Work very critical of DH, but did not know he has ASD - discriminatory?

It sounds as though the employer has recently changed to a 360 degree review process where they take the opinions of colleagues and any "underlings" to get a fuller picture of the employee's performance.

Their contributions are supposed to be anonymous though, the OP's husband shouldn't know that it was Gary who said X, or Jane who said Y.

https://www.aihr.com/blog/360-review-process/#:~:text=The%20360%2Ddegree%20review%20process,or%20negative%20employee%20performance%20patterns.

Also, if all this is being told to your husband second hand, through his line manager, then there is a huge possibility that colleagues haven’t made those comments in the first place.

This happened to me. I put in a subject access request to gain access to exactly what had been said and it turns out my manager was full of shit.

But if someone is in a wheelchair it is clearly visible to everyone. Your DH has a diagnosis (hopefully formal and provable y professionals) that is not visible to the naked eye. So how on earth can people make allowances for him when they don't know that he has an issue. You keep blaming his workplace and colleagues, but they are operating from a standpoint that he does not need allowances made for him as they don't know his diagnosis. Are you on the spectrum as you seem a little stuck on the part that almost does not matter and not the part than needs/can be resolved.

Actually, an employer can be held accountable for disability discrimination where a person hasn’t disclosed a condition, if they could be reasonably expected to have known.

I don’t know if your husband works in the public sector or the private sector but I know in the public sector there are additional rules about this, under the equality duty, that mean employers have to consider whether a policy, decision or action is likely to have a disproportionate effect on those with a disability.

Anyway, it would be pretty sensible for your husband to disclose his disability and point out that the expectations placed on him are discriminatory. This will give him some protection. He should also be able to access support via government funding, through either access to work, or some other scheme for work coaching specifically aimed at neurodivergence. This will address any communication deficits (or help him push back against discriminatory expectations).

Are they colleagues or his line manager. Is your dh expected to comment on his colleagues appraisals, if not how can they be allowed to comment on his, that seems very unfair and unprofessional. I would contact the union he is in. He is entitled to support like pp mentions, that includes asd. Is it a Large organisation with hr and occupational health. In hindsight he should have declared asd and his colleagues are not responsible for not knowing or understanding his needs.

I don’t think anyone is necessarily disagreeing with you that it’s difficult to work on an issue that forms part of a disability, it is, but the thing is neither the employer nor the colleagues know about his diagnosis.

So giving your wheelchair example, of course you wouldn’t ask them to run faster, everyone involved can see why they cannot do that, so it would be unfair to comment on it. But none of these people know about his diagnosis, so if he has been rude/blunt/not communicating well with a number of colleagues in the same way and they have no context for why that is, of course they are going to mention that rudeness or communication issues when asked by management.

Also OP, when he receives his copy of his appraisal, can he print it out for you to look at?

Perhaps he's interpreted some of it differently to how you might?

I was assuming (probably wrongly) that they need the extra income, so thought she might be able to share the burden a bit.

Did these negative comments come completely out of the blue? I may have misunderstood as I got the impression he'd struggled from the start. If they came out of the blue, then yes, that's not okay, ASD or not. Performance appraisals should not have huge surprises in them and if there were concerns about his behaviour or communication it should dhave been flagged earlier.

However, it alsos ounds like they're changing the appraisal process so this could be teething problems with this decision?

Nonetheless, if it's come out of the blue, then I don'tblame him for being upset. I would still encourage him to disclose asap and to ask for suppoert in making adjustments.

And, as I said earlier, I would also bes suggesting he consider whether the workload and its impact on him mightbe exacerbated by his ASD.

Don't. Unless all his colleagues are working 24/7 this is a problem for the OP's DH to resolve between himself, his employer and his colleagues. The OP should not work herself to death because her husband doesn't know how to set boundaries at work.

The problem is that the company is not allowed to make adjustments or ask others to make adjustments based on a "suspicion". So he has to tell them to get any support of this sort. He had every right NOT to tell them, and I understand why he didn't, but I still think it was a mistake that he needs to now dial back on.

How can work make accommodations or even discriminate if they don't know?

How could they be discriminating against him on the basis of a condition they weren't informed of?

Discrimination is treating a person a certain way specifically because of a particular characteristic. In your DHs case, they didn't know he had ASD so their treatment of him and appraisal could not have been based on that.

There is always this attitude in threads like this that the autistic person is always the one at fault when it comes to communication. This is very often not the case at all. Instead it is also partly because communication from neurotypicals is tied up with hidden meanings, unspoken rules, vagueness and an expectation and ignorance that everyone should just know what they mean. Yes the autistic person might use a different communication style that others don’t like but equally the autistic person might find the way they are communicated with utterly infuriating.
It isn’t always the autistic person that “needs to improve”, it’s very often the organisational culture and neurotypical expectations that need to make changes.
I say all this as a late diagnosed autistic person who now has an amazing line manager who advocates for and supports me…..and as a result I am communicated with by others in a much clearer, direct, non vague way. And equally, everyone now understands that if I say something in too blunt a way or that annoys them a) it is never intentional (because I’m actually a very nice person) and b) I’m quite open to them coming and kindly telling me that the way I said that wasn’t great and here’s a better way I could have said it.

OP, is there any way you can increase your working hours to give him some time off?

If your DH needs to tell them when he received his diagnosis (does he need to say this it at all?) it would be wiser for your DH to say he wasn't aware of the effects his disability was having until now, and that now he knows via from the appraisal he would like to improve and to have their support to improve.

And also wiser to say nothing about being afraid to disclose. Saying he was afraid could come across as an accusation that the company is hostile, and especially with your DH's communications problems he could easily give the wrong impression.

They will unfortunately I've seen it many times before. My current company is absolutely lovely though so there are some good places out there. Encourage him to start looking elsewhere even from just the work/life balance aspect x

Sorry but I disagree, he didn’t make a mistake not disclosing his ASD and nor does he have to justify why he didn’t.

Disclosure of medical information (except where it can had H&S/legal ramifications) is at the discretion of the individual.

His workplace are required to make "reasonable adjustments" to his disability but he has to inform them.

The most important thing your DH can do now to tell his employer about his disability, pronto, so that they can make adjustments and support him. It's not as if things have been going well without telling his employer.

He has been keeping his diagnosis from his employer for "the last few years" even though it has been affecting his work. Perhaps he was unaware of the effects of his disability at work but now he has been told, clearly his employer does need to know and he does need to disclose, not necessarily to all his colleagues but to HR and/or his manager.

Are these criticisms factual examples showing how he communicates and how the people he works with feel about it? Because if they are, then he needs to take it on the chin.