Diversity & Inclusion in the Tech Industry

As companies strive to add diversity and inclusion to their core values, how can the tech industry contribute? This week David had a chat with Heike Gramkow, the CEO of our #AmplifyreHub partner, Auticon GmbH, about #neurodiversity and inclusion in the tech industry. Check it out! Do you have any questions for auticon about #diversity and #inclusion? Leave us a comment below, and we are happy to answer! #AskTheHub is the series where we take questions from the community about business, technology, and product development topics, and talk to one of our partner companies who specializes in the topic.

David: Welcome to a new episode of AskTheHub the series where we work with experts from the Amplifyre hub about technology, business, and product development topics. Today, We have Heike Gramkow the managing director of Auticon and the topic is, “Inclusion and diversity in tech companies.” Hello Heike, how are you?

Heike: Hello, yes thank you very much for the invitation to the interview today.

David: I am glad you found the time, so the first question would be what is Auticon about and what kind of company it is?

Heike: Yes Auticon is a IT service provider like so many others on the market of course but specialty the unique thing we do have is all of our consultants are in the Autism Spectrum

David: So how long has the company been around and where is it based?

Heike: Yes so we are now actually already in the tenth year, we founded the Auticon in Berlin are then expanded to every major city in Germany in and went abroad a few years ago, so we are in Switzerland, we are in England, we are in France, we are in Italy, we are in the USA, we are Canada and even in Australia

David: Okay, so it has already grown very strongly, but it all started in Berlin you say?

Heike: Yes Exactly, the start was in Berlin. Then we moved to all big cities because autistic people are people of habit that means they don't travel, that's just that a bit different from other service providers, therefore, we have branches in every big city in Germany.

David: Where did the idea for Auticon come from?

Heike: Yes our founder Dirk Mueller Remus himself has an autistic son in range. Drik dealt with the topic a lot and inquired in groups and noticed that quite a lot of autistic people, even very gifted people were unemployed, in early retirement, or had never worked.
and then we founded and we are the only company in Germany that does that in this environment

David: Exciting so when I say as a company, okay I want to have inclusion and diversity, first of all, what would you say are the benefits of it, why should I think about it, think about having inclusion and diversity in the company. Especially in relation to autism?

Heike: Of Course I can only deal with the topic, there are, of course, very, very many advantages that our colleagues have, they have any special interest I said and there you have it you can also use very deep know-how nobody pretends there either. They are very precise, they are very structured, they are very quick in what they do, but of course, only works because we precisely design the workplace in such a way that they can just survive to 100%.

David: Okay that means you provide the framework around them. Tell us a little more about this framework

Heike: So in addition to our consultants, we have educators in our consultants, the so-called job coaches and we have project manager, the job coaches precisely have the task of the customer to crawl up on the subject of autism that can enter on the part of that is there start project that means, for example, it can be that a colleague doesn't like, if you shake hands with him, because he feels physical pain with this as a result. It is important that we prepare a proper work environment for autistic people. For Example Autistic People does not like to sit with their back to the door, because they are always distracted when someone passes by because they don't know where are they being addressed or whether they are requested and so precisely we make sure that the workplace is perfect for our people of course that the company is simply briefed in general on the subject of autism, of course, we don't just want to find, right projects for our colleagues, we want the topic autism simply as what is perfectly normal, spread in Germany and for it we stand up and we fight for it every day

David: I saw the slogan on the site. I believe the slogan is “Autism is not system failure but just a different operating system. That shows a very nice approach that you have on the subject. My last question would be, what trends are you currently seeing in the labor market or you see that the job market changes when it is when it comes to inclusion and diversity, this has changed over the past few years changed or is it exactly the same as before ten years

Heike: No, it has changed extremely. So I think the fears are no longer there since you notice now inclusion officers in every large company. That Everyone, diversity lives, gender lives everything that goes with it so that has become more open and we are happy about that

David: of course very much that there are more colors companies and new approaches new ways of thinking that you might not have otherwise

Heike: Exactly.

David: Thank you so much for your time for this interview Heike: It was all my pleasure

David: And for the audience out there if you guys have questions about inclusion and diversity or about Auticon in general, then please let us know in the comments section and we will be happy to answer. See you next time!

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