For my work family

Hello, lovely coworkers current and past (and future?)

I wanted to take a moment and let you know that I was diagnosed with breast cancer on 26 January. Since then, I’ve had tests, a CT scan, a cyst aspiration, two surgeries, and due to a weird thing my body did, a hematoma that’s put my recovery back a couple of weeks at least.

Pic of yellow rose plant sent to me by Lucy Norris’s Synamedia BT and CS team!

I’ll be updating this blog regularly on my progress, but I wanted to give you a glimpse into what I think is absolutely a stellar response from my employer. Synamedia, like nearly all tech companies, is adjusting to disrupted markets, different customer buying journeys and restructuring that has put us on the path to stability. To receive a cancer diagnosis during these destabilised times could have brought me so much stress and anxiety about work. And yet, I’m back home today after 5 days in hospital feeling peaceful and calm. I feel supported by Synamedia and able to lean on the great relationships I’ve made in only 5 months there.

Why am I so calm? What did Synamedia get right?

1. A culture of well-being was already in place when I joined. This meant that I could talk about my real self from day 1. I had chats about menopause with colleagues. I was able to be openly out and inclusive to all my colleagues. I had open conversations about how those inside and outside my team were coping with the changes. And felt actively invited to be part of making Synamedia a great place to be during change. In other words, the well-being message wasn’t just talk or slogans. Well-being is central to the way Synamedia operate and for me, it had a very real, very positive impact on my own anxieties about starting a new job in a new industry.
2. Relationships in a hybrid environment. The second thing that was already in place when I arrived was a fantastic hybrid/remote working environment. We’re all now familiar with how hard it is to form relationships with folks when you work for a global company and only ever speak on video calls. Time zones and different working cultures throw up some barriers that are hard to negotiate when you can’t just grab a coffee or a tea and have a chat. You have to find a way using only video calls to get past the work agenda and carve out a place to relax and connect with folks. Synamedia has a culture of relationships. I don’t know if this is intentional or organic, but it works. During my first few months, I felt perfectly comfortable booking 1:1 time with folks I’d hear speak on All-Hands or leadership calls l no matter what their level. My natural curiosity about who my colleagues are, what their experience has been and how they thought we could improve operations in the company was allowed to flourish. Because of this, I felt comfortable scheduling 1:1s with as many people as possible to tell them about my diagnosis. It wasn’t easy to repeat a cancer diagnosis and give each of them space to react and ask questions. But the support I received made the hard work of those conversations invaluable to me. I know today that I could pick up the phone to chat with any of my colleagues and they’d be there for me.
3. Finally, long-term illness policy. This all-important policy provides the hard numbers of how I can financially manage during recovery. The policy is excellent. I’ve been healthy my whole life and have always skimmed the sickness leave policy and health insurance coverage when considering new opportunities because I didn’t think I’d need them. I’ve learned my lesson now. And I’m grateful to have learned it when a robust policy to support me was already in place. So this is a big thank you to the whole Synamedia HR team for watching out for us naively healthy folks when we forget or don’t know to watch out for ourselves.

I’ll be blogging about my recovery on Medium. I invite you to come along on this journey with me!