How to Support Deaf People at Work
4 May 2023
It’s Deaf Awareness Week, a campaign that promotes awareness of the challenges faced by the D/deaf community in accessing communication and the barriers that exist in society. The 2025 theme is ‘Beyond Silence’, celebrating the diverse ways Deaf people communicate and the richness of their culture. During this blog, we’ll explore the barriers and struggles the D/deaf community experiences in the workplace and share how we’ve removed the barriers to accessing our employee benefits.
Understanding Deafness in the Workplace
To create an inclusive culture and a safe space for D/deaf people, it’s vital that managers and colleagues understand deafness in the workplace. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, and one person’s experiences will differ from another.
Help employees become more aware to avoid situations that may offend, like expressing pity. Many D/deaf people are proud to be part of the Deaf community. Assumptions can fall into the indirect discrimination category, and 56% of D/deaf people have experienced some form of discrimination in the workplace, which could have legal implications for the business (Totaljobs).
The first thing to understand is that there are three ways to describe D/deafness:
- Hard of hearing: People with hearing loss may have difficulty hearing some speech, especially whispering.
- deafened: Describes those who have lost their hearing due to an accident or illness. These people will have most likely learned to speak, read, and write before they lost their hearing.
- Deaf: Includes those either born without hearing or lost their hearing during early childhood or infancy. As such, Deaf people will have learned Sign Language as their first language.
We wrote ‘deafened’ in lowercase - this isn’t a typo. ‘Deaf’ is capitalised when referring to people who have been Deaf their whole lives. When not capitalised, deaf describes anyone with a severe hearing problem that they weren’t born with and, therefore, have become deafened.
Removing Barriers: Deaf Support in the Workplace
63% of D/deaf people believe they’re not given equal opportunities at work (Royal Association of Deaf People (RAD)).
Deafness is a protected characteristic within the Equality Act 2010, and as such, if an employee accuses an employer of discriminating against D/deaf employees, they could face a tribunal.
Below, we’re providing six ways to create a safe and inclusive environment for D/deaf people within your workplace.
1. D/deaf Aware Meetings
Take a moment to think about how your business or teams run meetings.
Does the presenter use slides as a talking point, putting minimal text on the screen and delivering most of the content verbally? It’s how most people give a presentation, but we can immediately see how that would impact those hard of hearing, deafened or Deaf.
In businesses today, many meetings, catch-ups, and calls are held via a virtual meeting provider. These all have D/deaf-aware features like turning on live captions and recording meeting transcripts. All it takes is a behaviour change to ensure we take these steps. Additionally, it’s best practice for all participants to turn on their video during virtual meetings to allow for lip reading.
2. Learning & Development
How does your business deliver its learning and development training modules? Online video learning is becoming more popular and is a beneficial training method for neurodiverse employees. However, they are often heavily reliant on audio, creating a barrier for those within the D/deaf community. You can overcome this by always adding subtitles to the audio track.
3. Team Building Sessions
Whether held onsite or at a dedicated venue, team-building sessions can be problematic for D/deaf or hard-of-hearing employees. With many businesses adopting remote and hybrid working practices, team away days are a welcome occasion for colleagues to engage face-to-face. These interactions mean lots of people having multiple conversations, which leads us to some of the other statistics highlighted by RAD below:
- 83% of D/deaf employees felt excluded from conversations with their colleagues.
- 69% said they felt lonely at work.
- 59% felt left out when attending social events.
Keep these numbers in mind when planning your next team-building session.
4. Creating an Inclusive Environment
Regarding inclusivity, there are laws businesses must adhere to, including making reasonable adjustments. However, as with employees or job seekers with neurodiversity (such as ADHD, autism, or dyslexia), there’s no obligation to disclose deafness.
However, being open and honest with employers would be advantageous to ensure the necessary support is received. Employers are required to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 so they can take steps to support deafness in the workplace.
5. Available Tech
D/deaf job seekers can apply for a grant from Access to Work to get assistance in paying for communication devices and the technology that will help them when starting or returning to work.
Additionally, organisations should assess each employee’s needs and consider adding hearing loops to the office or purchasing speech-to-text reporters. These adjustments will make the workspace more accessible for D/deaf employees, making it easier to engage with colleagues. Hearing loops may not make a difference to Deaf employees, but speech-to-text reporters will, making verbal communication more accessible.
6. Learn the Basics
What better way to make D/deaf employees feel included than to learn to speak their language? Look beyond the silence and celebrate how Deaf people communicate by enrolling team members on a sign language course. Even if they only learn the basics, it shows their D/deaf colleagues that they accept them, that they’re part of the workplace community, and that their peers are willing to make an effort to make them feel included.
Making Employee Benefits Accessible with Pluxee UK
Communicating the employee benefits you’ve made available to your people will likely be via written communication, such as posters and email. What needs further thought is what those benefits look like in terms of the D/deaf user experience.
Customer Support
Here at Pluxee UK, we have an in-house customer service team that supports the consumers of our employee benefits. To ensure we effectively support the Deaf community, our team offers access to a translation/text-phone service, which is free to use.
Using our Employee Benefits
Many of our employee benefits are physical or digital and, therefore, accessible to all. These include Employee Discounts, eVouchers, Salary Sacrifice Schemes, and our Pluxee Card (to list a few).
Online GP, our virtual GP service, has several features that make accessing medical support inclusive for D/deaf employees. Available via an app on your employees’ phones, all instructions are in writing, as is the general medical advice. GP and ANP consultations take place via video, which creates the opportunity for lipreading and captions.
Our Employee Assistance Programme provides employees access to BACP-accredited counsellors 24/7, 365 days a year, by phone, via email, an app, and face-to-face. These options ensure your D/deaf employees can still access crucial mental health support when needed.
Together, we can make work not just a place to be but a place to belong for the Deaf community. Boost camaraderie, engagement, loyalty and motivation.
