Hearing Loss, the Workplace, and You

Succeeding in the workplace if you have disabling hearing loss can be difficult. However, with the proper technology and determination, you can substantially ease the burden.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates 22 million Americans are exposed to hazardous noise levels at work, making hearing loss the most common work-related injury. Without the proper equipment and preparation, you could be at risk for irreversibly injuring your hearing on the job.

Know Your Rights

Hearing loss is often referred to as an invisible disability, and for those who wear hearing aids they are mostly inconspicuous (especially invisible hearing aids, like the Phonak Virto B series). There are laws in place, though, that protect all people with disabilities while in their place of work. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation for all employees with hearing loss. All one has to do is ask if they should need to sit in the front during training courses or if they need a sign language interpreter. Both the employee and employer both benefit when these accommodations are met.

Safety and the laws protecting your hearing health in the workplace are meant to work in tandem. In a Safety and Health information Bulletin dated December 2005 from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) at the US Department of Labor, there are decibel-specific guidelines for the use of hearing protection, different types of ‘specialized hearing protectors,’ and several paragraphs on how to select and fit hearing protection devices.

The Department of Labor estimates $242 million is spent annually on worker’s compensation for hearing loss disability. Knowing your rights in the workplace can keep you safe and feeling supported to ask for accommodation can help you succeed. UCLA audiologist Alison Grimes suggests starting a conversation with, “I really want to hear what you say. So, can you face me and speak a bit more slowly?” If you are passive rather than confident about your needs for effective communication, your hearing loss will win out during conversation and social interaction.

Preparing Like A Pro

When meetings are on the calendar, you should always make sure you go in with the advantage, and not the other way around. Request a written agenda prior whenever possible to make sure you follow the discussion. You can also ask that someone be present as a notetaker or ask for the meetings minutes afterward.

One spatial accommodation that may be advantageous is to ask that the meeting be held at a round table. This ensures that everyone can be seen when speaking, which is very important if you rely on lipreading. Remember to point the directional mic, if applicable, in your hearing aids at the speaker and ask the facilitator of the meeting to avoid allowing multiple people to speak at once.

Tech Can Help

There are many technologies to take advantage of in the workplace, designed to help you succeed. For meeting rooms, there exists a loop system that uses wireless technology and magnetic signals to transmit sound from the speaker’s microphone to a wire that encircles the room. People with hearing aids and cochlear implants can then retrieve those signals no matter where they are sitting in the room.

You could also ask your employer to look into tech that translates spoken words to readable text, something that could be quite useful in meetings. Computer Assisted Real Time Transcription (CART) projects words onto your laptop or a large screen as they are spoken. If you are in the market for a portable device, the UbiDuo 2 allows you and a co-worker to type to each other face-to-face, and there are video-captioned telephones that allow you to see the person you are speaking to and the captioned text they are speaking.

Working with Hearing Loss

These tips can be implemented into your own routine at work if you are not using them already. Hearing loss should not be burdensome at work nor an indicator of failure or being less-than. If hearing aids are an option for you or you want to know more about them, reach out to your hearing healthcare professional to ask about the latest technologies fit for your work environment, and be sure to shop our discount hearing aids.