue or maybe you didn't think the idea that they presented was something that you could do which I think for any business I think is detrimental to its success number five yes you are right it is the last point woohoo we're sorting it out it's it's all good in the hood it's the fifth point the fifth one an autistic person is direct and truthful now you may be thinking oh okay directness sounds like it's just another way of saying a little bit rude you could view it like that and I think a lot of people who misconstrued what autism is about think that autistic people are quite rude and direct and they're not very subtle about any of their opinions and to some extent that can be true but what can also be true about this is that if they spot a problem with a way of thinking with a way of doing the job they will always tell you about it if you allow them to if you make them feel comfortable and able to voice their opinions and matters you will find that a lot of the problems that a lot of workers would just pass to the side just to save the hassle they will be brought up and they will be solved autistic people work on more of a direct and logical wavelength meaning that we want to get to the heart of the issue we don't want to sort of dance around the bush as I've said in my previous videos we don't want to beat around the bush beat around the bush god damn it if you ask an autistic person for their opinion and you are open with them and you've developed a good relationship with them you are likely to get a lot of perceived criticism but this criticism shouldn't be taken as a personal thing shouldn't be taken as a rude thing if you ask them their opinion and they tell you they are going to be truthful about it they're going to say what they like about something what they dislike about something what they think will never work what they think will be something that will push your business forward and because of this it can make work life a lot quicker and a lot more to the point so hopefully this list has opened your eyes to the possibilities of new workers that can be efficient creative and can push your business further than you ever dreamed of there are so many untapped logical and creative geniuses in the autistic community there is a very large problem with unemployment among anybody on the spectrum it's very high all you have to do is google it see the statistics on it there is a lot of untapped potential here and one of these amazing people with extremely high IQs different ways of thinking about it and very efficient workers could be in your workplace yes employing someone on the spectrum is going to be a little bit different it may be difficult to get it off the ground initially you might have to do a little bit of reading not that much not not an excessive amount but as long as you just if you just kind and you try to be accommodating as much as you can try to make sure that their life at work is a comfortable and non-anxiety provoking workplace you will get the most out of these individuals if you like the video make sure to like it so that i know that you like it and we can make more of these collaboration style videos why not head over to indyandy's youtube channel to check out his stuff check out his videos he's done a lot of good work he pumps out videos on more of a regular basis than i do um so go check out his work and if you want to stay in tune with the kind of videos i make make sure to hit that subscribe button which is up there and i've done that right for the first time in i don't know god knows how long forever and you probably know that social media accounts down here facebook instagram twitter and if you want to go check out the four to your podcast it is available on apple podcast spotify and just about anywhere else that you can find it as i've said make sure to head over to indyandy's channel he's done me a solid by collaborating with me i haven't had much luck in the past and i'm so happy that i've managed to get this collaboration in the bag my first collaboration so andy thank you so much massive thank you to tom for having me on the channel today i really do appreciate it and i hope you got something from this video today so until next time see you there and if you want to go head over to indyandy's channel we've got another video on there another co lab video make sure to go check that out and we will be talking about how to better integrate autistic people into your workplace five tips five good tips that you can use not it's not going to take that long go check it out do you have a business do you want to grow do you find that your average worker is not performing to the standard that you want them to well why not consider employing an autistic person an autistic person they have a multitude of creativity logical thinking and a very high IQ if you want someone to revolutionize your business push your business further than you could ever dream of you know where to find us anyway this has been mr thomas handley from the asperger's growth channel and i'll see you guys in the next video see you later folks