World Hearing Day 2025

What is World Hearing Day?

World Hearing Day occurs on the 3rd March every year. It’s a time to really raise awareness and draw attention to the importance of our hearing health. The World Health Organization (WHO) invite us this year to embrace the theme of:

“Changing mindsets: Empower yourself to make ear and hearing care a reality for all!”

As a Director and Audiologist for Workplace Ear Care I am thrilled to see a push really being made to change the mindset on how we perceive ear care and hearing health. For too long, I have seen first hand how our hearing health impacts our communication and mental health. There have been too many patients putting off thinking about their hearing, many who truly believe there is nothing they can do to protect their ears and hearing. I’ve also seen many people who realise their hearing is changing but they don’t know what to do about getting their hearing checked, so leave their hearing health for another day. I fully believe that by having the knowledge of what our hearing is up to this gives us the power in choosing what we wish to do to support our hearing, whether there has been a change or not.

We need to acknowledge that hearing health isn’t just an older generation problem. Younger generations are at risk too. The WHO state that over 1 billion young people risk permanent hearing loss due to prolonged exposure to sounds during their leisure activities. This generation are then heading into workplaces where headphone and headset use are not only an expectation, but also a daily need. This is a lot of noise exposure on young ears and, as workplaces, we need to start supporting everyone with their hearing to ensure our hearing health is a priority. We need to realise on a daily basis we can help with this.

We need to acknowledge that regular hearing checks are for all ages, and not just for those who have noticed a problem with their hearing. An important message this year is that our future hearing depends on how we look after our hearing today. It’s time to be proactive towards our hearing, and stop only thinking about our ears when they become a problem.

What healthy hearing habits can we adopt?

• Regular hearing checks – these are vital to give us information about any small changes to our hearing, which means help can be accessed sooner rather than later. These regular hearing tests can help to be regular reminders to look after our ears and hearing health.

• Breaks from headsets and headphones – we must be taking 5 minutes break for every hour we are using them. We need our ears to recover from the continuous exposure to sound, whether it’s loud or quiet sounds we’re listening to.

• Remember the younger generations – children and young people need to start thinking about their hearing NOW. They need to take regular breaks from using headphones so that these breaks become common place when they too are in office working environments. We at Workplace Ear Care already encourage our children to have regular breaks from their headphones. We may seem like we’re being annoying, but their hearing health is so important!

• We need to talk about our hearing – Workplaces are a brilliant place to encourage talking about our hearing health. Raising awareness and encouraging hearing tests amongst our colleagues will help to remove stigma that is still attached with hearing tests and hearing loss. If we’re all making an effort to look after our hearing, we become a much more inclusive environment with more of us feeling empowered to look after our hearing.

Our hearing health is a shared responsibility and as an Audiologist, I urge all employers to make hearing tests as routine as eye tests and dental checks, in all quiet, non-noisy workplaces. It’s so important because how well your team hears in the future depends on the care you provide today.

This World Hearing Day let’s change the mindset that hearing care is only for high noise environments and the older generation. Instead, let’s make ear and hearing care a reality for all – starting with regular hearing checks for every employee in every workplace.

Contact us today to organise personalised employee hearing tests to show that you care about your employees’ hearing health.

Written by Nicola Miller BSC MSHAA, Director and Clinical Lead at Workplace Ear Care.

Nicola is an Audiologist with 15 years of experience working in both the NHS and private sectors

Extra reading:

WHO, World Hearing Day 2025 https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-hearing-day/2025

RNID, Break from headphones https://rnid.org.uk/information-and-support/ear-health/protect-your-hearing/listen-to-music-safely/