Is my employee dyslexic?

When dyslexic difficulties are well supported you will find that there are great positives to thinking differently. Dyslexic people can show great strengths in areas such as reasoning, problem-solving and in visual and creative fields, these are all valuable assets in the workplace.

Recognising that your employee is dyslexic and the difficulties that they may be facing is the first step to putting strategies in place to support and get the best out of your employee.

If you or your employee have spotted potential signs of dyslexia, there are several tools available that can help you to find out more. The most effective of these is a Diagnostic Assessment.

The tools include:

Checklist

Checklists are often used as a first step in understanding the nature of any difficulties that are being experienced and also to advise as to whether further investigation should take place.

Checklists are free and easy to carry out. The Adult Dyslexia Checklist contains questions that are predictive of dyslexia, scores for each answer indicate the relative importance of that question. Alongside each line you can keep a tally of your score and calculate the total.

A checklist cannot diagnose dyslexia, it can only indicate that difficulties could be due to dyslexia and further investigation should be carried out.

Screening test

These are usually online tests and can be free or available to organisations for a licensing fee. Through a series of questions they can give an indication of possible dyslexic difficulties and give suggestions for appropriate support strategies to try. They are not a diagnosis.

Find out more on the Screening tests webpage.

The only way to really know whether an employee is dyslexic and how best to support them is through a diagnostic assessment

Diagnostic Assessment

A Diagnostic Assessment is the only way to really understand whether your employee is dyslexic and how best to support them. You will receive a detailed report which will help you to make sure that any reasonable adjustments are properly tailored to your employee therefore saving the organisation expenditure and supporting your employee in the best way you can.

Find out more about Diagnostic Assessments, and how the BDA can help on the BDA Assessments webpage.