Employee with terrible body odor

Chief

I have an employee, a large vehicle mechanic, who has a bad body odor and other employees are complaining to HR. There does not appear to be a medical reason and it appears to be a hygiene problem with the employee. Our company furnishes daily uniforms and there is a shower available for after work. It does not take showers very often. He works the 2nd shift, so he has his own auto repair business during the day and appears just to come into work from there.

The supervisor has talked to the employee to no avail. Can't find anything anywhere that allows HR to address this issue.

Any thoughts anyone. He belongs to a union and they are also aware of this issue.

Lola815

Hopefully in your job description you have something that mentions good personal hygiene. This is a very sensitive issuse. Since his supervisor has been the one to talk to him, make sure he is the one to do it again, not you. you don't want "a lot" of people involved. A similar thing happened to us a few years ago and the manager talked to the employee in private the first time and hoped that would do the trick, but there were still complaints, so he talked to him the second time in private and he had to be very specific. he told the employee that his lack of personal hygiene was affecting his coworkers and if he didn't shower and clean his clothes more often, he would be repremanded. Luckily for us it work. Good luck.

HRsage

>It does not take showers very often.

Ouch! You mean He doesn't?
That aside. This topic has been discussed a few times on the forum. I would remommend doing a search for 'body odor' in the search area of the site. Some great suggestions are there for this type of situation. A popular one is to send a gently worded letter to the employee to inform him of the situation and see if that helps.