Employment program helping neurodiverse South Australians to succeed as data analysts

Last year, Kristin Haseldine was the most tired she had ever been in her life.

The 37-year-old quit her job and moved back in with her parents in Adelaide at the end of 2023.

"The last couple of years have gotten progressively harder, and I just couldn't work out why," she said.

After a recent diagnosis of autism and ADHD (AuDHD), Ms Haseldine felt like she had an answer for the challenges she had faced, and recognised she had been experiencing "autistic burnout". 

"Without any support or knowledge of what's going on, your life just kind of spirals and you don't know what's wrong," she said.

"You don't know why you just can't seem to get it right. You don't know why all these opportunities that just seem like such a great chance just don't work out.

Program to help people into the workforce

Ms Haseldine is one of a cohort taking part in an employment program run by Australian Spatial Analytics (ASA) to train and employ young neurodiverse people as geospatial data analysts.  

Geospatial analytics uses software programs known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to visualise and map out data.

This spatial data has a wide range of uses, from showing electricity networks where their infrastructure is located, to helping telecommunications companies track where the NBN runs.

ASA lead data analyst, Amelia Noel, said the work was well suited to some neurodiverse people.

She said the program's participants' attention to detail, pattern recognition and memory retention were important skills in data analysis.

"Their brains are definitely more wired to work with big data sets and they're doing really well," she said.

The ASA program has been bolstered by a $50,000 grant from the South Australian government aimed at helping disadvantaged people enter the workforce.

South Australian Minister for Human Services, Nat Cook, said good data and analysis was vital to creating government policies.

"This type of detailed work, the focused work on data is absolutely perfect for many people living in the autism and autistic communities to be able to engage, learn, teach and really become involved in improving our community generally, through the use of data with the skills that they have," she said.

Providing work suitable to the strengths of some neurodiverse people has been only one part of the project.

Participants may have different sensory needs, and small accommodations have made the office environment a more welcoming space.

Cleaning products and soaps are fragrance-free, emails are surmised in dot points to remove the need to sift through superfluous content, frequent breaks are encouraged, personal success officers are available to support participants and flexible work hours are offered.

For Ms Haseldine, removing the light bulbs above her desk was a simple but helpful change.

She said the office has been "reverse-engineered for the neurodiverse".

"In a neurotypical world, if you try and compare a neurodiverse person to a neurotypical person, they're not going to measure up too well," she said.

"It's like asking a fish to ride a bike.

Small adjustments for a big impact

Ms Cook said about 20 per cent of the population live with a disability, but were half as likely to secure long-term employment.

"Employing people with disability isn't a cost, it is a benefit, and we want more workplaces to get on board," she said.

"And understand that, given the right circumstances, we can secure better employment opportunities for people with disabilities."

Ms Noel said employers have a lot to gain from being inclusive.

"Every organisation, I think, should have some of the things that ASA has … making little adjustments is really easy," she said.