Chronic illness is a pervasive yet often hidden aspect of many employees’ workplace experi-ence. In a qualitative empirical study, we explore how individuals with a chronic physical ill-ness navigate their professional environments. We show that while chronic health conditions are constantly present, they often go unrecognized or remain concealed, creating challenges not only for those affected, but also for their colleagues, decision-makers, and the organization overall. We conceptualize chronic illness as an ‘unpredictable embodied identity’ – a shifting and unstable aspect of self that is deeply tied to one’s physical condition. Employees with chronic illnesses must continuously negotiate their identity in response to fluctuating symp-toms, workplace demands, and social expectations. Their experiences challenge traditional no-tions of stable professional identity, revealing how bodily unpredictability shapes both self-perception and interactions in organizational settings. By foregrounding this dynamic, we shed light on the complexities of working with a chronic condition and the organizational settings that either mitigate or exacerbate these challenges. Acknowledging and understanding this dy-namic interplay is not only key to fostering inclusion and equitable management of workers with chronic illness, but understanding the complexity of working with a chronic illness offers also broader insights for managing diversity within organizations.
