'We are changing lives by helping people to hear'
Stephen Leddy MD of Hidden Hearing. Picture: Jason Clarke
In its position as Ireland’s largest provider of hearing aids and services, Hidden Hearing aims to expand over the coming years with plans to employ up to 150 extra staff and open an additional 20 clinics.
Deemed an essential service, Hidden Hearing has remained open during the pandemic, going into ‘care mode’ to provide aftercare and battery supply service to clients throughout the country.
It currently operates 83 outlets employing 160 staff, including a Dublin audiology training centre.
MD Stephen Leddy says: “Our first task was to risk assess all of our clinics and formulate our Covid safety protocols to keep our employees and patients as safe as possible.
"The wearing of PPE has added some additional time to our testing protocols, and we stagger appointments to provide additional space and security to those patients visiting our clinics.”
The company also set up a remote care online facility allowing them to adjust hearing aids for those patients who could not make it into the clinics.
“Employee engagement has remained high during the past 12 months. We used the opportunity to train and develop our people to ensure that we continued to operate as the modern hearing care experts in our industry,” Stephen says.
Recent Hidden Hearing research revealed that one in every two adults knows someone with hearing loss — underlining the fact that one in three people over the age of 60 has some degree of hearing impairment, increasing to one in two over the age of 70.
Hearing loss is a condition that slowly deteriorates over time and may not be obvious to the individual.
Before the pandemic, it took on average 10 years from the time someone experienced a hearing loss to doing something about it, Stephen explains.
"However, we believe that this lead time has shortened dramatically during the pandemic due to heightened hearing loss awareness."
This is due to a number of factors, including the fact that mask-wearing has limited people’s ability to lip read.
“With the many lockdowns we have experienced, people live in a micro-environment with their loved ones, accentuating their respective hearing loss awareness."
Stephen qualified as a chartered certified accountant in 1995 and worked in the retail sector before joining Hidden Hearing in 2000 as financial controller.
He also set up the Northern Ireland subsidiary which now employs 15 people.
He was subsequently appointed managing director in 2002, at age 32, and implemented strategic changes to the retail business structure and corporate culture which have resulted in significant organic growth and profitability, year on year.
“We have a five-year organic expansion plan for Ireland that will see us double our workforce in multi-disciplined areas within the hearing healthcare space," he says.
"Our last census indicates that our population is ageing at pace, and over 1.3 million people will be 60 years plus by 2030.
"This fact, coupled with a fragmented supply market and low overall penetration, leads us to believe that we can substantially increase our clinic network nationwide."
Mask-wearing has limited people’s ability to lip read.
Stephen says: "Our vision is to help more people hear better with an overall purpose of life-changing hearing health for those with hearing impairment.
“Our focus is on testing as many people as we can to highlight hearing loss if present.
"Consequently, awareness is key, and our CSR initiatives from a press and online perspective have been very important and successful in highlighting the detrimental effects of untreated hearing loss.”
The initiatives have helped reduce the lead time of 10 years and has encouraged people to act sooner to address their hearing health.
Hidden Hearing Ireland is part of Danish worldwide health group William Demant Holding, which has over 122 hearing companies globally in more than 30 countries and is listed on the Nasdaq Copenhagen.
“Due to our position within the Demant group, we are first to market with all new technology.”
Hidden Hearing Ireland also benefits from sharing global best practices across its sister company network, which ensures the best in standard operating procedures and access to the latest diagnostic testing equipment.
Hans Demant founded the company in 1904, initially to develop a hearing aid for his wife Camilla, who suffered hearing loss. He then spent the rest of his life devoted to helping the hearing impaired hear better.
“We position ourselves in the market as ‘the modern hearing care experts’ offering personalised hearing solutions to our patients.
"Having access to the best technology possible for our patients is one of our unique selling points and core to achieving our purpose of ‘life-changing hearing health’.
"Our patients deserve the best, and we will not compromise by offering inferior products for the sake of a cheaper price," says Stephen.
The Oticon More is the newest addition to the company's portfolio, presented as probably the best hearing aid ever made using a deep neural network to retrain the brain on the sounds that it has missed due to hearing loss.
With his accounting background, Stephen admits to spending the first part of his career looking after numbers.
But since he joined Hidden Hearing in 2000, his career has been all about looking after people.
After his first time sitting in on a patient’s test 20 years ago and witnessing the joy and emotion experienced when their hearing aids were placed, he knew then he would never again change career.
“I still have the same passion and energy for the business today.
"I see myself as the conductor of an orchestra of 160 life-changers to make a positive difference to people’s lives daily.
"What could be more satisfying than that?”
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