To ask dyslexic team member to put a note on her email signature???

I used to work with a start up business that used a number of self employed contractors to provide specific services that they needed on an ad hoc or very part time basis

It's a sensible approach not some kind of tax dodge. Of course those people needed to have an element of training on business specific items, it would have been stupid to except that they would some how have known those things

I assume you don't have experience of this, there's nothing dodgy about it at all. As the business grew a couple of the people did go on to become employees

Then you've spectacularly missed the point.

The waffle would be because they haven't been properly instructed though, wouldn't it? My understanding is that AI can be told to write concisely, in business style, in the style of a romantic novelist etc.

Just having the conversation is putting pressure on her employee, so no as her manager she cant just have the conversation.
What she can do is have a conversation about what reasonable adjustments that the company/manager can make to help her. But be clear asking someone or suggesting someone disclose a disability in every email is not legal or reasonable.

The OP says she's running a micro business so she might think she has found a clever way to pay below NMW and avoid paying her NICs. However, this is foolish as the tax burden will fall on the OP and she will be treated as having paid net wages when HMRC realise or the OP gets reported. The trainee is extremely unlikely to meet the criteria for being self employed from the info provided.

Get her to put all the emails through chatGPT. Give it instructions to not change anything but to highlight grammatical mistakes, homophones and misspelling and where the meaning is unclear.

She can then make those changes, this way the email is still written by a person (which can be picked up on) and she is still being unskilled as correcting her own emails will (very slowly) help.

Or she can just get chatGPT to rewrite it correctly keeping her tone and all the information the same.

With tools like this available, she should use them.

What an unhelpful reply

OP clearly knows there’s an issue and asking for advice and experiences so she can sort it

What other disabilities and/or medical information do you think it would be nice to put in a header or foot note in every email and what would you be willing to put in yours?
Mire to the point why should I have to promote visibility of a disability?
As to why not have the conversation well because it would be illegal

I'm dyslexic and I never explain or apologise for it, I certainly wouldn't us this "Forgive any spelling errors which my dyslexia may have caused". As others have said tech and AI have come along way along way as has our understanding of dyslexia. My line manager knows I'm dyslexic only because I told her when we are open about strengths and weaknesses - dyslexia has a lot of strengths as well as areas that need some help.

But this wouldnt be suitable for everyone, especially those whose emails contain clients' personal data. Where I work, it would be a sackable offence to run an advisory email through AI.

Absolute agree with the mention here of copilot. She just needs to write the main points and it takes care of the rest, then she checks..
Honestly it’s a game changer for dyslexia and similar conditions.

Ask her to contact Access to Work. I have worked with several dyslexic colleagues and they can help with recommending software and providing training and coaching. They may also suggest awareness training for colleagues.

I know people have mixed feelings on AI but this is one of those times when it is genuinely useful. As a responsible employer, either ensure she has Copilot attached to her Outlook or a paid version of ChatGPT, particularly if she's sending anything with confidential information (as the free version of ChatGPT is used for training and I wouldn't trust it to keep information confidential.) All she needs to do is instruct it to rewrite to eliminate grammatical errors, but not to change the content of the email if she wants to keep her wording. It's one quick, easy step before hitting send.

I don't think it's fair to make her disclose dyslexia in her signature. You can probably reasonably suggest it as one option if she doesn't want to use AI, but she absolutely has the right to refuse.

Absolutely not @FusionChefGeoff my disability should not ever be mentioned in any email that doesn't involve me talking specifically about it with persons of my choosing. Forcing, requiring or even requesting me to put medical information or private information about a disability on every email I send out would be clear cut disability discrimination, and a gdpr breach.
Tell me what other medical information are you going "ask" other team members to put in their emails?

My manager is dyslexic, she just owns it and emails are sent out with spelling mistakes. We do work in SEND though so it's an inclusive workplace. I think it sends out an important message to our clients about disability and not needing to be ashamed or hide it.

The mistakes are usually fairly easily deciperable. She does get someone to check anything that's going to be published: posters, website etc.

Because we are a SEND environment, most people reading the emails would work out the issue and understand.

Personally, I don't think dyslexia is something that should be hidden. Dyslexic brains are amazing, she is most-likely an excellent problem solver.

