‘Navigating the New Normal’: Understanding How Cancer Survivors Attain Career Sustainability.

The cancer experience is life-altering in several ways, affecting personal and professional aspects of survivors’ lives. Beyond the physical and emotional scars left by treatment, survivors often face challenges as they re-enter the workforce following this career shock with new values, priorities, and capabilities. While physical symptoms may hinder a survivor's ability to perform work tasks, survivors also experience psychosocial changes that may threaten their career development and sustainability over time. Hence, this study draws upon the career sustainability framework to better understand the career transitions and trajectories of cancer survivors following their primary treatment. The central research aim was to explore how the experience of cancer influences the career sustainability of survivors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten survivors, all of whom had completed their primary treatment. Following interpretative phenomenological analysis, four themes were identified: Steering through Social Dynamics, Investing in Oneself, Redefining Priorities and Success, and Transforming across the Cancer Trajectory. This study contributes to literature by furthering our understanding of how career shocks may influence career sustainability in the context of illness. These findings provide nuanced insights into the strategies that survivors may employ to reconstruct sustainable careers and may inform organisational policies, practices and work interventions.