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

[FusionChefGeoff]

For the record I am NOT going to do this but I’m interested in other people’s views on this and decided to brave the AIBU format.

Ive been working with a fab new trainee for about a year now. It’s my own micro business and I’m training her from scratch, so to speak. She’s quite severely dyslexic, is very open about it with me and others we work with and we regularly have discussions around what I can do to make everything easier for her. Including redirecting some work that would normally sit with her job role because it’s unfair to expect her to ever get to the standard we would need. (To do with data management where we need precision and speed - and she just can’t see mistakes / typos)

Generally, attention to detail is important in our overall work and she and I have developed lots of strategies to support her which generally involves quite a lot of other people’s time checking with her.

However, there are still lots of mistakes in her emails to clients and I can’t justify having to sign off every email she sends it’s just not feasible. It’s also not nice for her feeling like she’s working in a straight jacket the whole time. Things that spell checks obviously aren’t picking up like apostrophes where they’re not needed or using the wrong homophones.

Ive worked with other people in the past who have an unobtrusive line ‘Forgive any spelling errors which my dyslexia may have caused” or something similar which I think ‘let’s them off the hook’ as it stops people judging them purely based on spelling.

If you’re dyslexic do you / would you use this approach? Or do you keep your dyslexia to yourself as it’s no one else’s business?

Genuinely looking for thoughts.

As I said I am NOT going to suggest this to her.

I would love any tips or ideas how to help her improve the accuracy and quality of emails - although generally she’s very good at using tools and software to help so maybe I just need to explore what she’s doing for emails and if she has anything else she can use more regularly.

Your own posts have typos and grammatical errors. To expect her to disclose her disability to all and sundry for a 'lack of attention to detail' when you haven't noticed and corrected your own posts seems incredibly hypocritical.

This is the kind of thing AI is actually good at. I’m ASD and my emails can seem very stilted to people. I tell our work AI what tone I want for this particular circumstance, give it my draft, and then it gives me suggested revisions. I don’t always take them, but it is incredibly useful. My communication has become much more effective.

Yes she doesn’t have to announce her disability. I think we’ve established that’s her choice. The OP also isn’t going to ask her to do so as she said in her OP. But she is going to start a conversation about what can help her and raising it as one of various suggestions is perfectly reasonable. My experience of poor spelling and grammar from deafness is that people are very understanding and accommodating when they know the reason why- without a reason they default to “must be thick”.

I’m more interested as others have raised about the employee being freelance. OP clearly thinks she’s great and wants to keep her on but the current set up isn’t working and will be damaging to business if they don’t find a solution. I don’t understand why OP doesn’t just end the contract but there we go.

I would guess that a forum post after 10 at night (probably quickly bashed out on a phone keypad) isn’t as big a deal as someone with consistently terrible spelling and grammar errors in business emails.

But if your post is about poor spelling and grammar, you might want to make sure your own can’t be criticised.

Well it’s fun to point out, but I don’t think it relates to OP’s real-world problem. I make spelling and grammar mistakes all the time on forums or over text. Business emails are different.

On your posts where you make errors, are they specifically about other people’s inability to spell, use grammar correctly or proofread? If not, it doesn’t matter as much.

You called OP hypocritical. She would only be hypocritical if her business emails were also consistently riddled with mistakes. Her problem pertains to business emails. Everyone makes mistakes typing on forums. They make mistakes in formal communication too, but clearly any occasional mistake the OP makes in her business emails do not compare to her dyslexic employee.

Grammarly does pick up on things like comma placement doesn't it? That said, it's probs much more useful if you're able to use it as a reminder of the correct grammar rather than completely relying on it. Usually, I know which is the correct phrasing when I see it.

My husband has this problem. He’s not diagnosed dyslexic but his spelling and grammar are awful. He’s highly successful in tech regardless but he just cannot see his mistakes because he doesn’t have the foundational knowledge. Whereas for me the mistakes leap off the page.

He often asks me to proofread things for him because, even after running them through AI, the software doesn’t pick up everything and he is none the wiser. He uses AI when coding and it only works well because he has the deep knowledge to know when AI is getting things wrong, but he can’t do the same with grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

“You called OP hypocritical”
Nope, not me!

