The email signoffs we’d love to send: Why dyslexic colleagues can’t always ‘quickly take a look at this’.

Corporate culture is immediate: we work faster and harder than ever before. That means our communications have sped up dramatically over the past decade too— whereas ten years ago many of us were all working in the same office and sending a couple of emails a day, post-pandemic we’re often working in different places and even time zones. That means email habits and instant messaging have had to step up too… meaning we’re dealing with more messages than ever before.?

For dyslexic colleagues, this isn’t always a good thing.??

There is evolving a sense of immediacy around emails: some companies even stipulate how long they expect their colleagues should take to reply, and clients and customers alike seem to want responses almost before they’ve sent their query. It’s stressful for all desk workers, but when they have dyslexia, things may feel especially challenging. Reading may happen more slowly for them, screen readers might require extra time to work through the text, people may like to print it and use pen scanners, and timekeeping and organisation with dyslexia can be harder to keep on top of.?

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The ’jump-to’ nature of email communications in the modern workplace isn’t that dyslexia-friendly: it often doesn’t give our colleagues with dyslexia (or indeed, other neurodiverse differences) time to read comfortably, process and respond in a way that doesn’t feel rushed or simply push tasks down the line to when they assume they might have more bandwidth.?

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So what can we do about it??

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• Send emails before matters become immediate. Need an answer on something for Friday’s meeting? Send the email on Monday or Tuesday, not Thursday.?

• If things are immediate, consider dropping your colleague a call, if they’re comfortable with that. If not, approach them over instant messaging first to enquire if they’re free to talk about the subject.?

• Don’t just forward an email with a ‘Hey, can you please implement’ at the top when you’re emailing a dyslexic colleague. Take the time to explain what you need and attach single resources— it’s often going to be swifter and far less effort for you to do that than to forward the whole chain and for them to wade through it.??

• If you are a colleague with dyslexia and you feel confident and secure enough to be open about it in a professional capacity, drop a line into your email signature that indicates you may take longer to respond.??

• You could even create it as an auto-reply if you receive a lot of emails, letting people know that they’re not being ignored or forgotten about, you’re just working to a comfortable timeframe for you.?

• Don’t forget to raise it with your line managers and HR reps if you feel like things are becoming unmanageable— roles can be tweaked, training sought out, guidelines bought in, and support strategies implemented to make things less overwhelming.??

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