Boss Lady: Tips for dealing with hygiene etiquette in the office

How do you deal with a colleague who wears the same dirty clothes all week or cuts their toenails in the office? The Boss Lady offers some tips.

I am asked a lot about how to deal with colleagues who have questionable hygiene etiquette, especially now many of us are heading back in to the office.

Problems raised include wearing the same dirty clothes all week, body odour, wearing too tight and inappropriate clothing, leaving old food on desks for days and cutting toenails in the office.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING PLAN

For bosses, to deal with this you need to map out a six-month or 12-month health and wellbeing plan and address mental health, hygiene etiquette and cleanliness standards you want from the whole department or organisation.

This way you can blend in the messages you need to get across and it doesn’t look too obvious that you’re targeting any one person.

The danger of staff approaching colleagues individually is that you can be accused of bullying.

To avoid this, the session should be run by an independent third party, if possible, and focus on health and wellbeing. Always bring it back to OH&S.

Of course, you should collect examples of what people are doing at their desks or in the office that is worrying colleagues and you can talk about that – and solutions – in the sessions. Cutting toenails should be done in the bathroom or at home, for example.

CALL FOR HELP

It’s important to remember that sometimes people are not raised the way you are and don’t know what is acceptable.

And a lot of times poor hygiene is a sign of a deeper problem, including mental health issues. If you see someone in the same stained clothes each day or they smell, it could be a cry for help because they are depressed, so you have to be quite careful how you approach these issues.

We need to make sure we’re not isolating them and making them feel attacked. We need to support them and offer services to help where appropriate.

It’s a delicate topic and requires a delicate solution.

Amanda is the founder of Small Business Women Australia, and a key mentor and advisor. Do you have a work query for Amanda?

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Originally published as Boss Lady: Tips for dealing with hygiene etiquette in the office