Book a talk
We can arrange to come into your place of work and deliver an interactive and engaging session to help raise awareness of this devastating disease.
Cancer Awareness in the workplace
Cancer is responsible for 29% of long term absence at work, the importance of getting people in the workplace, and their employers, involved in learning about cancer is more important than ever.
According to Cancer Research UK, there were around 366, 303,000 new cases of cancer in the UK (2017) (that’s 990 cases diagnosed every day). 100,000 of 156,034 of those diagnosed with cancer every year are of working age and in 2015 there were an estimated 890,000 people of working age living with cancer in the UK. This is set to increase to 1,150,000 by 2030.
This demonstrates how important it is for employers to be aware of cancer and how it can affect their employees.
In particular, pancreatic cancer needs to be highlighted more in the workplace. A recent survey commissioned by Pancreatic Cancer Action shows that, although almost 10,000 people are newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year in the UK, only 24% of people can name one symptom with certainty.
Raising awareness of the signs and symptoms of pancreatic cancer is key to improving the survival rate because if diagnosed early, chances of survival improve significantly.
A cancer diagnosis can have a real effect on the whole organisation and present challenges to management in particular. It is important that companies are prepared, not only when it comes to support, but also with managing cancer awareness and effective communication with staff in the workplace.
The Check4Cancer report highlights how employers chose to face this issue is likely to prove essential to corporate health in years to come. With the low survival rate of pancreatic cancer and more people diagnosed each year, it is crucial that awareness of its signs and symptoms is a point of focus when it comes to cancer awareness.
What are employers doing about it?
The Cancer in the Workplace 2016 report, commissioned by Check4Cancer, set out to explore how employers are responding to the increase of cancer diagnoses, the plans being made, changes being introduced and views on the readiness of their organisation.
The report showed that 64% of HR managers say that cancer is an issue currently affecting people in their organisation, however, it also highlighted the real lack of planning for employee support around cancer, despite the growing awareness of the need to attract and retain the best staff.
A shocking 71% don’t have any policies in place for communicating with employees about cancer (this figure rose to 89% in smaller firms) and nearly half of HR managers think line managers are unprepared when it comes to managing employees with cancer.
What are we doing about it?
Our Occupational Health and Well-being campaign aims to tackle some of these issues by going into the workplace and talking to people directly about pancreatic cancer.
Our recent survey showed that 100% of people felt it was worthwhile their time to attend the presentation and 94% of attendees said they would tell others about pancreatic cancer.
In addition, there was a significant increase in people’s knowledge of pancreatic cancer after they had attended the talk.
Book a talk
To book a talk please fill out out online form (click below), call 0303 040 1770 or e-mail enquiries@panact.org.
