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Chronic health issues can affect every part of your life, including your career and professional aspirations. While running a business is known to be a challenging role, entrepreneurs and business owners with chronic illnesses face more challenges than most. However, you needn’t let your health battles prevent you from achieving your goals.
With the right strategy in place, you can manage ongoing health issues and achieve professional success. To learn more, take a look at these five top tips for dealing with chronic health issues when running a business.
Ways to Deal with Chronic Health Issues when Running a Business
1. Get the Best Treatment
Chronic illnesses can be difficult to treat and people often wait months or years for an accurate diagnosis. Of course, these delays only make life more difficult in the interim, which is why it’s important to access the best treatment available, whether you need orthopaedic surgery or something else.
With Circle Health Group, you can avoid long wait times and arrange to see a specialist in days. From pacemaker implantations and orthopaedic surgery to pain management and physiotherapy, you’ll find an extensive network of medical professionals ready to provide the treatment you need.
When you understand your diagnosis and have access to the best treatment, you’ll be able to minimise the impact your chronic illness has on your day-to-day life and your business.
2. Identify Your Triggers
It’s not unusual for chronic conditions to flare up at particular times, which means that your symptoms may be worse than usual. By getting to know what your triggers are, you can reduce the likelihood of flare-ups and keep your symptoms manageable. This will enable you to reduce the amount of disruption your illness causes in relation to your professional life and your personal life.
For some illnesses, such as fibromyalgia, doing ‘too much can lead to extensive fatigue in the days and weeks following, for example. Alternatively, you might find that a bad diet exacerbates your condition or that too little exercise leads to an increase in pain and discomfort. Whatever your triggers are, identify them and learn how they affect you so that you can adjust your lifestyle accordingly.
3. Hire a Great Team
When you’re running a business, your workforce really is your best asset and, if you’re dealing with a chronic illness, it’s particularly important to hire a great team. If you’re surrounded by talented, trustworthy staff, you can rely on them to perform well at all times.
By hiring a top-notch employee and giving your team a reason to be loyal to the business, you’ll find that employees are willing to show flexibility and commitment, which will certainly come in handy if you need to adjust your own work schedule in response to your condition.
4. Have Contingency Plans in Place
Sometimes, the stress of wondering when your chronic illness will flare-up can be as damaging as the symptoms themselves. Indeed, stress can be a major trigger for some chronic illnesses, which leads to a vicious cycle of worry worsening your condition. For business owners, worrying about how your company will survive if you’re unable to work can be a major source of stress, so take steps to mitigate it.
If you have workable contingency plans in place, you’ll have peace of mind that the business will continue, even if you need to take some unexpected time off. You may want to ensure that your deputies have the authority to implement companywide decisions in your absence, for example, or set up remote working options so that you’re able to play an active management role without being on-site.
5. Use Your Experience to Be a Better Employer
Having a chronic illness can leave you feeling isolated, but you certainly aren’t alone. It’s estimated that 26 million people in the UK have long-term health conditions, which highlights just how many people are affected by ongoing physical and mental health issues. As a business owner, you have an important opportunity to use your experience to become the best employer, particularly if any of your staff happen to have long-term health issues of their own.
Many people with chronic illnesses struggle in professional work environments due to a lack of flexibility from their employers. However, your insight into what it’s like to live with a long-term illness may inspire you to provide better working conditions for your teams and, in doing so, you’ll make the world a fairer and more accessible place for people with chronic health issues.
Achieving Your Professional Goals
Running a successful business is a challenge for anyone and there’s no doubt that a chronic illness can make things more difficult. However, a long-term health issue needn’t prevent you from achieving commercial success. By getting the right treatment, understanding your condition, and using your experience to fuel your motivation, you can even use your health issues to help you achieve your professional goals, rather than allowing them to hinder you.