Episode 202: Addressing Employee Hygiene

Voice Over: You’re about to listen to another episode of What The Hell Just Happened?! Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss and sometimes even solve some interesting HR problems.

Paul: And… I’m gonna go off the rails sometimes and talk about whatever I want.

Tiana: Hey, Paul.

Paul: Hi, Tiana.

Tiana: How are you today?

Paul: I’m doing good. And I’m looking forward to whatever question you’re about to ask me.

Tiana: Oh, are you ready for it?

Paul: I am ready for what the heck just happened in HR.

[Tiana laughs]

Paul: Let it rip. What’s the question?

Tiana: Okay, this is an awkward one.

Paul: Okay

Tiana: Our members frequently have to face or listeners have probably encountered before. Addressing body odor issues in the workplace or smells.

Paul: Yeah, smells in the workplace.

Tiana: Mmhmm

Paul: So I can share with everybody that I think this might have been my like seventh call when I opened a solution center for HR.

Tiana: Really?

Paul: Yeah, it shows up in all sorts of ways.

Tiana: It makes a lot of sense to me too.

Paul: Yeah.

Tiana: Because it’s, you know, it’s a tricky thing to cover. It’s really weird. It’s not something that you kind of expect to have to coach through-

Paul: Yeah

Tiana: -or like, talk to somebody about?

Paul: It’s an uncomfortable conversation as a society for us to have with someone else.

Tiana: Yeah, absolutely.

Paul: It’s difficult in terms of an employer because, well, because of all the obvious reasons.

Tiana: Yeah, for sure. And it’s a question that I see all the time, too. And a lot of times this kind of comes into an employer’s lap because other employees have now started making comments.

Paul: Right. Or patients.

Tiana: Or patients, yeah. And I think particularly in the healthcare industry, when you’re right up and close over a patient’s mouth, you know, lifting your arms, raising instruments, that kind of thing. It can, yeah, be a problem.

Paul: Right.

Tiana: Yeah. Some patients running. Hopefully not.

[Paul laughs]

Tiana: But yeah, all jokes aside, you know, I would just like to pick your brain about the best way to kind of approach this and maybe we could start with like, head on when it has first come to your attention?

Paul: Well, if it’s come to your attention, and it’s not a, you know, a one-time thing is a one-time thing, but generally when we get the call, it’s an ongoing issue.

Tiana: Mmhmm, for sure.

Paul: So I think before we go through maybe the way to have the conversation, I kind of want to bounce off of you the different ways that you hear about this in the Solution Center.

Tiana: Oh yeah.

Paul: I’m gonna let you know. The first one that I dealt with was a horse smell. So the employee was going out and feeding horses in the morning, and then she was leaving the barn jumping in her truck and coming to work. She had no idea because she was at she lived with horses.

Tiana: Yeah.

Paul: If you’ve ever been around horses and horse people, they smell like horses.

Tiana: Oh, like if people could see me right now I’m smiling ear to ear. So I’m a rural Missouri Country Girl.

[Tiana laughs]

Paul: Oh, So you know.

Tiana: Oh, I grew up with this. Everybody’s working on farms.

Paul: So that explains the smell coming from your office.

Tiana: Hey, hey now!

[Tiana laughs]

Paul: Okay. So for my first one, it was horse/farm.

Tiana: Mmhmm.

Paul: And she just didn’t- It just didn’t register.

Tiana: Totally.

Paul: And as soon as we said something to her, she was a little mortified. But well, I say we, but as soon as the practice talked to her.

Tiana: Yeah, absolutely.

Paul: I think practice what it is that you think you’re going to say.

Tiana: This is a really good situation where you could rehearse with somebody even, you know, remember, talk to us, you know, we’ve walked members through these conversations, because they’re hard to have.

Paul: And you want to keep it work related.

Tiana: Mmhmm.

Paul: This isn’t a judgment of them.

Tiana: Absolutely.

Paul: But it’s going to feel like judgment, because put the shoes on, if it’s you, and you’re coming in. And for me, I’d be like, I want you to tell me if I have a booger on my face.

Tiana: Yeah.

[Tiana laughs]

Paul: Please tell me.

Tiana: And different people have different levels of comfort with that, too, you know, so you do have to kind of approach the situation delicately at first, because it’s hard to tell how the person on the receiving end is going to take things.

Paul: And so we discussed this could be a medical condition, or it could be something else. So take that into account. That’s part of your kind of your compassion and your empathy. You’re kind of on an exploration here to find out what’s going on with them.

Tiana: Absolutely.

Paul: I mean, if they’re coming in smelling like horses every day, I think we can pretty much figure that out, but regardless.

