Dyslexic individuals typically have trouble reading, writing and processing language as quickly as their colleagues. Securing extra time ‘up front’ for reading necessary material, and organising/requesting deadlines to provide extra time before or after work to catch up if necessary can take pressure off the most challenging aspect of working life, and provide more time and breathing space for contributing to analysis, conceptualisation and problem solving.

A workplace focus on spelling and grammar accuracy can mean you spend too much time on writing and proofing. Suggest to your employer that you ‘buddy up’ with a colleague to help proof-read your work; or request that reduced accuracy is permitted in early versions of your work. Hopefully, this will free you up to focus on the ‘big picture’, and not get bogged down with things like spelling.

If you have trouble remembering large lists of instructions or information, you may need to agree with your employer to a new format for receiving them. Let them know that you may need them to pause, slow down, or repeat instructions and try to agree to system where they’re happy for you to request this.

Let your employer know that while you want to know what you’ve done wrong, it’s also good to know what you’re doing right! The more specific they are with good feedback, the better you’ll be able to do it next time.

Look for opportunities to become involved in creative pursuits at work – even if this isn’t naturally part of your job. Volunteer to attend events like brainstorms and ‘blue sky’ meetings to give you an opportunity to contribute out-of-the-box thinking. There are often ‘no wrong answers’ at these sort of meetings, and it should provide an ideal format to share different skills at work.

Look for areas in your own job where you can have a little more freedom to use your creative strengths. Volunteer to head up a social committee, provide first response to IT queries for your department, redesign the office layout, maintain a company ‘Twitter’ profile or lay out the office newsletter - these are all small ways in which ‘regular’ staff members can get an opportunity to spread their creative wings.

While dyslexic employees can be excellent multi-taskers, you may find yourself easily distracted or hypersensitive to many standard features of working life. You may benefit from moving away from a fluorescent light source and into natural light, or away from ringing phones, voices and excessive movement.

While you might not be able to remove these distractions entirely, your manager may agree that meetings or periods of crucial work would be best held in a quiet conference room or behind a closed office door. Phone diversion and message taking can also be useful from time to time as a means of minimising distractions.

Standard KPIs can be particularly unfriendly to dyslexic employees, and you may wish to talk to your employer to suggest re-drafting them to take your individual strengths and limitations into account, particularly around deadlines and accuracy. Added responsibilities around areas of creativity as outlined above may well provide opportunities to add alternative KPIs to an employment contract or performance review.

It may well be worth experimenting to develop notetaking techniques which suit you the best. For example, many dyslexics respond well to Mind Maps: you may find details of a meeting easier to recall if you create a box in the centre of the page with the topic of a meeting or a specific task and the date. Each employee is represented by his or her own box. Agreed items and responsibilities are marked with lines connecting them with the right person. Combining various colour codes, the Mind Map makes it easier to prioritise and monitor tasks. For example, those marked in green might require immediate action, whereas those in red need immediate attention.

Many dyslexic individuals have difficulty reading black ink on white paper – particularly the organically whitened paper used in many modern printers and photocopiers. You may well find reading easier by using coloured or off-white paper for notes and printouts. Alternatively, try experimenting with tinted colour overlays placed over white paper to see if it helps.

Many dyslexics prefer sans serif fonts such as Arial, Sassoon and Comic Sans – where possible, convert internal documents into these fonts at 14 point size for your own personal reading.

There are a range of software and hardware resources listed on the Further Resources page which may help you work more effectively. Calendars, reminder services, text readers and spelling assistance software can all be helpful in areas dyslexic employees find challenging, freeing you up to focus on your strengths.

Many successful dyslexia-friendly workplaces have found that mentoring yields positive results for both dyslexic employees and their mentors. Suggest to your employer that s/he pick a senior staff member to provide regular ‘check-ins’, and who can give encouragement, support and inspiration to help you reach your goals.

Arrange to meet with your employer after, say, one month to review how the changes are going for both of you, and whether further adjustments are necessary. Appropriate ongoing adjustments, combined with personal responsibility and high work standards, can be all you need to lift your performance at work and discover areas in which you can grow and contribute to the business’s success.

There are a number of general adjustments an employer can make around the office to make it dyslexia-friendly. These are listed under the employer section of this website.