Autism At Work Program Case Study

1) How did this initiative get started in this company?
JP Morgan Chase’s Autism at Work program launched in July 2015. The initiative began when a high-level executive at JPMC was approached by a HR Business Partner. This outside party broached the topic of whether the firm would be interested in hiring qualified individuals on the spectrum. To get the ball rolling, they reached out to a manager in a line of business that they thought would be a good fit for employees on the spectrum. This happened to be James Mahoney who at that time was the Chief Quality Officer for Mortgage Banking Technology. The program started with a four-person pilot, called Team Chimera, in the Delaware Office of Consumer and Community Banking Technology. Team Chimera proved to be a successful venture and by April 2016 the team had increased the Mortgage Express team’s productivity rate by 50% and JPMC had plans of growing the team to 17 technologists with autism by the end of the year. In October of 2016 the program went firm wide, and the Autism at Work was officially started. Then in June 2017, the program joined the Global Technology Office to expand the program globally.
2) Was there an organizational champion? If so, who was that and why did they think that an Autism at Work Program was important?
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As mentioned above the Autism at Work team is still small. Currently, James and Anthony are the major champions but as the program expands, I think managers that have seen positive result will be the biggest champions for the program. Subsequently, the team is strategic about which managers they reach out to and which lines of business they pursue. There is an understanding that not all managers, management styles, and lines of business will be conducive to individuals on the spectrum. 5) Does the company have hiring of persons with Autism characteristics as an articulated business