There’s a difference between keeping a health condition private and spending a workday trying to make sure nobody notices what it’s doing to you. An employee might have told a manager about a disability and still be concealing the extent of their difficulties. Another may not have disclosed anything because the condition doesn’t currently interfere with the job.
Those experiences are often lumped together as non disclosure. New research summarized by the Institute for Work and Health suggests employers miss something important when they treat them as the same thing.
What the 45% figure actually means
Researchers surveyed 695 Canadian workers whose physical, mental or cognitive health conditions affected their ability to meet at least some job demands. They asked two different questions. Had the worker disclosed a condition or limitation to a supervisor? And had the worker tried to hide difficulties caused by their health while doing the job?
The answers produced four groups. Some 21% had disclosed something but continued to hide other difficulties. Another 24% hadn't disclosed and were also hiding difficulties. Together, those groups made up 45% of the sample.
The other 55% weren't hiding difficulties. That included 37% who had disclosed and 18% who hadn't. So the finding isn't that 45% of Canadian employees secretly have a disability, or that every person who chooses privacy is concealing something. It concerns a defined survey group, and it asks about the effects of a condition on work.
Why disclosure doesn't settle the question
Workers who disclosed to supervisors were more likely to say workplace supports were available. Yet the study found that only about a quarter of those who disclosed actually received supports. Among those who didn't disclose, fewer than 10% received them.
One particularly interesting group had disclosed some information while continuing to hide other difficulties. These workers reported the greatest absenteeism and workday disruption. The researchers suggest some may have spoken up to explain absences or interruptions while remaining cautious about sharing more.
People who hid difficulties were also more likely to describe unpredictable symptoms, concern about losing their jobs, a less supportive workplace and stressful decisions about what to reveal. Those relationships matter. They don't prove that fear caused concealment or that concealment caused productivity problems. The survey captured responses at one point in time and can't establish that kind of cause and effect.
What an employer can do with this
The lesson isn't to press employees for more personal medical information. Privacy can be a reasonable choice, and an employer's accommodation process generally needs useful information about functional restrictions, not unlimited access to a diagnosis.
An organization can make its support process easier to understand without asking anyone to identify themselves. Explain where requests go, who will see the information, how confidentiality works and what happens after a request. Make it possible to discuss an adjustment before a problem becomes a performance confrontation.
Managers should also resist assuming that silence means everything is fine. Equally, difficulties at work aren't automatically evidence of disability or discrimination. What matters is having a process employees trust enough to use and managers understand well enough to apply.
The Institute's findings don't create a new legal obligation. They offer a useful way to think about the gap between a policy that says support exists and the experience of a worker deciding whether seeking it feels safe.
Source: Institute for Work and Health, “Nearly half of workers with disabilities hide impact of health condition on work.” Its public study summary describes the survey methodology, findings and limitations.