A sustainable career path for cancer survivors returning to work: new theorising from an inductive qualitative case study

This study aims to understand the workplace challenges cancer survivors face when they return to work, and to analyse what human resources management (HRM) professionals and line managers can do to protect and motivate these survivors. This article opens with a review of the literature on cancer survivors and work, from an HRM perspective. A qualitative case study approach is adopted to understand the experiences of and challenges faced by cancer survivors returning to work and human resource (HR) managers' actions to address these challenges. The outcomes of this research are translated into a set of sustainable HRM practices for cancer survivors (HR planning, job design, career development, compensation, performance evaluation and training), and guidance in the form of proposals for management and government agencies to regulate the experience of returning to work.