Yes and they read like crap. The waffle is off the scale.

Do try not to worry about that.

Well, there we go. Mistakes on internet forums 🤷🏻‍♀️

Get her to use chatgpt to check

As someone without dyslexia and not in OP's position, I find
your florrid and tenuous stoma comparison does your argument no favours.

I just wanted to say how amazing it is you want to support your colleague and also how amazing there is so much support in technology for people with dyslexia, when I was young I had none.

I was lucky that I had a few good work colleagues and managers who were understanding and supportive and would help me. I left school with no GCSE’s barely being able to read and write thinking I was just stupid. Luckily I was identified by several employers as not being stupid and started to be given duties and training to boost my skills.

For me it was having someone to go over work I needed checking, just look at my spellings and grammar, make sure what I did made sense. Over time I needed less and less help. I remember one manager getting frustrated and slapping down a bunch of info on grammar on my desk, I reminded him that in my x years ( I think I was 32ish) if I’d not got it yet with my dyslexia then I wasn’t sure this would help, he was rightly embarrassed as he’d forgotten in that moment and apologised.

Even when I was able to do my job without someone checking it, I still asked as deep down knowing someone would be there is all I needed to get it right. If I didn’t have someone to check my work I’d panic I’d make a mistake which I’d inevitably would.

As others have said, use AI or apps to check spelling, grammar and punctuation. As a dyslexic I also suggest having templates for emails that you tend to use a lot and using the “read aloud “ function to check before sending. Wholesale use of, for instance, ChatGPT, probably results in many an email exchange that neither party actually reads properly so I’m not a fan. However, using tools to help communication without diluting your own “voice” is great for dyslexia. I don’t think I’d recommend a signature note as it might be picked up by a disgruntled customer to use as a general comment about competency. Maybe run a short training session for everyone o email technique?

I had a colleague (at a large corporate) who had a note at the end of her email that stated she was dyslexic and if anything wasn’t clear to just give her a call. I thought it was a great idea, and if I’d had more confidence I would have put something similar at the end of my email signature. I think my problem is I don’t particularly like highlighting one of my weaknesses to other people (but thats my pride speaking and it’s not very helpful).

I'm a nurse manager who leads a community team and I have nurse with dyslexia in my team.
As a manager it's my responsibility to ensure those staff members have the adequate software in the office and on their laptops. That they have received sufficient training and they also get extra time to complete reposts.
All very basic reasonable adjustments.
Making someone proclaim their dyslexia on email doesn't sit right with me and I'm sure it wouldn't be received well at a tribunal

A self-employed trainee is something I have never heard of. Surely a trainee is someone who by definition is under the supervision of an employer for training and assessment purposes?

Sorry if it’s been mentioned @FusionChefGeoff but make sure you are exploring access to work options with her around funding for things like software and other adaptations she may need.

I think it’s really positive you are taking these steps to accommodate her.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to suggest an email footer so long as it’s a suggestion made on the basis that it’s completely her choice whether or not she adds one and anything that is added to that footer is again completely her choice in terms of wording that she is a 100% comfortable with.

workplace adjustments can often come out of two way conversations and assessments where you both figure out the needs of the person based on their role and the nature of the business so in terms of having a discussion about “emails” in general and suggesting a signature as part of that process wouldn’t be inappropriate, particularly when it’s designed to get her to place where she can work independently.

this wouldn’t and shouldn’t necessarily negate the need for better software though so I would still definitely explore that too

My husband is severely dyslexic - diagnosed in his late teens - and he has something on his email signature along the lines of ‘ the author of this email is dyslexic. Expect big ideas but lots of typos’ which was recommended to him by someone in HR. Before he added this he often got snidey remarks about his spelling/grammar etc but that has all pretty much stopped now

Well, she’s here, asking for advice, isn’t she? Whereas you’re just responding rudely for no good reason.

There's this website where you can create a document that allows you to add what support you might need which could be helpful, allowance for spelling but also copy of meeting notes, etc etc - www.axspassport.com/