“Have you told them?”
A piece unpacking power dynamics, job insecurity, and alternatives to assertiveness advice.
There’s a particular kind of advice that gets offered to disabled and struggling employees, delivered with the best of intentions and the certainty of someone who has never had to calculate the cost of being heard. ‘Just speak up,’ they say. ‘Tell your manager what you need. Advocate for yourself.’ The problem isn’t that speaking up is bad advice. The problem is that it assumes a level of safety and reciprocal good faith that many people simply don’t have.
The Architecture of Risk
Speaking up requires something very specific: the belief that your manager will listen without it affecting your job security, your career trajectory, or the way you’re perceived. For many disabled employees, that belief is hard to muster, and not without reason. When you’re already worried that disclosing your disability might nudge you from ‘capable employee’ into ‘problem that needs managing,’ speaking up about struggling feels like handing someone a lever. You don’t know what they’ll use it for.
There’s also the simple mathematics of precarity. If you’re on a contract, in a probationary period, or in a role where headcount cuts are rumors circulating before official announcements, assertiveness can start to feel like a luxury. Speaking up about needing flexibility or accommodations can mean painting yourself as someone who might not be able to commit fully. In a competitive job market, that’s a story people don’t want told about them.
And then there’s the matter of past experience. If you’ve spoken up before and been dismissed, gaslit, or had your concerns weaponised against you later, you learn something deep: that voice is not safe here. That’s not pessimism. That’s data.
The Emotional Labour of Making Yourself Heard
There’s also an underestimated labour involved in actually speaking up, especially when you’re already managing fatigue, pain, or mental health challenges. Speaking up well requires emotional regulation, strategic timing, careful language, and the energy to have your concerns taken seriously. It means preparing for pushback. It means staying calm while being told your needs are unreasonable. It means smiling through the frustration.
That’s work. Real, draining work. And when you’re already working to manage a disability or health condition, that’s labour on top of labour.
What to Do Instead
If speaking up feels unsafe or unsustainable, there are other ways to advocate for yourself that don’t require you to be louder or braver than you have capacity for. Written communication can be more powerful than it sounds. An email is a record. It documents what you said, when, and exactly how. That changes the dynamic slightly. You’re not asking in real time; you’re putting something in writing that your manager has to deliberately choose to ignore. It buys you a different kind of safety.
Strategic silence can also be a form of power. Not speaking about every struggle, every bad day, every challenge—but being selective about which conversations matter and which don’t. That’s not the same as never speaking up. It’s about choosing when and where your voice is worth the risk.
Quieter forms of influence matter too. Building alliances with colleagues, developing relationships with people who can advocate alongside you, finding sponsors rather than relying solely on your own voice—these are legitimate strategies. They’re not as direct as speaking up, but they can be more effective, and they distribute the load.
And sometimes the most important thing is to acknowledge that the system is asking you to do something unsafe, and to protect yourself accordingly. That might mean documenting everything. It might mean looking for a different job. It might mean building networks outside your organisation so you’re not entirely dependent on this one workplace believing you deserve basic consideration. These aren’t ideal solutions. They’re survival strategies. And sometimes survival is the point.
The advice to ‘just speak up’ is meant kindly. But it assumes a workplace where your voice is safe, where your needs won’t be held against you, and where asking for what you need is treated as reasonable rather than difficult. If your workplace doesn’t work that way, the problem isn’t your assertiveness. It’s the workplace.