For just a moment, picture that you have a job as a salesperson. Now imagine that you have a call scheduled today with a really valuable client. Your company is being looked at for a job and several people from your business have come together on a conference call. All of the various voices get a little garbled and difficult to understand. But you’re fairly certain you got the gist of it.
And it sounds distorted and even less clear when you keep cranking the volume up. So you simply make do, interpreting what’s being said the best you can. You’ve become fairly good at that.
As you try to listen, the voices sound specifically muffled for about a minute. This is the point where the potential client says “so exactly how will your company help us solve this?””
You panic. You didn’t catch the last few minutes and aren’t certain what issue they’re trying to solve. This is your contract and your boss is counting on you. What do you do?
Should you confess you didn’t hear them and ask them to repeat what they said? They’ll think you were distracted. What about relying on some slick sales jargon? No, they’ll see right through that.
Individuals go through scenarios like this every day when they are at work. They attempt to read between the lines and get by.
But how is untreated hearing loss really affecting your work as a whole? The following can help us find out.
Lower wages
The Better Hearing Institute questioned 80,000 individuals utilizing the same technique the Census Bureau uses to obtain a representative sampling.
They discovered that individuals who have neglected hearing loss earn around $12,000 less per year than those who can hear.
Hey, that isn’t fair!
Hearing loss effects your general performance so it’s not difficult to understand the above example. Unfortunately, he couldn’t close the deal. Everything was going great until the client thought he wasn’t paying attention to them. They decided to work with a company that listens better.
His commission on this deal would have been over $1000.
It was just a misunderstanding. But that doesn’t change the effect on his career. If he was wearing hearing aids, think about how different things could have been.
Injuries on the job
A study reported in the Journal of The American Medical Association discovered that people with neglected hearing loss are almost 30% more likely to have a significant work accident. And, your danger of ending up in the emergency room after a significant fall increases by 300% according to other research.
And individuals with only mild hearing loss were at the highest risk, surprisingly! Maybe they don’t recognize that hearing loss of any type impairs a person at work.
Even if you have hearing loss, you can still have a successful career
You have a lot to offer an employer:
- Confidence
- Personality
- Experience
- Empathy
- Skills
These positive qualities shouldn’t be dominated by hearing loss. But it is often a factor. You may not even realize how great an effect on your job it’s having. Here are some ways to lessen that impact:
- Make sure your work area is well lit. Seeing lips can help you follow along even if you’re not a lip reader.
- Wear your hearing aids while you’re at work every day, at all times. If you have your hearing aids in you might not even need many of the accommodations.
- Request that you get a hearing aid compatible (HAC) phone. The sound doesn’t pass through background noise but instead goes directly into your ear. You will need hearing aids that will work with this technology to use one.
- Before attending a meeting, find out if you can get a written agenda and outline. Conversations will be easier to follow.
- Understand that when you’re interviewing, you’re not required to divulge that you have hearing loss. And the interviewer may not ask. Conversely, you might need to consider if your untreated hearing loss will affect your ability to interview well. You will most likely need to inform the interviewer of your condition if that’s the case.
- When you’re talking with people, make certain you look directly at them. Try to keep phone calls to a minimum.
- In order to have it in writing, it’s a good idea to write a sincere accommodations letter for your boss.
- Speak up when a job is beyond your abilities. For example, your boss might want you to cover for someone who works in a really loud part of the building. Offer to do a different job to make up for it. This way, it never seems as if you aren’t doing your part.
Working with hearing loss
Even if you have slight hearing loss, it can still impact your work performance. But many of the obstacles that neglected hearing loss can create will be resolved by having it treated. We can help so call us!
