Imagine combining the paralyzing terror of a cancer diagnosis with the added fear of losing your job, and then possibly your health insurance. The Publicis Foundation announced the “Working with Cancer” initiative—the first pan-industry coalition to remove the stigma and hopefully fear of having cancer in the workplace—at Davos last month in partnership with the World Economic Forum.
The initiative was born out of Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun’s own battle with the disease. In April of last year he was diagnosed and treated for throat cancer which was brought on by the HPV virus. Deciding to tackle the subject head-on, he released a companywide video to Publicis’ global team of 100,000 people informing the staff about his situation.
As CEO, he was able do that without fear. And, while the response to his honesty was overwhelmingly positive, he received thousands of emails from those who explained why they could not as confidently announce their diagnosis to the world (and company). These letters told of the fear these people felt, not only for their lives but also for their jobs. In fact, 50% of cancer patients are afraid to tell their employer about their diagnosis.
“This really took him back and made him think about it through the lens of de-stigmatizing cancer as a diagnosis,” Publicis Health CEO Alexandra von Plato said. “He then made sure that the company was very clear about the way we would support people who are diagnosed and undergoing treatment, to make sure that we had readily accessible recovery forward policies and programs that people could access. It’s really to give people hopefully one less thing to worry about as they face the battle.”
The initiative is supported by top cancer charities and organizations including the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, MacMillan Cancer Support and the Gustave Roussy Institute. On Feb. 4, World Cancer Day, "Working with Cancer" launched a mass media “wakeup call” asking everyone to take part in supporting their colleagues with cancer.
Von Plato points out that many while many companies actually already have a supportive system for employees struggling with cancer in place, the problem is that employees don’t know about it.
“We’re trying to make sure that first is that the programs that exist are surface readily and that people can quickly understand what's available to them. And then this whole group in this consortium can compare and contrast their offering and improve across the board by sharing best practices and experiences for what's working and what's not, as well,” she said.