We all have stressful days at work.
But imagine if every day was complicated further by being unable to keep up with conversations and feeling lost and isolated in the noise. For Deaf people, this can be an everyday experience when their workplaces fail to make reasonable adjustments to help overcome these barriers.
Only 54% of Deaf people are employed, compared to 70% of hearing people. This gap could easily be closed with a few small changes to workplaces that would allow better accessibility for Deaf employees.
Simple provisions like access to BSL interpreters and educating colleagues through BSL courses or Deaf Awareness Training can contribute to a workplace where all colleagues feel valued, helping to increase productivity, diversity and staff retention.
This blog outlines five reasons why your Deaf employees might be stressed, and what your business can do about it.
1. Communication barriers
For your Deaf colleagues, being able to access key information in the workplace can require significant extra effort. They may be trying to lipread in meetings or rely on incomplete notes, sometimes feeling lost in group conversations that move too fast, with too many people speaking at once.
Even catching up on conversations in text form, such as via email or meeting minutes, can be challenging. The grammar and sentence structure used in BSL differ from those of written English. It can take a Deaf colleague, whose first language may be BSL, a little longer than English-speaking employees to process written language. This can lead to feelings of falling behind other colleagues and struggling to keep up in a fast-paced working environment.
2. Inaccessible meetings
Attending verbal meetings without BSL interpreters can be exhausting or even alienating for your Deaf employees. Rapid discussions, overlapping voices and background noise can make it nearly impossible to keep up without the help of an interpreter.
When people talk over each other, switch topics quickly or use unfamiliar jargon, it becomes difficult to follow the thread of the conversation.
Even just working out who’s speaking can take long enough that Deaf participants miss key parts of the conversation, and sometimes important context gets lost completely.
3. Social isolation
Casual chats by the coffee machine, office banter and after-work drinks might seem like small things, but they matter. They’re where team bonding happens.
Unfortunately, these are often not accessible interactions for Deaf colleagues who can’t join in the conversation as easily. Over time, it’s easy for them to feel excluded and disconnected from the wider culture, like they’re not in on the joke or part of the team. This can make it even more difficult for them to feel like they can meaningfully contribute to the conversation or to the workplace more broadly.
Deaf Awareness Training can support your hearing colleagues in ensuring that everyone in the team is catered to and can participate and socialise with their co-workers.
4. Lack of awareness from colleagues
Many Deaf employees feel they’re constantly educating others, whether by correcting assumptions, explaining their needs or asking for adjustments. This is something that most employees wouldn’t expect to have to do, and the need to constantly advocate for yourself can be exhausting.
Well-meaning colleagues might shout when speaking, speak too fast or talk while looking away, making communication harder. No one wants to be that person who is constantly asking others to change their behaviour, nor do they want to feel left out or on the outside.
5. Inadequate workplace adjustments
By law, employers must make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for disabled employees, but don’t always know how to implement these measures. It’s often down to the Deaf individuals themselves to ask for change.
Lack of adjustments can contribute to compromised performance at work and add to their feelings of isolation and not being able to fit in as others do.
Supporting your Deaf colleagues creates a better workplace for everyone
Supporting and improving awareness of the needs of your Deaf employees can benefit your whole workplace. It leads to more cohesive teams that can communicate with one another more effectively.
There are several simple strategies you can easily put into place to accommodate these changes.
Providing BSL interpreters in meetings can make a massive difference to your Deaf employees, allowing everyone to keep up with the conversation in full.
Investing in BSL courses for your employees can have an enormous impact on everyone’s experience at work. If everyone knows the foundations of BSL and can communicate in this way, it creates a far more inclusive environment where all your employees can be involved in conversations.
Visual alerts for things like fire alarms and ringing phones, usually only indicated through sound, can make it easier for your Deaf employees to respond to cues that most employees take for granted.
The Royal National Institute for Deaf People reports that 26% of people would feel uncomfortable being told to manage someone who was Deaf or has hearing loss. Deaf Awareness Training can help to support colleagues in understanding the experience of Deaf people and provide easy strategies to reduce the anxiety experienced by both parties.
At Sign Solutions, we can provide Deaf communications support to help you bring your colleagues together and create teams that thrive, whether your staff are hearing or not. Get in touch today to find out how we can support you in creating a more inclusive workplace.
