Episode 91: How to Tell Your Employee They Stink

Grace: In a compassionate way, I want to help you get there. And I need you to help us get to this goal. And we’re going to work together to do that. And that typically is much more effective for whether it be cigarette smoke or any of these other things

Paul: or any of these things, you kind of have to put the ball in their court and be as supportive as you can where that’s warranted.

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Paul: On today’s show, we’re going to address kind of a touchy subject.

We’re going to talk about when an employee comes in with some kind of smell or odor about them. It could be everything from they smell like cigaretts, which is a pretty simple one to the handle to they have a body odor about them. And you find out the reason why they have a body odor about them is because something that’s going on in their personal life.

So it could be medically related, it could be domestic abuse. There’s all sorts of things. So this is a question that we get a lot in our solution center. And today I’m going to be joined by Grace Godlasky. Grace is the one who’s, at CEDR, It’s her job to manage the solution center team. So that’s our team of experts over at CEDR.

And it’s also her job to kind of develop them so that they can give these compassionate answers to some of these kind of difficult issues like someone comes in smelling. So with no further ado, let’s get to the show.

Paul: Hey, Grace, welcome to the show. It’s been a while since we’ve done a podcast together.

Grace: It’s been a little while! I’m so happy to be here.

Paul: Well, I mean, part of the reason why we’re here is you did a course for us and for our members and for the world at large out there. It’s about hygiene and specifically about employees coming in smelling. I mean, I’m just going to use it as a general term. We’re going to get into these odors a little bit, is what we’re going to do today.

And just as a reminder everybody, as I said in the introduction, Grace runs our solution center team. She’s the manager there. She’s our fearless leader. She develops that team who whose job it is not just to answer questions on the legal stuff, but to help create policies and create, I don’t know, solutions to the problem. We don’t just answer the legal part of it.

We do a human side of it. If you guys have ever read anything we’ve ever written and it’s all of those experts jobs to be able to give you actionable guidance, you know, and you can’t just walk up to somebody, for instance, and say you stink and start from there. And I think all the listeners know that. But anyway…

Grace: It’s a very human issue, talking to people about how they smell good or not.

Paul: And you know, everybody over at CEDR, when they pick a topic to do a course on, we do it by looking through all of the tickets. So whether you realize or not, we’ll call them tickets. We get about 12,000 requests a year to help solve different issues. And this odor issue is really common because there are so many variations of it.

Grace: There really are a few things you would not even think would be a problem. Come up with how people are smelling and I know we’ve got a little little list of examples to share, and some of them are surprising.

Paul: Yeah, some of them can catch you off guard. You don’t know exactly what to do. And I think no matter what and most instances, unless it’s just flagrant, like an employee goes out, smoke a cigaret, comes back and smelling like cigarets that that one’s pretty easy.

Like, dude, you know what’s going on? You can’t do that. You know, you’re working with patients in here and you smell like Cigarets can’t do that. That’s the easy one. Yeah, I think it’s one of the few easy ones. The rest of the time when someone has an odor about them. I think, like all HR issues, Grace and correct me if I’m wrong here, nothing’s ever cut and dry.

Just because somebody has body odor doesn’t doesn’t mean you can just walk up to them and say you need to take showers. I mean, you could do that. But that’s really not a you know, not a very good way to work with people in your experience, how does this come up all the time?

Grace: Regardless of the context, the challenge for managers and what we are asked to help with is what the heck do I say? So in the course, I really walk you through how to start the conversation, how to have the meat of the conversation, and where to where to land with your employee. But before we even get there, the different smells and the different ways that this comes up are you named it any sort of smoke smell, whether it’s tobacco, cannabis, You know, we see more of that as laws are being passed everywhere.

We see traditional like body odor or smell just B/O smelling like you just rolled out of bed, you know, didn’t brush your teeth. That kind of odor we see. And Paul, you this is a fun one, kind of like animal smells like people who maybe live on a farm or help with a farm or even if they’re not on a farm, they have a ton of dogs or cats in their home and they’re just smelling like animal.

