From our colleagues to yours: How to be a diabetes ally at work

With 1 in 10 adults living with diabetes globally, the odds are that so are about 10% of your colleagues.¹ Not sure how to transform your workspace into a more diabetes-friendly environment? Find out from our Roche colleagues living with diabetes how to be more inclusive.

Leading a diverse, equitable and inclusive (DE&I) workspace boosts innovation while improving employee recruitment, satisfaction, engagement and retention. 

It’s also the right thing to do.

Being an ally starts with learning how to support the people in front of you. We asked our Roche colleagues from around the world living with diabetes what would help them be their most authentic selves at work*. What would make their lives easier? What would make them feel included and psychologically safe at their Roche site?

Having been invited to ask for anything they could imagine, what’s surprising is how simple the requests were. We’re going to do our best to work towards these goals across our company, and hopefully these tips will also encourage others to create a more diabetes-inclusive workspace.

More awareness

Just because diabetes is common doesn’t mean it’s not serious; keeping the dangerous and potentially fatal secondary complications of diabetes at bay is a lot of responsibility. Since it can’t be cured, it requires constant management – all day, every day. So the first thing a diabetes ally needs to understand is that, while diabetes is a big deal, and that your colleagues living with it are under a lot of pressure to keep their health in check, they’ve got this. Because they’ve learned to take care of their individual daily diabetes management and how to live with it for the rest of their lives, they have a thorough understanding of what they need to do. 

But this doesn’t mean they won’t ever need your help. The best way to show your support is to learn about diabetes – understand the different types and what it’s like to live with a chronic condition. Make this part of the conversation at work so other people can learn this, too.

  • Speak up for diabetes as a diversity issue and weave it diabetes into your company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) conversation to help people understand it better

  • Offer to help set up diabetes awareness training

  • Address diabetes stigma in the workplace

  • Be familiar with the devices that can help manage diabetes and understand that, when an alarm goes off, your colleague needs time and space to react

More compassion

Many of the colleagues with diabetes we spoke to referred to a constant sense of guilt, as though getting diabetes was their fault. What often exacerbates this emotion is that – once they’ve disclosed their diabetes status at work – they feel like they’re being watched whenever they eat or drink anything. Having to worry about what others think in addition to worrying that their work performance may suffer because of the tiredness that often comes with diabetes, as well as side effects from medication or the constant fear of disrupting others in the office, unnecessarily compounds stress, which can then go on to negatively impact their health. 

  • Offer occasional and informal check-ins to casually make sure your colleague has everything they need

  • Leave your judgement and assumptions aside. If you’re curious, ask questions and be open to learning. You may not know what you don’t even know

  • Be respectful when someone is out of their daily routine because of a work event by making sure their needs are being met. For example: 

    • Do they have a big presentation that day? Since not only stress but also excitement can severely affect blood glucose levels, make sure they have the time and space allotted in advance of the event to take care of their diabetes. 

    • Everyone is expected to join a spontaneous team lunch? Avoid surprising your colleagues. If you have to, make sure to give them as much information as you can about what kind of food there will be so they can plan their diabetes management. 

    • When planning a team activity that will last several hours and involve food or physical activity, make sure you inform your colleagues with diabetes in advance so they have the information they need to prepare; this kind of thing should not be planned as a surprise

  • Accept that diabetes can take a physical and mental toll on people and that it’s not always a reflection of who they are 

More talking… but with more inclusive language

Sometimes people say things that they don’t realise are offensive. But the words we use are important, and it’s up to all of us to keep evolving towards an inclusive culture that helps everyone feel safe. If someone uses language that can be construed as hurtful, it’s important to speak up. If they’re making inaccurate statements about diabetes, they should be corrected so that misconceptions about diabetes don’t spread. 

One benefit of everyone taking ownership of creating an inclusive and diabetes-friendly culture is that even the most open colleagues living with diabetes get tired of always being the ones having to say something. A true ally will step in and point out inappropriate language or behaviours so the person with the most to lose won’t have to.

  • Use person-first language; your colleagues are not ‘diabetics’ but ‘people living with diabetes’

  • Avoid diabetes ‘jokes’ as they often feed into stigma, such as: “This dessert is diabetes on a plate.” People don’t get diabetes from eating too much sugar

  • Don’t ever question someone’s food choices. Know that a lot of planning has gone into their diabetes management for the day, including what they’ll eat

  • Offer support by asking how you can help; volunteer yourself to be a go-to person in case of emergency and find out in a calm moment the steps your colleague would like you to take

Being an ally starts with asking yourself: “What can I do better? Which of these hurtful behaviours have I exhibited? What can I do if I see someone else doing something hurtful? What can I do right now to be more inclusive?” 

Our Roche colleagues with diabetes aren’t asking for the world. They’re not demanding special treatment. Cutting to the core of the matter, one of our teammates living with type 2 diabetes summed it up simply:  “Just think about us more.” 

*These interviews were conducted anonymously, but the quotes you’ll see throughout this article come from our colleagues living with the type 1, 2 or LADA forms of diabetes.

Illustration credit: Huge thanks to Santiago Paulos, Visual Designer and Diabetes Advocate, for illustrating the interview quotes.

References

  1. IDF Diabetes Atlas 2021(last accessed 24 September 2024)

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