Chronic Illness

Everyone's experience of chronic or long-term health conditions is individual to them. Some people experience mild symptoms that don't require too much change to how they go about their work and their lives.

However, those with more severe symptoms need to actively manage their needs and may benefit from changes to their role or working habits.

Defining chronic or long-term health conditions is not easy. Many conditions are invisible, and people may have more than one condition. Mental health, physical health and neurological conditions can all play a part in chronic and long-term health conditions, so it's important that you let us know if you're going through a difficult time and how we can help you.

Often, symptoms aren’t obvious to us and to others, so we want to make sure that you know which support is available to you.

We know your period is not a chronic illness, but it's a chronic pain in the ass until you get to Menopause. Which is even worse for those with Endometriosis. For further information about how we can help you with these cases, take a look at Working on your period.

Support available

If you can't take time off, make use of our flexible Working hours and location policy. Sometimes, you might just need a little extra time for yourself during the day.

We provide mental health support with Pulso and Headspace. If you're struggling mentally, whether it's health-related or not, please take advantage of the support available. You can read our Mental health support page to see what other options are available, as well as the Help via Pulso page.

Make use of being able to work from home when it works for you. We don't expect you to continuously come to the office when you're feeling rough. Speak to the People and Operations team if there's something that you'd like to purchase to make your home office more comfortable.

Let's talk about it. We know this is sometimes easier said than done, but talking to your manager or the People and Operations team can help us support you better. While we do our best to check in and recognise signs that someone might be struggling, these conditions are invisible, and it can be tricky to detect when someone is suffering.

Making adjustments. We want to help you as much as possible, and sometimes, this might be making simple changes to your role or your working environment to make you more comfortable while at work. Speak to your manager. They will listen and learn more about your needs and work together with you to get you all of the support necessary.

Changes can be as small as shifting your typical working hours (to allow for sufficient breaks or working more from home) or spending additional time with your manager to help you organise your work better. There can also be bigger changes, like moving to a different project.