Managing cancer in contemporary workforces

This exploratory paper extends debates usually reserved for social welfare and health provision to a new domain by exploring how deservingness features in line manager-employee interactions in the context of an employee diagnosis cancer. It draws on narrative interview data from people with cancer in the UK who were employed when diagnosed and line managers with experience of managing an employee with cancer. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of occupational health and human resources staff and staff from a UK cancer support charity. Post-diagnosis support for employees with cancer was negotiated in subjective, individualised ways, drawing on their pre-diagnosis workplace contribution as well as the perceived deservingness of cancer as an illness. Despite the outcomes of these negotiations sometimes benefiting individual employees, support offered on grounds of deservingness did little to address structural issues of workplace accessibility and undermined employee entitlements. Managerial support for employees with cancer defaulted to dated stereotypes of disability and ill-health regarding genuineness and/or deservingness that did not reflect current equality, diversity and inclusion agendas. Pervasive and unhelpful notions of deservingness in the context of ill-health and disability have distinct and worrying implications for ageing workforces, particularly across the global north. This paper offers recommendations for research to address them.