How to support employees suffering from cancer

Balancing work and cancer has become a major corporate social responsibility challenge for organizations, says Professor Rachel Beaujolin at NEOMA Business School.

Each year, 160,000 employees in France receive a cancer diagnosis. This diagnosis fundamentally changes their personal and professional lives, with medical treatments, fatigue, and stigmas surrounding serious illness contributing to these employees reassessing their priorities.

For HR professionals, it raises a question: how can employees with cancer be supported in continuing to work without compromising their healthcare needs?

Beaujolin says that standardised solutions, rigid support frameworks, and uniform responses are well-intentioned but unfit for purpose. This is because cancer treatment is a complex journey, often influenced by unpredictability, such as side-effects of cancer treatment.

“This highlights the importance of tailoring working conditions to the specific needs of employees affected by the illness, as no two situations are the same,” she says.

Drawing on a study she published in the journal Revue Française de Gestion (French Management Review), she proposes three key strategies to support employees diagnosed with cancer:

• Adapting workplace conditions in line with the evolving needs of employees and their treatments.
• Encouraging informal conversations to better understand and adjust solutions on a daily basis.
• Transforming practices by introducing greater flexibility and inclusivity.

Her findings are based on academic analysis of prior studies and interviews with employees affected by cancer, while also pulling from her own experience with cancer, recorded in a logbook.

/ENDS

For more information, a copy of the study, or to hear from Professor Rachel Beaujolin, contact Jamie Hose at BlueSky Education on jamie@bluesky-pr.com, or call +44 (0)1582 790 706.