Just picture for a minute you’re a salesperson. Now imagine that you have a call scheduled today with a very important client. Your company is being looked at for a job and a number of individuals from your business have come together on a conference call. As the call continues, voices go up and down…and are sometimes hard to hear. But you’re fairly certain you got the gist of it.
Cranking up the speaker just makes it sound more distorted. So you simply make do, interpreting what’s being said the best you can. You’ve become pretty good at that.
As you listen, the voices sound specifically muffled for about a minute. This is the point where the potential client says “so exactly how will your firm help us solve this?””
You freeze. You didn’t catch the last few minutes and aren’t sure what issue they’re attempting to solve. This is your contract and your boss is depending on you. What can you do?
Do you ask them to repeat themselves? They’ll think you were distracted. Do you start using a lot of sales jargon? No, that will be too obvious.
Every single day, individuals everywhere are dealing with scenarios like this while working. They attempt to read between the lines and get by.
So in general, how is your work being affected by your hearing loss? The following can help us find out.
Unequal pay
The Better Hearing Institute questioned 80,000 individuals utilizing the same method the Census Bureau uses to get a representative sampling.
People who have disregarded hearing loss earn, on average, $12,000 less per year.
That doesn’t seem fair!
We could dig deep to attempt to figure out what the cause is, but as the example above shows, hearing loss can affect your general performance. Unfortunately, he didn’t close the deal. Everything was going excellently until the client thought he wasn’t listening to them. They didn’t want to work with a company that doesn’t listen.
His commission on this contract would have been over $1000.
The circumstances were misinterpreted. But that doesn’t change the effect on his career. If he was using hearing aids, think about how different things may have been.
Injuries on the job
A study revealed in the Journal of The American Medical Association discovered that individuals with neglected hearing loss are nearly 30% more likely to have a serious work accident. And, your danger of ending up in the emergency room after a serious fall increases by 300% according to other research.
And it might come as a surprise that individuals with mild hearing loss had the highest chance among those who have hearing loss. Maybe they don’t realize that hearing loss of any kind impairs an individual at work.
How to have a prosperous career with hearing loss
Your employer has a lot to gain from you:
- Empathy
- Experience
- Personality
- Confidence
- Skills
These positive attributes shouldn’t be dominated by hearing loss. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not a factor. You might not even know how big an effect on your job it’s having. Here are some ways to decrease that impact:
- Make sure your work space is well lit. Seeing lips can help you follow along even if you’re not a lip reader.
- So that you have it in writing, it’s not a bad idea to compose a respectful accommodations letter for your boss.
- Request that you get a hearing aid compatible (HAC) phone. The sound doesn’t pass through background noise but instead goes straight into your ear. In order to use this technology you will require a hearing aid that’s compatible.
- Before attending a meeting, ask if you can get a written agenda and outline. It will be easier to follow the conversation.
- When you’re speaking with people, make certain you face them. Try to keep phone calls to a minimum.
- Never neglect using your hearing aids while you’re at work and all of the rest of the time. When you do this, lots of of the accommodations aren’t necessary.
- Be aware that you aren’t required to disclose that you have hearing loss during an interview. And the interviewer may not ask. But the other consideration is whether your hearing loss will have an effect on your ability to have a good interview. In that situation, you might decide to reveal this before the interview.
- If a task is going to surpass your capability you need to speak up. For example, your boss may want you to cover for somebody who works in a noisy area. Offer to do a different job to make up for it. If you do that, your boss won’t think you’re coping out.
Working with hearing loss
Hearing loss can impact your work, even if it’s minor. But getting it treated will frequently minimize any obstacles you face with neglected hearing impairment. We can help so call us!