And then the opposite end is smelling too nice, or people are just overwhelmingly smelling like perfume or cologne or hair products, whatever it is that they’re.

Paul: And they just don’t know. They just don’t know. I mean, most of these are people who are new. I mean, if you work at any of any kind of a medical or dental practice or any of the people that are listening to us, the chances are you’ve been told we just can’t be wearing perfume.

But I think, like, you know, the new employee, a lot of times she’ll come in on day two and she’s put on her battle dress. You know, part of that is, you know, a little perfume and everything. And then the hey, you can’t you can’t wear perfume to work, that sort of thing. So you mentioned livestock. That was one of the first ones, is it makes sense.

It was in Kentucky, it was horses and she would go feed the horses in the morning. And it wasn’t that she didn’t take showers. It was just that she would come in with that smell of horses on her. And like most people who have or many people who have an odor about them, and I think this is important.

A lot of times they don’t know how to nose blind to it and Grace, I just kind of want to run down this list of kind of of what the hell just happened, kind of phone calls we get. Livestock, cigarettes. We have seen this as a sign of early onset dementia as part of some other things that are also going on with this employee.

I have older parents and one of my parents. We have to kind of remind her that she needs to take showers. Now, of course, she’s way past working age, but that stuff comes up and it can be really sensitive and we want to handle that as advisors on our side and we want our employers to handle that in a different way.

You know, that’s just something that you’re going to have to address. Takes a little investigating to figure out that sort of stuff is going on. I put another one down as financial issues that crop up, and so I’ll give one one really good example. Grace. The employee is having financial issues doesn’t matter why. And in this instance, they can’t afford three uniforms or four uniforms or five uniforms.

So what’s happening is, is that they only have one or two. It’s not their body odor. It’s stuck to their clothes. They’re just not washing their clothes enough because they’re just overwhelmed. They’ve got three kids, a husband, maybe two jobs, you know.

Grace: No laundry on their unit. They have to go to the laundromat. Yeah, exactly. And that is a reality for a lot of workers.

Paul: Yeah. And so financial issues can show up in a lot of different ways, which really can in the next one, which is the domestic issues. I mean, we’ve had, you know, more than a few, I’m sorry to say, where, where as we go into the investigation, we learned that this employee is in a shelter somewhere or they’ve had to move out of their home and they’re in a not in a great position to be able to take showers.

And it’s just it’s just part of kind of life going to crap around them. You know, we’ve had people where you discover that they’re in cancer treatment. And again, this kind of goes back to the things that they have the energy to care about at that point. You know, they’re coming to work, they’re going to treatments. Life is not perfect by any stretch.

And they’re picking and choosing what they have the energy for. And again, it’s just something that, you know, you got to handle with some compassion. And I think a lot of these odor issues, with the noted exception of the first one that I named, really I want people to say, okay, I have this problem, but then there’s this compassion component, I think, around most of these, you know, around most of these problems.

And then again, medical conditions kind of go with the cancer treatment. But Grace, I’ve had more than one instance where I’ve been looking in and we discovered that this person has lost their sense of smell. So that happened with COVID. You know, now that and it’s common around long COVID and I’m still meeting a few people have said, yup, I still have don’t have the smell back.

Right. And so there’s an issue, you know, there’s there’s an issue there. You know, that’s just a few things, but it highlights in the course we talk about having an initial seek to understand conversation rather than jumping right to discipline. And all the examples you gave highlight why we teach folks to do that because you want to really get to the root cause and approach it in a compassionate way versus jumping straight to, you know, your own violation of our dress code policy.

Certainly you could do that and regret that during this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I for everybody who’s listening, Grace, no matter what the issue is, we still have to address it. That’s the hard part of being a manager and an owner. It’s so hard making yourself making those words come out of your mouth and it’s so hard for this issue in particular because it’s personal.