Tiana: And I think a way to keep this workplace specific to and kind of even make the topic a little bit more neutral is you can rely on your policies to lead this conversation. You know, a lot of times in your dress code policy, for example, it helps to have language just to state that, you know, you need to maintain exemplary hygiene at work at all times. You know, small issues also come up with the issue of too good of a good thing, right? People are wearing too much perfume cologne and can be sensitive patients have allergies.

Paul: Use that same conversation.

Tiana: Exactly.

Paul: Professional conversation to say, Look, I don’t know if you know this or not and then you tell them, you’d be candid.

Tiana: Absolutely,

Paul: Yeah.

Tiana: And be clear about the impact too. You know, we’re just bringing this to your attention because you do work closely alongside patients, we need to make sure that we’re maintaining a clean and sterile, safe environment for them that’s comfortable. And so that’s why we have to bring this to your attention.

Paul: And if it was me and I was coming in smelling like horses, which by the way you smell like horses, I would want you to tell me, right?

[Tiana laughs]

Tiana: Yeah. And, you know, sometimes that might be a good opportunity. For giving a personal example, you know, I’ve been in this boat, I didn’t realize that new all natural deodorant I was using was not working, and I got checked on it.

Paul: Do you know, that just strikes a ton, because I just gave up on some. So yeah, I’m like, I’m going back to the stuff that reportedly, I’ve seen in the news causes cancer but it keeps me smelling.

Tiana: Paul uses all the aluminum now.

Paul: All the aluminum.

Tiana: We’re gonna have to watch out for that.

[Tiana laughs]

Paul: And this is extra just in case you were in a small podcast and

Tiana: Everything smells fine, by the way, for our listeners out there.

[Tiana laughs]

Paul: It’s okay. You know, tell me what’s going on? You know, we’ve noticed this, I don’t think you have to go into we’ve had several patient complaints we’ve had. I mean, we may have to go into that at some point but that’s not where we want to be right now. We just want to let them know what we’ve noticed. And that we’re, you know, this is something that we have to talk about, especially because we’re in just close proximity. And I add, I’d want to know if it was me.

Tiana: Absolutely. And, you know, so earlier, you had brought up situations where this sometimes more than just something medical. And, you know, we never want to approach a conversation with assuming or making any assumptions about somebody having a medical condition or a disability. So you don’t want to approach with that. But it’s okay to throw in something to the effect of, you know, if there’s any way that we can support you, if there is something more serious going on contributing this, you know, to this, let us know, you know, and we’ve got an open door, we’re here to talk to you about that.

Paul: Mmhmm

Tiana: And you can leave it as open ended as that. Because sometimes these situations do turn into, hey, it’s this medication that I’m taking, or I’ve got X, Y, Z, you know, medical condition that contributes to that. And that’s going to pivot the conversation into an accommodation conversation.

Paul: And in this next example, and you gave it to me, or life condition, where now that, you know, after an employee tells you what’s going on now that you know, you might be able to do something to help them out. It’s not even, doesn’t fall in the realm of accommodation. But you gave me a great example, where an employee was having trouble with her hygiene, it appeared she wasn’t showering, and she had a reason and a little bit of a heartbreaking reason.

Tiana: Absolutely.

Paul: You know, you shared that, you know, in the end, the boy was living with parents, they were all having some serious financial issues, there were some health issues with the parents, all the money had been sucked out of the family. And they were not able to keep their utilities on a regular basis.

Tiana: That’s right.

Paul: And so she was having trouble actually getting to some place and take a shower.

Tiana: Mmhmm.

Paul: And, and the practice was able to help and look, I give that example, but we get that kind of thing all the time.

Tiana: Absolutely, yeah. You never know what somebody’s life situation might be.

Paul: I want to leave us with this thought too. If you’re going to be a good manager, this is the kind of thing you need to tackle because what you don’t mean is a lot of people talking about anything behind another employee’s back.

Tiana: Mmhmm.

Paul: So when you don’t address this, when it doesn’t feel right, when you’re not comfortable with it, when you don’t find a way to address it, everybody else ends up talking about it and trust. The employee knows when this kind of stuff is going on.

Tiana: Absolutely.

Paul: Yeah, I’ve got it from here and I’ll take care of it and then take care of it as a leader.

Tiana: Absolutely.

Paul: Okay, all right, Tiana, thanks for bringing this. This happens way more.

Tiana: Absolutely.

Paul: I know people who are listening are like yep, that happened in my office.

Tiana: Oh yeah, thanks for unpacking it with me. I appreciate it.

Voice Over: Thanks for joining us for this week’s episode of What The Hell Just Happened? Do Paul a favor; share this with your network. If you have an HR issue or a question, you’d like us to discuss on this show, send it to podcast@WTHjusthappened.com. For more HR advice and insights from Paul and his team of experts, you can also join the private Facebook group, HR Base Camp, or visit HRbasecamp.com. Make sure you tune in next week. And remember: better workplaces make better lives.