As a member of the management team, you are responsible for overseeing a group of individuals with inevitably different personalities and backgrounds. There is no avoiding the fact that you will sometimes have to deal with sensitive or uncomfortable situations due to these differences in how people think and live. One such situation can arise when an employee has a personal hygiene issue that disrupts the work environment in some way. This may mean an employee who has body odor, an unkempt appearance, or foul smelling breath. What do you do about employees with bad hygiene? Read on for some suggestions:
Move straight into the issue. Don’t beat around the bush. If you must have a difficult conversation with an employee and request a meeting, then you can bet that employee already knows something uncomfortable is at hand. By delaying the point you need to make, you are only prolonging the tension and, ultimately, insulting the employee’s intelligence and ability to handle constructive criticism. Once you are in a private place with the employee, just come out and say what the problem is, right away.
Be direct. You need to give specifics. While it is understandably tempting to sugar coat the issue, you are helping neither the employee nor your work environment by not being as up front and direct about the problem as possible. For example, if an employee shows up to work every day smelling of cigarette smoke so strongly that it makes the office an unpleasant place to be in, you need to specify the off putting nature of the cigarette smell, rather than tiptoe around the subject by making veiled suggestions like, “Have you tried those new smoke eating fans?”
Don’t make it personal. It is important that your employee know that your concern with the employee’s hygiene issue is not a personal thing. It is work-related, and the only reason you are bringing it up is because you feel that the issue is disruptive to the work place. Keep in mind that what some people call bad hygiene, others think of as a natural, culturally acceptable, way to be. Therefore, when you broach the difficult subject of bad hygiene, you should do so on purely professional terms. For example, rather than tell an employee a smell is “offensive,” you might say something more like, “It is overwhelming the other employees and they are having a difficult time concentrating on the job because of it.”
As you can probably guess, no manager likes the prospect of having to confront an employee about a hygiene issue. Unfortunately, there is sometimes no way around it. Follow these suggestions to handle the situation with respect and delicacy.
About the Author: Antoine Plagens ia a HR manager in charge of hiring, acting as the work schedule maker, and handing issues with employees. Tact and professionalism are paramount, in any situation.
The post Management 101: What To Do About Employees With Bad Hygiene appeared first on 82WHO.