Culture | How should HR support employees with cancer?

The word cancer can sometimes be considered a taboo subject to bring up in the workplace, as employees and employers may shy away from discussing such a sensitive topic in a public environment. However, with figures released by Cancer Research UK showing a 12% increase in the number of cases since the mid-1990s, it’s clear that more support needs to be rolled out for those employees who have any form of the disease.

According to Macmillan Cancer Support in 2018, four in five line managers (87%) are not given any training on how to support people with long-term conditions such as cancer, while research shared by YouGov in the same year revealed that 26% believed that making reasonable adjustments to allow someone to keep working with cancer would be difficult. Similarly, research shared by Unum this year found that upon returning to work, 28% of workers with cancer, or who have had cancer, said they didn’t receive any support or the support they did receive fell below their expectations when they were at work following their diagnosis.