Perspectives of Italian Employers Regarding the Return to Work Process of Employees Who Received a Cancer Diagnosis: a Qualitative Study

Data collection will be performed through individual semi-structured interviews. Each interview will last around 60 minutes, and it can be arranged in person or remotely, depending on the participant's preference. Socio-demographic data, expertise of the employer, and company-related data will be collected through a semi-structured interview.

Experiences of employers will be collected through open-ended questions using an interview guide that was written based on the one used by Tiedtke et al., 2017, by adding some questions related to the facilitators and barriers perceived by employers during the sickness absence and RTW of employee with cancer.

The open-ended questions will concern general information about the company, employers' experience after cancer disclosure and during sick leave, employers' experience to sustain the RTW process and the long-term work reintegration, and the influence of the experience on the company.

Each interview will be audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed according to the thematic analysis method using an inductive approach with open coding.

Analysis will be iterative and involve multiple researchers to ensure inter-rater reliability of the coding procedure and the methodological rigor of the analysis.

Themes generated will be discussed with Dutch researchers from the Amsterdam University Medical Centers.

Analyses will be carried out at the end of each interview because, based on the themes that will emerge from each interview, we will understand when to stop recruiting.

Inclusion criteria

• employers* of a company
• being directly involved in managing the RTW process of at least one employee with cancer diagnosis in the last 5 years.

• An employer can be the specific person who represents the company where the employee was working at the time of cancer diagnosis or a person who supported the employee during the sickness absence and the RTW process (e.g., line manager, human resource manager).

Exclusion criteria

• none