Respecting Privacy

The news that your employee has cancer is never easy to hear, however she delivers it. Instead of asking a barrage of questions, remember that privacy is mandated by federal laws, and you're required to protect your worker's right to it.

First, determine the level of privacy your worker wants. Does she want no one but you to know, does she want to tell the entire company, or, more likely, does she fall somewhere in between?

Then, create a strategy that will meet her privacy needs.

When an Employee Requests Privacy

The less said the better, obviously. The best strategy is to tell your other workers about the absence or needs of the coworker with cancer, without giving unnecessary details.

Try: "Miss Jones is experiencing a personal problem."

Other tips:

• Don't say it is a health issue. You can tell workers he or she will be in intermittently or not in, and discuss how the workload will be covered. Put the focus on the workload, not the worker's medical problems.
• Develop a long-term strategy to keep things quiet.  To some degree people are going to find out within an office. So you might talk about this possibility with your employee, and come up with a strategy if word does start to get around. Take your cue from the employee. He or she might want to talk one-on-one to employees. Or, he or she might want to write down details in a memo.
• Let your employee decide how to communicate the news. And let him or her tell coworkers. Stay out of it unless your help is requested.
• If the employee has requested that the diagnosis be private, resist the urge to tell anyone else in the company. If you need more suggestions on how to keep the condition private, see the American Cancer Society's page on "What Supervisors Can Do". Among other suggestions, the Society recommends always speaking to the employee in a private area.
• Reassure your employee that you'll keep the secret.  Simply say, "I will respect your privacy." And then follow through.

When an Employee Wants to Share the News

Some employees will want to tell their news as soon as possible to coworkers.  They may do so for practical reasons, such as a rough chemotherapy session is coming up, and they need to brief a coworker on an upcoming presentation so the coworker can take over.

They may need to share for emotional reasons, just to get some morale support.

Others may decide, after initially telling only a few people, that it's better to tell others directly, rather than letting the news seep out and perhaps sound worse than it is.

Some tips:

• Never discuss any aspect of the medical condition without the employee's permission and knowledge, even if he or she wishes to be open about it.
• Get a sense of how important this is by thinking about  how you would feel if you just found out you had cancer, and your boss was discussing it with colleagues.
• Develop a plan to spread the news. Talk to your employee about how he or she would like to share the news—what venue might be best. A staff meeting may be ideal. But if your worker is not comfortable with that setting, have other alternatives to suggest. Maybe he or she wants to do it one-on-one. Maybe he or she wants to send a memo and then be available for questions, informally, at his or her desk.
• Anticipate that your other employees will have questions and figure out in advance, with your employee, how to handle them. If the employee with cancer is comfortable doing so, you might say, "If you have other questions, Jane will be around later to talk."
• Consult an outside expert if needed. If you feel ill-equipped to communicate the cancer news to your other workers, you might consider first consulting, with your employee, an outside expert. Some cancer support group leaders go into worksites to help people break the news. Your HR department may be able to steer you to these resources.
• Anticipate that for  employees who decide to share, the loss of privacy may be accompanied by a surprising and heart-warming show of empathetic support. At this point, most families have been touched by cancer. So they may be overwhelmingly willing to pitch in and help out—making the situation easier for everyone.