Why Is Personal Hygiene Important in Professional Settings?
Why Is Personal Hygiene Important in Professional Settings?
Safe Working Practices
Peninsula Group, HR and Health & Safety Experts
(Last updated )
Peninsula Group, HR and Health & Safety Experts
(Last updated )
Personal hygiene at work is vital, but how do you handle issues created by bad personal hygiene? We explain how to raise these issues and how to resolve them.
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Why Is Personal Hygiene Important in Professional Settings?
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HR management outsourcing is when a team of experts manage your HR by looking after your contracts, policies, and procedures.
These are the HR essentials every business needs. Without them, your staff could bring successful claims against you, you could lose thousands in legal fines, and even face prosecution. Never underestimate the benefits of HR support for a small business.
We have years of experience in providing HR for SMEs and HR management outsourcing. Contact us to see how we can support you, including HR advice for small businesses - as well as medium and large companies.
Good human resource management is having round the clock support when you need it the most.
Whenever there’s a staff challenge or an important legal update, you just pick up the phone and get the help you need – no matter the time or place.
The main benefits of HR outsourcing are:
- Cost saving: Reduces the expenses for such things are hiring, training and employing an in-house HR team.
- Time saving: Saves time for staff members away from HR tasks.
- Improves expertise and compliance: Provides ongoing advice and support to ensure complete and total compliance.
- Reduces risk: Reduces the risk of any payroll and compliance failures.
Outsourcing HR is cheaper than hiring internal staff and saves you money overall when it comes to your HR service. Plus, you avoid making mistakes that could cost you heavily in claims and legal fines down the line. Every business should consider HR support as a way to avoid claims.
Peninsula is one of the leading HR outsourcing services in the UK, and by working with us you get access to our HR advisory service. Contact us for your outsourced SME HR today.
The key functions of HR outsourcing services are:
- Payroll and benefits: Helps a business to manage employee wages, tax processing, and employee enrolment.
- Recruitment and onboarding: Helps with job descriptions, sourcing new candidates, interviewing, and ensuring a smooth onboarding process.
- Compliance with employment law: Helps to ensure compliance with ever-changing employment legislation.
- Employee relations: Helps to manage grievance and disciplinary procedures, and any ongoing support that's required.
- HR admin: Helps to handle and manage daily tasks, such as employee records, sorting employment contracts, and processing any leave requests.
- Training and development: Helps to create and deliver staff training programs to improve employees' skills.
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Everyone should maintain personal hygiene at work. It’s professional, considerate, and often a necessary element of your working environment. However, employees can make working life uncomfortable for others with poor personal hygiene.
From the first day of their employment, employees should understand your dress codes and grooming policies. If an employee’s bad personal hygiene becomes a problem, you must address and deal with it.
Bad personal hygiene at work can affect a team, an office, and even an entire company. So you must treat it seriously.
Personal hygiene in the workplace can affect another employee’s quality of life. This includes issues like a foul-smelling environment or contracting illnesses.
Bad personal hygiene comprises:
Body odour.
Unclean apparel.
Bad breath.
Persistent coughing.
Flatulence.
Overuse of deodorant, perfume or cologne.
Some employees may not even be aware of their bad personal hygiene at work. This is why it’s good business practice to implement a personal hygiene at work policy.
What are the consequences of poor hygiene at work?
It’s difficult to understand how detrimental poor personal hygiene at work can be to co-workers. Many believe that bad personal hygiene at work can contribute to a loss of personal productivity.
Poor personal hygiene can make a working environment unpleasant. Issues such as persistent coughs or strong perfumes can make it hard to concentrate.
Issues such as a persistent cough may be because of an employee working while they are unwell. This would be a health risk that you should address. This is when you need to consider how to handle both personal health and hygiene at work.
What's a personal hygiene policy?
A good way to nip bad personal hygiene at work in the bud is to establish personal hygiene policies. Established policies will provide common knowledge of hygiene standards for employees to follow.
Understanding how to implement a workplace dress code helps establish personal hygiene policies. You can read our guide about workplace dress codes.
It’s important to maintain personal hygiene when interacting with a working environment. Important ‘risk hotspots’ to regularly clean include:
Reception and entrance areas: Reception desks, sign-in clipboards, pens, door handles.
Lifts and stairwells: Handrails, lift buttons.
Desks and meeting rooms: Keyboards, equipment, monitors.
Desks are an extension of an employee’s personal hygiene that can affect others. A messy desk can cause issues for other team members , almost as much as body odour and persistent coughs.
Co-workers may raise issues such as cluttered desks as a problem. This would be an appropriate topic when discussing personal hygiene and an example of poor personal hygiene at work.
Don’t discriminate when dealing with personal hygiene issues at work
Personal hygiene policies should respect any individual that can’t accommodate certain standards. These policies shouldn't discriminate against any protected characteristics to avoid employment tribunals.
Consider the following when thinking about taking disciplinary action over an employee’s bad personal hygiene:
Is it due to religious beliefs/cultural differences?
Is a bad standard of hygiene because of a medical concern, emotional stress, or a disability?
Does the employee have financial issues that make it difficult to address poor personal hygiene?
Any personal hygiene policies should coincide with any existing employee’s rights. The Equality Act 2010 fully outlines these rights.
How to deal with personal hygiene issues at work
There are only two parties that should intervene with poor personal hygiene at work. These are the employees with bad personal hygiene and HR managers. Take the following steps when dealing with an employee with poor personal hygiene:
The best way to deal with personal hygiene issues at work is to politely and professionally raise the issue with the member of staff. Handle it discreetly, arranging a meeting with the employee.
Before meeting the employee, ensure you have all the facts. Don’t go off hearsay, gather your knowledge first-hand. If possible, be able to reference the issue directly, such as scruffy clothing.
Approach the employee and arrange a meeting. Try to deal with an issue sooner rather than later. This way you can avoid further issues with other employees and to spare them being the focus of gossip.
Positive reinforcement and work-based compliments ensure the employee doesn’t feel victimised.
Remain professional and don’t overstep your position. Avoid placing blame, don’t give unsolicited advice, and don’t attempt to diagnose the employee. Address the poor hygiene with the employee and allow the employee to speak their mind.
If they become emotional or defensive, try to maintain your supportive tone and manner. Bring the discussion back to positive terms so it can continue in a way that’s beneficial to both parties.
After talking to the employee about their poor hygiene arrange a follow-up discussion. Communicate your expectations, discuss what the employee’s next steps should be. Set a timeline for improvements.
How Peninsula Business Services can help
Discussing bad personal hygiene at work can be uncomfortable. This is why Peninsula Business Services provides comprehensive legal advice. Contact us today for a free consultation with a HR consultant.
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