TL: DR – I helped to launch and lead a disability employee resource group at a company that sent me into debilitating autistic burnout and severely deteriorated my mental health. I feel like my company exploited my disabilities and neurotype to help their public image. The cost was my well-being and health.
A while back, my place of work announced they would be launching Employee Resource Groups to help provide opportunities for historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. They would be selecting people to help launch and lead the ERGs, and I applied to lead the disabled/neurodivergent ERG. The requirements were vague, but I knew it would be a little out of my wheelhouse. I will be the first to admit that I am rough around the edges. I am a late-diagnosed Autistic/ADHDer who dropped out of high school. I have a couple of college credits and minimal “professional” experience. My resume is filled with various part-time retail and food service jobs sprinkled with a few elder care roles. LinkedIn is terrifying to me. I don't know how to build a “personal brand.” Corporate lingo feels like the vocabulary equivalent to wearing a wet sock, and I still have to look up 95% of the abbreviations in emails from upper MGMT. Needless to say, I am a little naive about the corporate world.
When I interviewed to be an ERG leader, I was sure I bombed because my experience with DEI amounted to painting pickets for protests, a shiny new ADHD diagnosis, and a pair of dirty Doc Martins with yellow laces. When I found out I was selected, I was SO excited for the chance to have enough influence to make an actual change and to have a platform I would be able to share with those more marginalized than myself. I also felt like, for the first time in my life, I was being offered a shot at an actual career. The job description boasted the chance to gain professional leadership skills and opportunities to add valuable experience to my resume. I was SO proud to be part of a company that would give someone like me so many great opportunities. The work would be in addition to my full-time role, but I was ready to take on the challenge.
A month before we launched the ERG, sweeping changes were announced around my full-time role, and a storm broke loose. The changes made the job unmanageable for hundreds of marginalized employees, from working moms to disabled and neurodivergent people. Many people were forced to quit, while others, myself included, were forced to adapt despite the increased stress and challenges we now faced. Emboldened by my shiny new “lead” title, I joined in with the slew of people speaking out against the changes. Using the little bit of influence I had been granted, I took meetings with anyone willing to hear me out, and spent hours listening to teary-eyed co-workers' feedback, promising to try my best to act on it. Finally, we created enough noise that some of the new stricter policies were loosened. But, unfortunately, it was too little too late. Morale hit rock bottom, and the loss of trust in the company ate away at the employees, who had no other options but to stay.
When we launched the ERGs, I had to deal with the understandably angry members demanding I find a way to fix the issues, but I also had to struggle through the changes and deal with my frustrations around the matter. Despite this, I was passionate and determined that if I could just get my ideas and the feedback from my community in front of the right people, things would get better. I was exhausted and barely performing in my primary role, but I convinced myself I could set it aside and be the leader my peers needed me to be.
I will not fault the DEI team I worked with for the issues this led to. I can honestly say, the individuals I partnered with on that team were some of the most inspiring, wonderful people I have ever met. They shared my passion for the work we were doing, and they never let anyone feel unheard, or like they didn't belong. I am eternally grateful that I had the chance to work with them. Having said that, the longer I played both the passionate ERG leader and the struggling entry-level employee, the more I started to feel like I needed to exist in two spaces at once. I needed to be fully performing in my primary role to continue the ERG work, and the ERG work was way more demanding than I initially expected. It was impossible to do both within the time constraints I had without the quality of my work in one or the other suffering. I needed more time, so I secretly started to do a lot of the DEI work off the clock. Because of my neurotype, I tend to hyper-fixate on projects I am passionate about, so this was a slippery slope, and it wasn't long before I was putting in 16 hours or more a day to get everything done. It did not help that while other ERGs were starting to get help from their members, we were still struggling with a distrustful and hurt population that was not interested in volunteering their time to a company initiative, leaving the bulk of the work on a very small group of people.
I can not pinpoint exactly what point I started to spiral into burnout… Maybe it was after I came down with Covid, and rather than resting with my time off, I did a data analysis project, built a website, and wrote a newsletter for my employee resource group. Maybe it was after one of the relentless changes that continued to happen in my primary role took effect. Perhaps it was the introduction of a performance management system that ranked me against my peers. Maybe it was the months of trying to get accommodations to make it possible for me to manage my work and repeatedly running into roadblocks. Most likely, it was a bit of everything, but six months after the official launch of the ERG, something in me broke.
I attended a conference with the DEI team for a week and had a chance to step away from my primary role. It was the first time in a while I felt excited about the work I was doing but reflecting on it now, it felt like the second wind you get after staying up all night before you completely crash. When I returned, I could no longer fully perform in my primary role. Clocking in for work made me so anxious that it felt like my breath was being choked from me. I dreaded the emails from my lead about my numbers. I dreaded meeting with my project manager to talk about ERG projects because I was too tired for that as well. I had to ask my doctor for sleeping pills because, as exhausted as I was, I would spend all night in bed crying because I felt entirely worthless.
That brings us to the present. I am still employed with the same company, although I do not think that this telling of my story is vague enough to remain anonymous if it gets back to anyone I work with, so… we'll see what happens. I am not going to lay the blame entirely on my place of work for my poor decisions as far as taking on more than I could handle and completing work on my own time. That's on me. The issue here is the fact that I am a disabled person who was asked to help my place of work become more accessible and equitable. While I was putting my heart and soul into this work, MGMT was actively making changes that hurt employees like me… while using the work I was doing (along with the work of other marginalized groups) to make themselves look better to consumers and stakeholders. The ideas I shared when I was wearing my DEI hat were celebrated, while the same ideas led to me feeling gaslit and like I was overreacting when I was wearing my entry-level grunt hat.
Performative DEI initiatives are not just sleazy and gross…. They are actively harmful. I know I am missing a lot of the details to really paint the picture of what I've experienced – Burnout is fun- but I just needed to get this off my chest while trying to figure out what to do next.