Table 3.

When workers communicate about their episodic disability: Misgivings about others and their role in the communication-support process

Supervisors and managers	“They just don’t have any sort of broad basis of knowledge upon which to base things. So, they are often coloured by stereotypes or predispositions and unknown discriminatory attitudes that they might have, and not even be aware of it.”	(Resp 2, labour lawyer, workers)
	“I think we probably have the right policies and practices in place…But, I can tell you, I bet most managers are not familiar with them. Most managers don’t have the awareness to even identify or even think about it being something other than a performance issue.”	(Resp 26, HR & manager, public services)
Co-workers	“It is sometimes difficult to let that history go. There’s still crews that are resistant to having somebody come back because the relationship was severed and somewhat toxic.”	(Resp 8, DM, utilities)
	“I think where the frustration kind of boils over is…No one is actually being open so that their team and their colleagues understand that this is not going to be fixed. This is the way it’s going to be. And I think it’s easier for people if they have—the more information they have, the better it is.”	(Resp 12, HR, healthcare)
	“They’re perceived as getting favourable treatment and then all the other co-workers are having to pick up the slack.”	(Resp 5, DM, healthcare)
Health professionals	“The physician role is really to diagnose and treat and we need to stop asking them if the person can do their job…They are very intelligent people, they certainly have the ability, but they do not have the time to understand the workplace.”	(Resp 17, DM, consulting firm)
Union representatives	“In the unionized environments that I worked at previously, they tend to compare one person against another—‘why did you do this for this person and not something for this person?’”	(Resp 1, HR, service sector)
HR and disability managers	“I did find that the turnover in that group was quite high…Even mid-process…I was dealing with one person and then all of a sudden they had moved on…That continuity, just organizationally, was a challenge.”	(Resp 15, manager, public sector)
	“HR doesn’t normally interact with the employees—I know that sounds a bit odd. It’s HR to manager, manager to employee…. Their name is human resources, you would think that they have hands on, but no… they’re sort of one step removed.”	(Resp 25, manager, healthcare)