There’s no way that it’s not personal. You know, when you’re coaching someone. On how you missed that note in that chart or you didn’t put that thing back in the right place, it’s not as personal, you know, It’s just not at work. But this is really about it’s just so close to who someone is that it requires a lighter touch.

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Paul: I want to give this example. We had an employee was coming in smelling like smoke. And you know, as I said before, it’s pretty simple. You can just say, hey, stop going out and and smoking cigaretts you can’t come back in smelling like smoke.

But what we learned with a lighter touch and just being investigative at first was that her mom had had a stroke. Her mom had to move out of her house and move in to this employee’s house. Her mom is, you know, 85 years old. She’d been smoking her entire life, even though she the employee had, you know, relegated her mom to the porch to smoke, which is just great.

Mom, you’ve had a stroke and you’re still smoking the employees clothes smelled like smoke. I mean, that’s not employee smoking. So, you know, using a little compassion here, the solution to this, to this issue being offered to be a lot more compassionate. It may involve something like we see so many practices doing this. Not all practices can do this.

I’m going to tell a story. This is 15 years ago. I remember this. He his practice grew. He ended up and still has, I think, three locations. He’s got about 30 employees, maybe more, maybe 40. And this problem came up so much that his office manager, who had come from another large practice, said, look, this is the reason why we launder clothes here.

They’re scrubs and we have their scrubs here because with this many employees, it’s always something. Somebody always has some smell. It’s this, that or the other. So what we decided to do was we made it so that everybody came to work in their street clothes and they changed clothes when they got here. But look, that means you have to have a place for a washer and dryer or you have to be an outside company.

You have to keep all a place to keep all of these work clothes. You have to have a place for everybody to be able to change. And that’s not an easy solution for for everybody. Right. And, you know, on a personal level, I’ll share my mom’s in her eighties and she won’t stop smoking when I go to see her.

I have to leave my clothes in my luggage, in my car. Yeah, I can’t I can’t even bring it in. So it’s it permeates everything.

Grace: It does. It’s a real challenge, but it highlights such a great practical solution to explore. And even if that’s not the solution, you know, there are there are certainly other solutions for that employee.

You know, do you want to leave your scrubs here until it is time for you to take them straight home and wash them and bring all of them back just so they’re not setting them up here? There are just a number of things that you can brainstorm for these issues. And one of the things we highlight in the course that I’ll say is typically, you know, we do want it to be a collaborative solution like that where you’re floating some ideas.

They might be coming to the table with some ideas and you’re landing on something that works for both of you. It’s typically not a one way street where you’re saying you must shower every day or you must, you know, not let your mom smoke at home, you know, whatever that is. Because as an employer, when you’re in the shoes of an employer, it’s usually reaching just a little bit too far.

With that said, though, it’s not your problem to solve. You know, you can say this is the result that I need in a compassionate way. I want to help you get there and I need you to help us get to this goal. And we’re going to work together to do that. And that typically is much more effective for whether it be cigarette, smoke or any of these other or any of these things.

Paul: You kind of have to put the ball in their court and be as supportive as you can where that’s warranted. I think one of the phrases I like to use and this works in a lot of places for HR Related issues, but particularly well in this as if it were me and I was having the problem, I would want you to tell me.

And so that’s why i’m going to talk to you. It’s kind of like, hey, you’ve got a booger on your nose, right? I mean, yes, you know, please, if I have a burger, would you please tell me I got in the case?

Grace: I know that’s true. That’s a true friend right there. That’s going to tell you.

Paul: That’s exactly right. So, you know, you just you know, you approach the problem that way and you really keep it a little bit work associated. You know, the you know, it’s really the reason we have this issue here is because of the patients. You know, you don’t try it. You try not to make it personal where it doesn’t or being personal.

Now, make no mistake, you’ve talked to someone two or three times and they they’re not going to wear nicotine patches. They’re going to go out to the car, they’re going to smoke. We cover that. There are some legal activities out there. There are some states that actually protect a person’s right to do whatever they’re doing when they’re not at work, as long as that thing is legal.

