Deaf Awareness Week 2022

Deaf Awareness Week 2022 runs from 2nd-8th May and the theme for this year is Inclusion Deafness. We know that 1 in 5 people may live with some form of hearing loss, which is potentially a fifth of our workforce, so this week we asked our employees to tell us their experiences of Deafness or hearing loss and some of the things they find challenging in the workplace. We are using their stories to share within the organisation to ensure we are all mindful of our behaviours and habits how they can impact others.

We had some really valuable feedback from colleagues about particular things that are challenging, some common themes were;

• multiple people speaking at once, either online or in person.
• masks in general, people wearing them making lip reading hard, or them being a nuisance in relation to hearing aids (one of our employees lost three hearing aids during the pandemic due to them coming off with their mask!)
• background noise in busy work environments, for example being out in the community with wind and traffic noise, or open plan offices.
• people talking in meetings at an angle their face can't be seen, or turning cameras off in online meetings.

All our staff stories have been made into a video which will be shared on screen at our main operational site at Knutton Lane for those with less access to IT, as well as on our intranet.

One of the people who contributed to our request for staff stories was our very own Chief Executive, Martin Hamilton, who took the time in a very busy election week to share his own experiences of hearing loss with the organisation. Below is his story in his own words;

My experience of Deafness or being hard of hearing is....

I have experienced progressive hearing loss and constant tinnitus over a number of years, affecting both ears. I’m the third generation in my family to experience this so had assumed it was genetic but, it turns out, I’m simply the third generation to have significant damage caused by working with noisy machinery on farms. Tinnitus is a condition which affects people in very different ways – I often wonder what the world sounds like without a constant background of hissing interference. I know some people find tinnitus to be hugely stressful and can disrupt sleep, and I can really understand this – I feel lucky in this regard as for me tinnitus “ just is” and, as such, it’s something that I have got used to, and live with, without any active management. I’ve been wearing hearing aids for the past three years and these have had a really positive impact – not just on me but also on those around me who less often have to repeat themselves, or who have to really persist to attract my attention. I will always remember wearing the aids for the first time outside and realising just how much I’d been missing – everything from birdsong to the rattle of change in my pocket. It was really quite shocking.

What do you find particularly challenging, either within the workplace or in a wider context?

For me, the most difficult environments are places with a lot of background noise, such as cafes and restaurants and, in a work setting, larger meetings where speakers may be some distance from each other. The environment that prompted me to invest in hearing aids was, in fact, Full Council, where there are lots of participants in a large space, and where what is being said is very important to capture. And, I really do see them as an investment as there is such a ‘payback’ from knowing that you are not missing the detail. Since well before I got hearing aids my kids would consciously book restaurants with individual booths wherever possible, as without this I would withdraw from the conversation after a few minutes simply because I couldn’t pick up what was being said. I wouldn’t always notice that I had zoned out – but it was something that I became increasingly aware of over time. Two other work related quirks due to my hearing loss – one is that at least once or twice a week when I am really concentrating at my desk, someone may make me jump by approaching and asking a question when I simply haven’t heard them until they are up close. Those are the times when open plan working, hearing loss, and concentration combine to make life a little embarrassing. The second is the impact of Teams and other forms of video meetings. For me, headphones do not work well with hearing aids – the structure of a hearing aid means that its impact is diluted when wearing a headset. For me, this means planning ahead, day-by-day, to know whether my diary means I really must wear the aids, or whether I will be mostly on Teams and will hear better for most of the day without them. This isn’t always helpful as the more I wear hearing aids, the more used to them I become and, inevitably, sometimes I get caught out with not having them in when I should.

What advice would you give to those you work with to make things easier for you?

The best way that people can make things easier for me is to simply remember that I have a hearing loss! That may sound very obvious, but everything else flows from it. Finding quiet spaces for conversations is important and, in group settings, taking turns to speak. These help me because my hearing is particularly compromised in places with lots of background noise.

Another interesting fact about Martin is....

When walking along a busy road without hearing aids, I find the particular sound of passing traffic almost unbearable.