Being an employer of someone who has been diagnosed with cancer is a tough but increasingly common situation. Managing your employee’s new schedules as a manager or leader can be challenging while you react to their diagnosis.
Hopefully, it’s something you won’t have to deal with; however, millions of people are diagnosed with cancer each year, and many of those people are employed. Getting your businesses prepared to deal with a diagnosis can make it easier for management and HR to take the necessary actions to facilitate an ill employee’s treatment.
Hearing the Diagnosis
The first part of dealing with an ill employee is preparing your workplace for that information. This way, you’ll have the tools in place so the employee feels comfortable and empowered to disclose their health information privately even when they are at their most vulnerable.
Follow the Employee’s Lead
Whenever an employee files for work accommodations because of an illness, it should be treated carefully and respectfully. They may or may not want the rest of their co-workers informed about their health situation. Remember, it will be the business’s responsibility to ensure their medical information remains private.
While the employee looks to gain accommodations for their illness, management will have to help them navigate through changes, such as:
- Adjusting their current work schedule
- Accounting for numerous doctor appointments
- Changes in employee duties
- Adjusting to and dealing with employee pain according to ADA statutes
- Other accommodations may also be necessary
When it comes to accommodations, communication is key. Some employees may not need many adjustments, while others with the same diagnosis may experience increasingly worse symptoms. How cancer and cancer treatments affect people is variable, so an employer’s response should be flexible.
Train Your HR and Build In Policies
Get the right training to prepare your staff before you even have to deal with an actual cancer patient in your business. It can be a good idea to start training HR associates on dealing with a potentially terminal illness in the workplace.
By preemptively accounting for this situation, your company can also implement policies that will guide how management and HR should handle these situations when or if they occur. This will lead to fewer questions and help your company more seamlessly deal with an individual’s new accommodations.
Balancing Privacy and Apt Employee Protection
Issues arise if an employee is particularly private about their health. It may be difficult to make accommodations for an employee if they simply file that they need leave for a medical issue. After all, they are not required to disclose additional information. An HR member may only know that an employee is going through cancer treatment if they have to handle insurance forms for that individual.
At this point, an HR representative may decide to reach out to the individual. However, it is always important to remember that HIPAA and other laws protect employee privacy. Be sure that health information never leaves the department unless the employee has given explicit permission stating otherwise.
Efficiently Submitting Paperwork
The final but particularly key step in caring for an employee diagnosed with cancer is ensuring all paperwork, particularly for insurance, is completed and quickly submitted. Sometimes delays in paperwork can incur the employee extra costs equivalent to hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Outlining Your Insurance Policies
Having a series of formalized steps that direct employees through company insurance policies can streamline the insurance processes. This will make getting treatment easier for a newly diagnosed individual. Understanding what insurance can and can’t cover is vital information that the ill employee will need to know while working out a treatment plan with a doctor.
Often though, this information is not easy to understand. This can make it difficult for any employee to navigate the company insurance themselves. An ill person may need myriad benefits, and it will likely be the responsibility of HR to administer them. These kinds of benefits include:
- Increased medical benefits
- Clinical support and care management
- Medical leave
- May include employee assistance
This list is not exhaustive. Depending on the employee, they may also require other benefits given by your company.
When it comes to introducing these benefits to an employee, you should be direct and informative but also empathetic. They need to understand what benefits the employer can offer and clearly understand their rights. It’s best to avoid speculative or general care statements, especially in formal or initial employee care meetings.
Respond with Action
While a person may want to continue working as normally as possible despite their illness, many people need certain accommodations to continue working. This may be while they go through and recover from cancer treatment. The best way to support your employee is to ensure your business takes swift action to address their needs.
Keep In Contact with the Individual
Even as your employee falls into a “new normal” through their diagnosis and treatment, it’s essential to keep communication portals open for continued dialogue. This can help avoid issues down the line, allow for certain accommodations, and help the employee feel valued by the company. Even if it’s not taken, offering support can be a great relief to someone suffering from cancer.
Doing What You Can
Wheelhouse is passionate about improving cancer patients’ lives, and we help employers and employees navigate the cancer journey. By offering our benefit add-on for your employees, we help to reduce cost, curb incident rates, increase patient satisfaction and improve outcomes by introducing tailored cancer prevention strategies and care coordination systems to broad communities of people.
Cancer diagnoses are challenging for everyone. And as an employer, manager, or member of HR, the last thing you want to do is create more stress for the diagnosed individual. Take steps now to create policies and enact training to help members of staff deal with situations like this before they happen.
All in all, if, unfortunately, someone in your workplace is diagnosed with cancer, it’s essential to let them be in control of how the company responds to their diagnosis. Always keep medical information private unless otherwise directed by the employee and be willing to help them schedule their treatment around work to make the best schedule for them and your business.
If you’re an employer interested in a benefit add-on to help your employees, let’s talk!
Sources:
https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/0616/pages/how-to-support-employees-with-cancer.aspx
