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Doctor,
A regular employee complains about a newly hired employee's perfume causing her to get hives. She wants me to deal with the problem for her. How should I handle it? First of all, I am not the supervisor, but an HR Administrative Specialist. Everyone brings all their problems to me and I try to find solutions.
Signed,
Trying To Clear The Air
-- Hello Trying:
Your question is not the first I have received pertaining to perfume and physical irritation. Please review my answer to "Is a fragrance-free workplace possible???" in our Q&A Archive which contains several questions about the physical environment of the workplace.
Your twist in this matter is that you are an HR Administrative Specialist who was not trained in how to deal with a request by one employee that you advise another employee to cut out the perfume? That is a lesson that so far is not in Human Resource training. So for you it is a delicate, relatively new, issue of helping maintain self worth and saving face for both parties. What might be a process that would help this be possible?
There are some monkeys that an HR person should not allow to be placed on her back. This might be one such case. Some things are not real problems, rather they are annoyances that should be dealt with interpersonally co-worker to co-worker. I would begin with the co-worker who says a newly hired co-worker's perfume causes her hives, and ask this individual if this is something that she should handle informally and privately with the new co-worker.
Or if you as HR specialist handle it, if she realizes that the new hire will wonder who is the complainer and consequently, that co-worker will see this as a barrier of mistrust and anxiety about how she is being accepted? Secrecy, especially one worker telling a superior or HR specialist something about a co-worker, such as she wears too heavy a perfume, certainly can be stressful to a new hire.
If the she-gives-me-hives worker still wants you to be the bearer of bad news, you might next inquire if you may disclose that it is she who is allergic to the new hires perfume. And if the worker with hives wants to keep that hidden, you must maintain that confidence, but you may say that it still may get out that she is the complaining worker, and you do not want to be blamed as not keeping a secret.
So you then will tactfully, but directly, and explicitly ask the new hire to not use her perfumes because coworkers can find them offensive and can be allergic to them. Then wait to learn how the new hire responds. Hopefully, she will not say, "Says who?" and she will understand your request and will cut out the offending perfume. Then you might arrange with the individual for a follow-up, say in two weeks, to let her know if the allergies seemed to subside. Follow-ups, if not formally, informally, are important in conflict resolution.
In the earlier answer I gave to the questions "Is it possible to have a fragrant free workplace??" I stated that this may be a more difficult interpersonal problem than was the problem of changing to a smoke-free environment, partly because we can not cut off our noses nor can we prevent or cover up all body odors without perfume.
Please let me know what you do and I will anonymously share your experience with the others who write and read The Workplace Doctor.
WEGO knows to follow one's nose to learn what is really going on in the workplace.
--Bill Gorden