Nonetheless, though, there are no laws out there that say that you must tolerate the smell when they come back. And so after I’ve talked to you a couple of times about the smell, I’m probably going to write you up. And if you can’t make it stop, I’m probably going to let you go for it because you’re getting everybody who’s listening.

You’re going to get complaints from patients, never mind the other employees and that sort of thing. Right? So you know that.

Grace: Yeah. And that list of of legal things, we cover it in the course. It’s longer than you think it might be. You know, it’s not intuitive that there are all these legal considerations, but we covered a few here.

The medical needs, the lawful off duty conduct that you just referenced. But even things like protected class issues, you know, if you’re going to say, hey, person, you’re smelling too strongly like like food, like garlic, onions, curry, I know your dad owns an Indian restaurant, whatever that is, then you should be saying the same thing to, you know, your non-Indian employee who smells like fried chicken very, very heavily or fried foods very heavily.

We get into some of those nuances. It’s a little harder to to tease out because it’s kind of a know it when you see it situation. But that list of things to keep in mind that might be the legal about employees smelling in the workplace is a little bit longer than than we might think.

Paul: It it really is and Grace, just reflecting back on what you just said, are you familiar with the the restaurant called Bojangles? Have you come across it?

Grace: Well, my husband and I lived in Alabama for a long time. And so, yes, we did have our Bojangles days. We don’t go we live in the north now, so we don’t go as much and it’s not as easily accessible.

Paul: Well, I would say when I lived in North Carolina, I probably smelt like fried chicken also.

But however, I just want to say this, Grace. Grace isn’t yet Grace’s in a different state than we are out here in Arizona. Grace, Bojangles is coming to Arizona.

Grace: Is it really? that’s exciting news. I wonder if it’s going to come up here.

Paul: I don’t know. But I’ve heard they’re building like 26 locations in Phenix, so I’m very, very excited about that.

And that has nothing to do with the podcast.

Grace: Your next broadcasting will be from Phenix with your Bojangles.

Paul: What is it called the I can’t remember the name of the It’s a filet. It’s so good. Grace as I like to do. I’m in this with an old story. This is a you won’t believe what the hell just happened story.

I get a call. This is back in the day when I would pick up the phones because I could. Everybody I pick up the phone and doctor comes on and he says, Paul, you won’t believe what the hell just happened. And I was like, What doc? And he was like, So I’ve been having this problem with this employee and smells, and we were talking about it for about two or 3 minutes and he was kind of dodging around the smell and everything.

And then finally he came out what he wanted to tell me. He was like, Man, we just figured out that one of my employees, who we just hired about two months ago, has been going out and having sex with her husband in her car at lunch on a regular basis. And it was causing some problems back here in the office because people were noticing that, you know,

Grace: you know, she didn’t smell as fresh in the afternoon as she did in the morning. Okay. Okay. So we make this stuff up, Paul.

Paul: And then I was like, What the hell did you just do with that? How did you handle that? And he was like, Man, it’s most uncomfortable conversation I’ve ever had in my life. But I had talked to her about it as we started with There’s a never ending list and ways that people can come in and have an odor about them.

You might have to deal with it. This is right. This is what H.R. does.

Grace: You know, what’s funny is as wild as that is the formula that we teach in the course, and it works for all of it. Like even this, if you kind of you can stick to that, that roadmap and you would be able to struggle through but still get through that conversation.

Paul: Yeah, we’ve done our best to make it so look, everybody, a link to that course is in the in the show notes that you can go to the course and take it if you’d like to. Grace Thanks. This year your your course is very punny everybody. You’re just going to go ahead and warn you about that.

Grace: Buckle up. Yeah I make a ton of bad jokes. I was actually pushing them down during this podcast last fall. And, you know, I’ve it’s run its course.

Paul: Okay Grace so thanks for coming on this episode of What the Hell just Happened?! which is my employee came in and they have a smell about them and I got to do something about it.

Grace: Thanks, Paul.

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