Chronic Health Conditions in the Workplace: Work Stressors and Supportive Supervision, Work Design, and Programs

Abstract

A large and growing number of workers are managing chronic physical and mental health conditions while working, necessitating attention from both researchers and leaders and practitioners in organizations. Much of the current discourse around research and practice in this area is focused on prevention of chronic disease and rehabilitation of disability to help workers return to work. Less commonly attended to are workplace factors that can support the quality of working life and the longevity of working life for workers with chronic health conditions. This Special Issue contains a set of interdisciplinary articles examining common stressors for workers with chronic health conditions, including work-health conflict, anticipated stigma, and job insecurity. It also contains articles examining important supportive relational and social and motivational work design factors, including supervisor support, psychosocial safety climate (shared perceptions of work policies, practices, and procedures that are meant to protect worker psychological health and safety), sense of community, organizational fairness, and health-related leeway (freedom available to workers to self-regulate work activities while self-managing day-to-day symptom fluctuations). The focal populations in this set of articles include, broadly, workers with various types of chronic health conditions, and more specifically, workers with mental health conditions, workers with diabetes, and breast cancer survivors. We hope this Special Issue sparks additional interest in these important topics and others that are critical to supporting workers with chronic health conditions in organizations.

Editorial: The role of social dialogue in return to work after chronic conditions

“…More recently, several studies have emphasised the need to shift research focus towards understanding the role of employers as critical linchpins in the success of the RTW process (Amir et al ., 2018; Popa et al ., 2020; de Rijk et al ., 2020). At the organisational level, McGonagle et al . (2024) highlight the need to shift from reactive, individual-focussed efforts to support RTW to more systemic, organisation-focussed efforts.…”

“…More recently, several studies have emphasised the need to shift research focus towards understanding the role of employers as critical linchpins in the success of the RTW process (Amir et al, 2018;Popa et al, 2020;de Rijk et al, 2020). At the organisational level, McGonagle et al (2024) highlight the need to shift from reactive, individual-focussed efforts to support RTW to more systemic, organisation-focussed efforts. Critical factors previously identified include work design, reasonable accommodations at work, a phased RTW, a supportive work environment and line manager, formal policies, the provision of access to worker representation, communication and cooperation between healthcare professionals, health insurance and employers to facilitate planning a successful RTW (James et al, 2006;Grunfeld et al, 2008;Steenstra, 2017).…”

“…Chronic illnesses are shown to have significant societal costs as they depress wages, workforce participation and labour productivity, as well as increase early retirement and high job turnover. At the organisation-level, much attention has focused on employee health costs, which include the direct cost of any health plan, costs due to employee absenteeism and costs due to reduced productivity amongst employees not working at full capacity (McGonagle et al , 2024). For individuals, working with a chronic illness may lead to a poor quality of working life, high levels of absenteeism and/or presenteeism (McGonagle et al , 2020).…”