Have you heard about hearing health and wellbeing at work?
This isn’t occupational health. This isn’t about noisy environments. This isn't to meet HSE guidance.
This is us getting people talking about our hearing, and being proactive about how we can look after our ears and hearing in all workplaces - not just the noisy ones.
For too long anything to do with ears or hearing has been pigeon-holed to only be important or relevant to those who work in noisy environments. Although this is understandable due to it being a requirement for health and safety purposes, it makes you wonder: what about everybody else, whose ears and hearing are vital to their everyday work, but where their workplace environment means they’re not exposed to continuous loud noises? Our hearing is so important to us for communication when we’re out at work, yet most of us take it for granted, and hardly any of us give it much thought unless we experience problems with our ears.
There are so many of us who work in different environments. Some are hybrid workers, or sit in co-working office space, open plan offices, small offices or large offices. These create a wide variety of listening environments. Do we give much thought about how where we’re working can impact how well we can hear? Do we know how well we can all hear? By talking about our hearing we can really find out how conducive our working environment is to working efficiently and confidently.
We are finding more of us are using headsets when we’re at work. These can be used to take phone calls, video calls or to take part in virtual meetings. Headsets and earphones are becoming vital and commonplace in our work environment. We need them to hear the speaker well enough without interrupting those around us. However, the use of these headsets are putting our ears and hearing under more strain than ever before. When we put our ears under consistent strain and stress, this could result in earlier changes to our hearing than we expected. Although we’re not necessarily being exposed to loud levels of sound through a headset, the continuous low levels of sound could be doing more harm than we realise. Sometimes the level of sound can be louder than we think - over time we might be having to gradually increase the volume. These small increases over a longer period of time could add up to a large charge without thinking about it. Over time this could be having an impact on how well we are hearing day to day.
The workforce population is ageing as people are having to work later in their lives. While many people enjoy working, others may have to continue working due to changes in retirement age and financial pressures. We want everyone in the workforce to have confidence in their hearing.
It’s well known as we age there’s an increased likelihood our hearing could start to deteriorate. Age related hearing loss, also known as presbyacusis, is a loss of hearing that begins in higher frequency ranges. A loss of hearing in the higher pitches doesn’t mean you can’t hear anything, but it takes away the clarity of speech and makes it harder to understand what’s being said. Therefore, we feel as though our hearing is fine because we can hear the hubbub around us, and any alerting sounds, but our difficulties actually arise when we’re trying to follow conversations and instructions. This can create difficulties when we’re at work, as we don’t always realise when we’re mishearing words and therefore not communicating with others properly. We may feel silly we haven’t heard properly, have completed a task incorrectly as a result, and haven’t realised this could be due to changes in our hearing.
How can we help ourselves?
We need to adopt healthy hearing habits whilst at work, but also when we’re home or in other social environments.
It’s important to make sure we take regular breaks from using headsets, headphones and ear pods. According to the RNID we should take breaks from using our headsets every hour for 5 minutes. It’s preferable for our hearing to take short and more frequent breaks as opposed to longer and less frequent breaks. Excessive exposure to sound (no matter the volume) can affect the blood flow to our ears. It’s this change in blood flow which can impact potential hearing loss.
When we’re in our working environment we want to be hearing the best we can. The design of our offices can impact the way we hear when we’re at work. Open plan offices can look great and create open spaces, but this can create echoes and more noise around us if not appropriately sound-proofed with soft furnishings. The height of computer screens can also impact hearing when we want to talk to colleagues; if they’re at the beginning of their hearing loss journey, they may not realise they benefit from lip reading. Often though, we’ll find computer screens cover lips and mouths, so we can see others’ eyes. We need lip reading to help us with visual cues when trying to understand speech if there is extra noise around us, or if we have a hearing loss. A great way to help with this is to step away from your desk and walk over to the person you’re speaking to. This way you can have a clear conversation, with the added benefit that you’ve also got up from your desk for some much needed movement in your work day.
In some office environments you might find there are colleagues who like to shout and call out from one side of the office to another. This isn’t helpful to those who struggle at times to understand what’s being said as they’ll just be adding to the background noise and often make it harder to hear. Again the recommendation is to encourage walking over to other colleagues and having a more meaningful conversation, which in turn creates less noise in the room, as well as creating better communication between colleagues.
Regular hearing tests are the primary way we can help ourselves in our work environment. With our ageing population, as well as the expectation that our hearing will change, a hearing assessment is an effective and simple solution to help employees understand what their hearing is up to.
A hearing test finds out what can be heard across the speech frequencies. We often expect there to be a deterioration in the higher pitches as we get older due to changes in the hair cell structure within the hearing organ, the cochlea. However, even if a hearing test shows there is no hearing loss this really helps to give that person confidence in their hearing.
By offering this service, employers can empower employees with the ability to understand a part of their body, and also to help them understand what action can be taken in the future if necessary. More often than not, hearing loss is ignored because we can ‘hear enough’ and make do, or we don’t have the time to make or attend an appointment, or we don’t understand where to turn for help.
By having employee hearing tests carried out in the workplace, the employees don’t even have to leave the building to find out about the health of their ears. Regular hearing assessments allow your employees to understand and find out about any small changes to their hearing and to start picking up healthy hearing habits sooner rather than later. If hearing losses are left undetected, people often stop wanting to go out socially due to the worry they can’t hear, they don’t want to work in fear they’ll hear the wrong words, and in turn this can affect their mental health.
A prolonged loss of hearing can also have an impact on the cognitive load. But what is cognitive load? The cognitive load is to do with our working memory and how much information we can process at a particular time. We often find if our hearing is declining, our brain will need to put more resources into hearing better, which takes away from helping other areas of our brain. If this is happening too often, it’s a worry what long term effects this could have on the brain.
How can Workplace Ear Care help?
At Workplace Ear Care we’re here to help you and your employees with your hearing. Hearing health is so important, and we are looking to encourage all employers with staff to also realise the importance, and start being proactive about our hearing health. We’re here to help your employees understand their hearing, advise on ways to reduce the risks to their hearing, and help you as employers to look after your staff. For too long we have seen people delay or ignore looking after their ears and hearing health, and as a result struggle with their hearing for longer than necessary.
Be a part of the change, by being proactive and making all employees’ hearing health a priority.