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Congratulations on landing your new job! Starting a new role is an exciting opportunity to meet teammates, grow, learn, and advance in your career.
While there’s plenty to get excited about, onboarding can also feel a bit overwhelming. Reporting to an unfamiliar environment can feel unnerving and overstimulating. Recognize that your new co-workers understand many of the things that you are feeling as you onboard. They may seem cool, comfortable, and confident in the workplace now, but they all went through their own experiences of being new. They can relate to much of what you’re going through, and most of them will be happy to share their experience with you and help you get acclimated.
As you prepare to onboard at your new job, consider these tips.
Think Through Your Disclosure Strategy
It’s up to each professional to decide how, when, and if they choose to disclose their learning difference. It’s a personal decision that you get to make if and when you’re ready. Think about it. Talk about it with someone you trust, and familiarize yourself with the law around disclosure. This way, you can feel informed and confident about your decision.
Landmark College, which is designed for students who learn differently, created the session Neurodiversity Disclosure in the Workplace, which may be helpful to view as you prepare for onboarding. The session offers first-person perspectives from Landmark students, alumni, and other professionals about how they navigated disclosure. Some disclosed during their interview process. Some waited until onboarding. Others decided not to disclose. It can be helpful to hear what worked for other neurodivergent employees as you consider what might work best for you.
Proactive Communication is Key
Knowing what you need to be successful is an attractive quality in an employee. Communicating this to your manager shows a degree of self-awareness and communication savvy that managers appreciate. It helps them to do their jobs well when they know how the people on their team work best.
“I encourage all new employees to establish effective communication with their supervisors. Their relationship will be unique, regardless of their identities,” explained Dr. Randy Williams, vice president for inclusive excellence and associate professor of education at Elon University. “So, clarifying needs, expectations, resources, and even barriers will establish communication that can lead to trust and a fruitful experience for the candidate and the institution.”
As you prepare to start your new job, think about what would be important for your manager and team to know. Jan Coplan, senior director of career connections at Landmark, suggested that it may be helpful to map out some details about how you work best. What you include may depend on your disclosure strategy; for example, if you’ve disclosed that you are autistic, then you can reference this directly. This is one reason that disclosing can be helpful, but each employee has to decide what they feel comfortable with and what works best for them.
These are some suggestions Coplan shared that you may consider:
- I may not pick up on non-verbal clues, so feel free to be clear and direct with me.
- If I don’t make eye contact, it doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention.
- I may rely on technology for help if a project requires a hefty amount of reading in preparation for an assignment.
- It’s helpful for me to get written instructions or to have instructions presented in color-coded chunks of information, rather than in one long document.
- I may need to wear headphones or close my door to alleviate distractions during times when I need to focus.
Coplan pointed out that taking initiative to share what you need with your new manager and team means professionals are “educating their coworkers or the office environment about how they work best.” It also means professionals are sharing a “little bit about who they are” and they are giving their manager and colleagues “the license and the permission to be direct with them,” according to Coplan.
Recognize the Limitations of Your Cognitive Load
Coplan noted that cognitive load is another name for “brain power capacity.” Learning a skill, like data entry for example, is hard to streamline in an office environment that is abuzz with office sounds. This means your brain has to work on both blocking out environmental noise and also learning the skill. Your mind, then, is working double time. Because of this, you may notice that it takes multiple repetitions to internalize the skill.
Be patient with yourself. Be aware of the limitations of your cognitive load. If you find that it’s taking multiple repetitions to learn a new skill, communicate about it, take your time to learn the skill, and don’t add worry to what you’re already managing.
Generate a List of Conversation Starters
Part of what makes it hard to be new at a job is that there is both a social and a professional dimension. As a new employee, both serve you. Meeting the people you work with is about more than making friends. It is nice to have friendly people on your team, but team members also help one another navigate the nuances of professional life.
Having positive relationships with your co-workers can make onboarding easier and more comfortable; plus, it can continue to serve you throughout the duration of your tenure to maintain healthy relationships with your co-workers. It feels good to be on a team. You can lean on your co-workers when you need extra help and you can offer them extra support when they need you.
It’s helpful to have some questions in your back pocket to ask your new co-workers so that you can easily stir up conversation with your new teammates. It takes the focus off of you and gives you the chance to listen and learn about the people around you.
Here are some samples:
- How long have you worked here?
- What do you like most about your job?
- What was your onboarding experience like?
- How long did it take you to feel comfortable in your job?
- Do you have any tips for me?
- Do you have any pets? (just a fun question because it’s not too personal and people always enjoy discussing their pets!)
- What is your favorite place to eat lunch around here?
Recognize the Value You Bring
Onboarding can be a challenge, but it gets easier over time. Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Identify resources, including teammates, that help to make the adjustment easier.
“We all can add value to workspaces,” Williams wrote. “Organizations that commit to creating conditions for talents to emerge are often more innovative and successful in achieving their goals than homogenous organizations. Neurodivergent colleagues have abilities that may respond well to our most complex challenges. Learning their ways of knowing is a wise investment.”
Your employers are glad and grateful that you’re here. That’s why you got this job. Onboarding can be hard work, but it’s worth it.