In the modern day there is no excuse for lots of errors. And Im dyslexic myself, Im more likely to miss autocorrect correcting to the wrong word.
AI tools, text to speech and reading text aloud are all included in most basic tools these days. But shes not your employee, shes a poor preforming contractor so think hard about how much effort you put into this.

She would be entitled to access to work funding which would pay for dictation tools etc.

It is also useful though, to external people eg customers and suppliers to know if someone is dyslexic because the person may have difficulty reading incoming emails, so it's a good reminder and raises awareness to all that dyslexia is something for everyone to be mindful of.

I had no idea about this!

I knew that Verdana is the least taxing on the eyes to read (for everone not just ppl with dyslexia) but didnt realise font choice could help or hinder with dyslexia

I’m dyslexic and I wouldn’t put that on my email signature, and nor would I appreciate the suggestion. I don’t think it’s a good idea at all and I’d think a lot less of the person suggesting it.

I buck the trend in that writing is one of my areas of strength so it’s not an issue for me. Data and numbers tho - don’t give me them if you want your business to continue trading because I have dyscalculia as well as dyslexia. I’m very open about that these days and make it clear that no, I can’t get better at it, your choice is either to insist I do the work and suffer the consequences (inaccuracy is inevitable as I literally can’t reliably recognise the numbers) or you give me work that plays to my strengths. I also purposely don’t go for jobs that require me to do significant financial or data work.

what I’d like you to understand OP is that there’s a lot of aspects of dyslexia that never get talked about. Everyone thinks it’s just about not being able to spell/write/read properly. You can help your trainee by learning about the other impacts (lots of websites out there). Two little known aspects I’ll point out tho are:

It is really tiring. Us dyslexic people are working SO MUCH harder to get to somewhere near the same results as you. Trying to operate in a world that doesn’t support our natural ways of being is exhausting. For instance, when I go to the office I’m exhausted by the time I get there usually, and then spend the whole day worrying about getting lost in the office and not being able to find my desk. Office lights are always a problem.

Regardless of whether they realise and/or admit it, it is very common for people with dyslexia carry a burden of shame from a life of being told they aren’t good enough, stupid, worthless, not trying hard enough. If you think of asking her to put an announcement on her emails in that context, is it still a good idea? Already she’s already having a daily feed of “I’m not good enough” input eg people having to check her work (just because that’s not your intention it doesn’t mean the impact isn’t there).

By the way I never found a software that could help me. Tried them all! Might help to review her strengths and the type of work you’re giving her rather than look for ways for her to do things just like everyone else.

I often have to remind people at work to stick to dyslexia-friendly fonts such as Ariel, Verdana, Tahoma or the specially designed Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono font which also helps people with low vision. Some fonts can be a nightmare for people with sight issues and dyslexia to read.

if you’ve got co-pilot she needs to run emails through that and ask to proof or use AI to support them in the first place. Really, your place of work is probably a little backwards re tech if you haven’t already put something in place like that. AI has transformed the experience for colleagues with dyslexia. It is becoming less of a barrier because proofing is getting better all the time and you can minimise the time thinking about structure.

I think a disclaimer looks bad on the employing company because it’s basically saying we haven’t been arsed to sort out proofing (whether through tech or second pair of eyes) so we expect there to be poorly communicated emails.

Why is a trainee self-employed?
I do hope you aren’t doing that to avoid paying things you should be.

This is really helpful for the op

op you need to remember not all dyslexics are the same - so one thing that might support one dyslexic would not necessarily help another etc

It might take quite a while before you find what could help them.

Giving her access to a tool that will help checking her grammar and typos seems to be the obvious solution.
Could be as simple as copilot (although I'd be concerned about it re writing the emails instead of just correcting). But it can be integrated with outlook for instance so quite helpful as you don't have to copy paste into a different platform.

I'm not dyslexic so I might be missing something, but I'm surprised that as a manager you think the best option is to lower the standards and provide her with so much external support to do her job.

It's totally fine at the start, but it goes beyond the reasonable adjustments any other business would agree to, so it's not helping her long term.

You should absolutely expect her to get to the standards expected for her role, and help her achieve this through reasonable adjustments (a bit more time, self-help tools, etc).
I'm also wondering whether it's the right job for her if a core part of the role is attention to details, and that is also a key feature of her disability. There are plenty of jobs, even office based, were this is less important.