Imagine for a minute you’re a salesperson. Now picture that you have a call scheduled today with a very important client. Multiple agents from their offices have gathered to discuss whether to hire your business for the job. All of the various voices get a little jumbled and hard to comprehend. But you’re fairly certain you got the gist of it.
Turning the speaker up just makes it sound more distorted. So you just read between the lines the best you can. You’re really good at that.
There comes a point in the conversation where things get particularly difficult to hear. This is the stage where the potential client says “so exactly how will your company help us solve this?””
You panic. You have no clue what their company’s problem is because you didn’t catch the last part of the conversation. This is your deal and your boss is counting on you. So now what?
Should you admit you didn’t hear them and ask them to reprise what they said? They’ll think you were distracted. What about relying on some slippery sales jargon? No, they’ll see right through that.
People go through scenarios like this every day when they are at work. Oftentimes, they try to pretend they’re fine and wing it.
So in general, how is your work being affected by your hearing loss? Let’s find out.
Lower wages
A representative sampling of 80,000 people was obtained by The Better Hearing Institute using the same technique that the Census Bureau uses.
They found that people who have neglected hearing loss earn around $12,000 less per year than people who are able to hear.
That doesn’t seem fair!
We could dig deep to try to find out what the cause is, but as the example above shows, hearing loss can affect your general performance. Sadly, he couldn’t close the deal. When they got the impression that the salesperson wasn’t listening to them, they pulled out. They didn’t want to deal with a firm that doesn’t listen.
His commission on this deal would have been more than $1000.
It was just a misunderstanding. But how do you think this affected his career? How might things have been different if he were wearing his hearing aids?
On the Job Injuries
A study revealed in the Journal of The American Medical Association discovered that people with untreated hearing loss are almost 30% more likely to suffer a serious work accident. And, your risk of ending up in the emergency room after a serious fall goes up by 300% according to other research.
And people with only slight hearing loss were at the greatest risk, surprisingly! Perhaps, their hearing loss is minor enough that they don’t even know about it.
Even if you have hearing loss, you can still be successful at work
You have so much to offer an employer:
- Confidence
- Experience
- Personality
- Empathy
- Skills
These positive qualities shouldn’t be dominated by hearing loss. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t be a factor. You may not even recognize how great an impact on your job it’s having. Take measures to reduce the impact like:
- Never overlook wearing 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.
- Request a phone that is HAC (Hearing Aid Compatible). The sound goes straight into your ear instead of through background noise. In order to utilize this technology you will need a hearing aid that’s appropriate.
- When you’re speaking with people, make certain you look directly at them. Try to keep phone calls to a minimum.
- Speak up when a job is beyond your abilities. For instance, your boss may want you to cover for somebody who works in a noisy area. Offer to do something else to make up for it. By doing that, your boss won’t think you’re coping out.
- Be aware that you’re not required to reveal that you have hearing loss during an interview. And it’s not okay for the interviewer to ask. But the other consideration is whether your hearing loss will have an impact on your ability to have a successful interview. In that situation, you may decide to divulge this before the interview.
- Write a sincere accommodations letter to your boss. This way, you have it in writing.
- Keep a brightly lit work space. Seeing lips can help you follow along even if you’re not a lip reader.
- Before a meeting, ask if you can get a written agenda and outline. Discussions will be easier to follow.
Working with hearing loss
Even if you have minor hearing loss, it can still impact your work performance. But lots of the challenges that untreated hearing loss can create will be resolved by getting it treated. We can help so contact us!