In Employee confidentiality, secrecy and stigma, I talked about how our culture of secrecy, as it relates to illness, has negative effects in the form of stigmatizing people who are ill. Employee wellness programs rarely address this issue.
This is a big problem in the workplace. For most of my work life I have been advised NOT to talk about my illness in the workplace for my own good. The advice has come from a wide spectrum of people – doctors, social workers, and even senior managers who worried that people may look at me or treat me differently.
Employee Confidentiality
There are many reasons why people may wish to keep their illness secret. Some people still believe that illness is some sort of character flaw, while others feel that their manager will use the illness as an excuse to get rid of them or deny them promotion. Still others just don’t want to talk about it – with anyone.
First off, I want to state that I respect everyone’s right to privacy and confidentiality. If a person doesn’t want others at work to know they are sick they shouldn’t be forced to reveal that fact unless it constitutes a danger to others.
But what about the people to whom chronic illness is just another facet of their lives? To me, talking about my illness is no different than talking about my spouse. Both are personal topics that I don’t dwell on at work, but I certainly don’t avoid them if the conversation is relevant.
Having an open and understanding culture as it relates to illness has several advantages to organizations:
Employee retention
For many years I was a fair-weather employee. I never really felt comfortable in the corporate cultures that I worked in. When new opportunities came up, I tended to jump ship quickly.
Then I started working at a different company. The job was originally on-call and to be truthful I was only expecting to stay there a few months. But when I joined the company I soon found people like myself who had similar health challenges. There was even a person who had the same illness as myself who also did the same job.
For the first time, I felt I was surrounded by people who understood me. I stayed at that company for over a decade where I did some of the best work of my life. I also became a tireless promoter of the organization in both the media and at industry events.
Increased Productivity & Decreased Presenteeism
In my first stint as a manager I had a talented employee (we’ll call her Dawn) who was struggling with her productivity. Previous managers had been frustrated in their attempts to get her production level up.
Here’s where I came in. Because of the nature of the news business there were often days when I had to come to work when I wasn’t feeling all that great. I was honest with Dawn on those days and told her briefly about my illness and how it might affect me.
She suddenly revealed that she herself had been dealing with a serious invisible illness but had been keeping it a secret from people at work because she felt no one would understand her challenges
Does everyone have to work 9 to 5?
As she opened up to me she described how she was having trouble balancing her doctors appointments with her strict work schedule. Because of her productivity issues, her previous manager had laid down strict rules about her being in the office from 9 to 5, plus whatever extra time she had to put in to finish her projects. Forcing her to work those hours wasn’t getting the job done. She was a walking poster for “presenteeism”.
Her job was a creative one that wasn’t necessarily dependent on her being available 9 to 5. I made a deal with her. I gave her targets in terms of quality and quantity of her product, but allowed her all the flexibility she needed to go to her doctor appointments or leave when she felt tired or ill. Now she could work without fear. She regained her passion for her job and increased both her productivity and the quality of her work quite dramatically.
She still had to keep track of her hours to make sure she was working for the time she was paid for. She also knew she had to hit certain deadlines when emergencies popped up. But for the most part, her hours were flexible and allowed her to take care of herself when she needed to.
Chronic Illness is a problem you can’t see
If your employees aren’t forthcoming about their chronic conditions, there is no way you can help them regardless of what sort of employee wellness program you may have. They can easily suffer the same fate as Dawn – disengaged, working unproductively, and making their problems worse by not taking care of themselves.
The question is – how do you do it? How do you walk that line between confidentiality and openness? I will explore some of those ideas in my next post.
