Magic Pot of Jobs

Although I work for a company that does the majority of its business in office and light industrial placements, I work in the Professional division, which specializes in IT and Creative solutions.

I had hoped that my cushy spot in Professional would shelter me from ever having to have The Stinky Talk with a talent. Alas, it did not.

A client called me the other day to tell me that while he was thoroughly pleased with the quality of work my talent was doing, there was… an issue. The embarrassment was evident in his voice.

“Well, just go ahead and say it and we’ll figure it out. It’s what I’m here for.”

“There’s… an odor problem.”

“Okaaaay. What kind of odor?”

“He needs to shower.”

“I see. I’ll discuss it with him.”

Great. Now I’ve committed to telling someone that not only does he smell, but it’s enough of a problem that his coworkers are complaining to me about it.

I’m not good at this kind of stuff. I do reasonably well when I have to confront someone who has clearly done something wrong that I can be mad about, but how do you tell your employee that he smells bad?

One of the advantages to working for a large company (especially if you’re fairly new to the recruiting field like I am) is that we have an entire department dedicated to helping us figure this stuff out. And again, because so much of the company’s business is industrial, they get this question a lot.

It turns out, my instincts on how to handle the situation were pretty good, but it was nice to hear them confirmed. Here is what I learned:

- Start by complimenting the employee on the work they’re doing. (If they’re doing bad work, then you have bigger problems than B.O.)
- Explain that there is a concern that is uncomfortable to talk about, but you’d rather the employee hear it from you, privately, than in some other fashion.
- “There is a concern about… an odor issue. With us all working so closely together, odor is becoming a problem.”
- DO NOT suggest the causes of the odor yourself. Just ask the employee if it’s something he or she can address.
- LISTEN very carefully to the answer. Odor can be caused by any number of things- hygeine habits, diet, medical issues, etc.
- Tread carefully. Suggesting that someone change his or her diet could be seen as discrimination, since diets are often culturally determined. If there is a medical cause, it could be an ADA issue.
- Ultimately, treat the problem like any other performance issue and just ask the employee to take care of it.
- Remind the employee that you respect him and the work he does, and that’s why you want to help him succeed as much as possible.

As it turned out, my talent took it really well. So well, in fact, that I was afraid he hadn’t understood what I was telling him- I didn’t want to press the issue and make things more uncomfortable. My business partner heard the conversation and assures me that I was quite clear without overstating the point, so we’ll see.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2005 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Tales from the Field, Things we shouldn't have to say. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.