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Don’t press pause on your passions – hearing loss and your career.

Having a hearing impairment should not stand in the way of you achieving all your career goals and fulfilling your dream job.

Below are a few tips to keep you on the right track for success in the workplace with hearing loss.

Firstly, you need to be the best person for the job, and this applies to everyone – even people without hearing loss. Making sure you have the correct training and qualifications is all you need to get your foot in the door.

Secondly, your boss may have reservations regarding your hearing loss (if you have felt the need to disclose this information) but show them that it is easy for them to accommodate your needs!

Be proactive about the issue and demonstrate the solutions to any problems that might arise in the workplace.

Third, explain your hearing loss to your boss and colleagues. Don’t be embarrassed to share this information about yourself, trust us – it leads to much more effective communication down the track. A few suggestions include:
– Describing the nature of your hearing loss, for example ‘I have trouble hearing in a loud environment’.
– Let people know if you have a ‘better side’ to hear from.
– Ask people to speak louder and more clearly/slower.
– If you are having trouble with a particular question or sentence, ask them to rephrase in a way that might be more understandable.

-Try to choose the best seat for team meetings- near the front if there is a speaker or in the middle if you are at a long or round table.

And lastly, to make your life easier make sure you are always wearing your hearing aids when working in an environment where communication is key and remember to ask your boss for assistive devices such as captioned phones or hearing loops if you believe it will improve your standard of work.

There are also assistive technology that we can link in with your hearing aids to allow wireless streaming from the middle of a table, teleconference or lapel of your boss in a meeting. Just contact us on 8331 8047 to try some of these amazing accessories.

Remember you are not the only one with hearing loss in the workplace. The Department of Health and Aging found that one in six Australians are affected and in 2005 around 3.55 million Australians had some form of hearing loss.

 

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You probably didn’t even know it – but the following famous names have one thing in common with you! And that’s hearing loss:-

Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton ignored his hearing difficulties for years until doctors diagnosed him with high-frequency hearing deficiency. He often described his inability to hear in noisy, crowded environments – such as political rallies and the theatre. He now wears two in-the-ear hearing aids.

Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg, 60, attributes her hearing loss to years of listening to extremely loud music. As a host on The View, in 2015 she gave her audience a warning about hearing loss and the effects – saying “Stop it in its tracks because not being able to hear is a bit of a b–ch. I can tell you that from experience.”

Ludwig van Beethoven
At the tender age of only 26, Beethoven began to lose his hearing and by the age of 44 he was almost completely deaf. Although he was suffering through hearing loss at the time he was still able to become one of the world’s greatest composers – his greatest accomplishment being the composition of the Ninth Symphony.

Thomas Edison
Thomas contracted scarlet fever as a child, this is the cause of his hearing loss. He often referred to himself as ‘deaf’, and told people he believed he was actually a better scientist because of it.

Jane Lynch
Jane Lynch never realised she was completely deaf in her right ear until she was 7 years old. She says at that time her brother had a transistor radio that he kept moving from left to right, she said ‘You can’t do that. You can only hear out of one ear.’ With which he replied ‘No. I can hear out of both!’

 

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