Imagine being so sensitive to your environment your brain feels overloaded, causing stress, upset, or withdrawal. Information overload can include strong smells, sounds, lights – any of your five senses. Where most people can filter out sensory noise, hypersensitive people can’t, and this has a huge impact on them, especially on their ability to be at their best at work. It’s notable that up to 1 in 5 people are considered hypersensitive – far more than we think.
Hypersensitive people pick up on sensory information others may miss, experiencing the emotional impact of such information. Watching a movie, listening to music, fragrances or smells, lighting etc may all cause discomfort for hypersensitive people.
We’re often encouraged at work to provide feedback and provide radical candour, but imagine how that could be received. As well as the sensory assault, there’s the internal emotional impact - churning thoughts, resulting in feelings of anxiety or worse. While it may all sound negative, think of the benefits; their ability to be empathetic, to pick up on subtleties in the behaviour of others, to see what many others miss. Whilst group settings may feel uncomfortable, individual relationships are likely to be built on strong emotions of compassion and care. Some might argue that hypersensitive people make the best leaders due to these characteristics. So how do we create environments for hypersensitive people to be their authentic and effective selves at work?
Here are 5 tips that could help by The Engagement Coach, which was founded by Amrit Sandhar, who has worked with a number of well-known brands across the UK, to improve employee engagement/ experience, ultimately to improve organisational productivity.
The Environment Hybrid or remote working helps individuals choose where they can work best. If it’s essential to be in the workplace, consider the environment. Is the music too loud? Can you smell food from the café? How’s the lighting? Rather than redesigning the open plan workplace, consider allocating rooms adjusted for low light, quiet spaces to reduce sensory overload. ‘Thinking rooms’ allow hypersensitive people to retreat, calm themselves and enjoy working.
Leaders and managers
Hypersensitive people can take feedback very seriously, so an empathetic approach is needed. Training and upskilling leaders and managers on coaching techniques helps individuals identify the answers for themselves, and to manage their own performance. It allows individuals to question, explore and analyse information, reaching the best conclusions for the way forward for themselves, avoiding potentially distressing feedback while feeling empowered.
Team meetings
Hypersensitive people often find team meetings and debates difficult, so seek alternative methods for sharing input and ideas which can be collated prior to the meeting, ensuring everyone has the ability to be heard. This calmer environment allows for advance preparation with no distractions and might help other more introvert members of the team.
Organisational change
Change is always challenging within organisations, but for hypersensitive individuals, the impact is magnified. People need time to process all of the information, and how messages are relayed will be as important as what is relayed. Hypersensitive people will pick up on perceived incongruencies, so if leaders happen to be poor communicators, they may misinterpret this as a lack of buy-in, creating more concern. Open and honest conversations, where individuals can ask questions and receive responses in small groups, will increase confidence and comfort.
An inclusive culture
We want to create workplaces where people feel like they belong. There may be disagreement or conflict, but it doesn’t have to be loud and threatening, rather an acceptance that we will disagree. Encourage teams to become comfortable with conflict by supporting them to calmly put forward their points and respect each other’s opinions. Creating a psychologically safe environment where people can speak up, even with conflicting views, is possible when everyone is respected for their talents and experiences.
Hypersensitive people can be extremely productive, empathetic, and caring members of any team, and by adapting our workplaces to make their involvement more stress free and inclusive, we can create amazing cultures. Small changes will allow hypersensitive people to bring the best of their talents to work, and it just so happens that these changes are likely to help the broader employee population too.
