Employers’ attitudes to employment of people with epilepsy: still the same old story?

Abstract

Purpose: One area of life quality known to be compromised by having epilepsy is employment; and one factor contributing to the employment problems of people with epilepsy (PWE) is employer attitudes. Much research on this topic is now outdated and given the changing legal, medical and social contexts in which PWE live, we therefore re-examined employer attitudes in the UK. Method: A mail survey of a random sample of UK companies selected to be representative of the 14 UK economic regions and proportional to the number of employees. Findings: The overall response rate was 41% (n=204). Twenty-six percent of respondents reported having experience of employing PWE. Sixteen percent considered that there were no jobs in their company suitable for PWE; 21% thought employing PWE would be ‘a major issue’. Employers were uniformly of the view that PWE, even when in remission, should disclose their condition to a prospective employer. Seizure severity, frequency and controllability were all considered important features of epilepsy in the context of employment. Epilepsy created high concern to around half of employers, including the likelihood of it being linked to a work-related accident. Employers were willing to make accommodations for PWE, in particular job sharing, temporary re-assignment of duties and flexible working hours. Attitudes to employment of PWE were influenced by company size and type and previous experience of doing so. Conclusions: We conclude that it is still the same old story for employers’ attitudes toward people with epilepsy, though happily for people with epilepsy, with some room for optimism.