ABN AMRO-'Unfortunately, I can't cheat the casino by counting cards'

The ABN AMRO Autism Embassy has been around for ten years now.

Its aim is to get people talking about autism in the workplace. How did the Embassy come about and what has it achieved so far? Also: where will we be in another ten years, in 2034? We talked to the founder Cor Jongejeugd.

Cor found out that he had autism in 2009, through his children. He'd been working for the bank for seven years, first as a product controller in the dealing room, and later as a business developer for the Financial Risk Grid. 'When my two sons were diagnosed and I heard the explanation of all the test results, I thought: but what's strange about that? I could identify with the test results so I decided to get tested myself. Guess what? I passed!'

Cor was 39 at the time and his knowledge of autism was limited to the film Rain Man. An exaggerated, stereotypical exception, he explains: 'Unfortunately, I can't cheat the casino by counting cards.' It took him over a year to accept the diagnosis. 'You look back at your life, and you look forwards: how is this going to affect my work?'

His team reacted positively; in fact it confirmed many people's suspicions. 'They all knew that my way of working and communicating was a bit different. And once they understood why, the team started looking for ways to smooth out the creases in our working relationship.'

At the table with Gerrit Zalm

It got Cor thinking: 'It would be great if there was more awareness of autism in the workplace by the time my children start work. So under the pretext 'stronger together' I started looking for like-minded souls within ABN AMRO and stumbled across the ...

B-Able Desk. At that time, the focus was on physical disability, but they were very keen to broaden their scope to include neurodiversity.'

And then the ball started rolling: On World Autism Awareness Day 2014, Cor was appointed ABN AMRO's first autism ambassador. Soon after that, our late colleague Brigitte van Blijswijk was appointed ambassador as well. 'It was around the time the Dutch Participation Act was being introduced, so the bank was working out something in that field anyway. In one of his weekly blogs, our former CEO Gerrit Zalm called on colleagues to come and spar with him about how ABN AMRO could put this into practice. I thought: Right, this is my chance! I sent him an email and to my astonishment, Brigitte and I had a meeting with him within two weeks.'

'After Gerrit had written about our conversation in his weekly blog, colleagues came to me to ask how they could help, and to tell me how proud they were that their employer was taking autism seriously.'

Questions from managers and teams

ABN AMRO now has four ambassadors: colleagues Arjuno de Vos, Marguerite Groet-Sneep and Axel Crama have now joined Cor. Over the years, the type of questions they've been asked has changed. 'In the first five years, it was mainly individual colleagues asking for help, such as tips on how to tell your team that you've got autism.'

But these days, we get a lot of requests from managers and teams. 'For example, they have a colleague with autism and want to learn the best way to communicate with them. Or because they're organising a team-building day and the topic of neurodiversity is on the agenda. It's a positive development if you ask me.'

The Embassy also organises several events every year, with the aim of getting people to talk about autism in the workplace, and enable colleagues with autism to get to know each other. 'This is important, because people need to know that they're not the only one. You can learn from each other's experiences, although having said that, everyone's experiences are obviously very different. And that's something people need to know too: autism itself is very diverse.'

People raising children with autism

Fast forward to 2034. What will the Autism Embassy be like if Cor has anything do with it? 'I hope we'll have even more ambassadors and that as well as individual growth, we'll see even more growth in our managers. We're having a kick-off with the Parents of Neurodivergent Kids (PONK) soon, organised for people raising neurodiverse children. Bringing up a child with autism can be tough, and it can affect the way you perform at work. But it doesn't have to if you ask for help in time. We're very happy to help. I know from experience that as a parent, you shouldn't wait too long.'

B-Able

B-Able is a programme within the bank for colleagues at a distance from the job market. At the moment, 125 colleagues work at ABN AMRO through B-Able. It's a mixed group, including people with physical, mental and/or neurological disabilities. Disabilities that you can't always see.