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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

What an unhelpful reply

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Then you've spectacularly missed the point.

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

Just tell her to copy and paste the email into Chat GPT. No need for specialist software. Chat GPT will fix it in seconds

Voice typing and AI grammar checking together can make these errors easily correctable. You are not wrong for not wanting people just to think your company just doesn't care about spelling and grammar, but there is really no need for things to be going out with mistakes or for you to tell people.

I have Cerebral Palsy, and lots of people at work do know and I actually have some one-to-one support each week paid for by my employer too. Generally I am very relaxed about people knowing as I would rather people understood than thought I was weird, lazy etc. However I would be appalled by the idea of a blanket statement on a document. It's very impersonal, almost like an apology for being me. I think I would be quite hurt and angry if my line manager suggested something like that. I guess maybe it's about who you feel you are.

I am ME. I have had Cerebral Palsy since birth. While it's disability in words, in reality it adds to the elements of me, like other things do. I'm bad at some things and good at others just like you, and while some of the things are things "most people" are good at, some are things that anyone could be good at. You don't sign off your emails mentioning that you are rubbish at drawing, or dancing, or have never grasped French. My wobbly handwriting, or poor memory, or your colleagues poor spelling is no different to that.

Someone from a company that we deal with has a sign off that says along the lines of

I was made with a heavy sprinkling of Autism and ADHD so please expect to see creative thinking and unusual spelling

We are not allowed to use external apps like chat but have a secure work AI module that we are encouraged to use. My organisation went from ‘oh we’re a bit nervous of this’ to ‘you must all be using AI for productivity gains’ in about 6 months.

I would suggest that together you have some standard email texts that she can cut and paste in as appropriate if a lot of emails are sending similar information.

Also useful for busy people as well as people with dyslexia of course so not 'othering' her.

But yes I think adding a note to an email signature is good too - I have one for a voluntary role saying 'volunteer email account - not checked all day every day' which was my way of saying 'your late reply is not my emergency'.

Whilst as a non- dyslexic person it wouldn’t bother me seeing such a signature, it’s likely to be pretty triggering asking her as a dyslexic person to do that.
both my DH and DS are dyslexic and it’s something they both struggle with when pointed out, so I’d be a bit cautious.
definitely investigate the apps.

What software do you have ?

I'm dyslexic but also ADHD so I have a high attention to detail.

I do chuck everything through chatgbt, and soften my emails as I can be quite harsh.