The Tough Conversations
What does a Cardiff University study say is the hardest talk to have with a colleague?
A myriad of tough conversations happen in the workplace: firings, failing performance reviews, that little chat you had with that @sshole Milton who keeps playing his radio in his cubicle. If we were to pit these conversations together in a wrestling match, which would come out the toughest? In an admittedly biased 2015 study coming out of Cardiff University and funded by ladies’ hygiene company Balance Activ, the verdict is in: the hardest workplace conversation you’ll ever have is with that crotchety colleague down the hall who smells like a pair of unwashed moldy socks left in the locker after several gym workouts.
We know this with some measure of confidence because, according to two-thirds of Brits, ‘telling a colleague they smell’ is the hardest workplace conversation they’ll ever have, eclipsing other perilous topics like: ‘telling the boss to bugger off and quit micromanaging’, ‘But I really didn’t mean to erase six months’ worth of work from my hard drive’ and even outstripping ‘I’m desperately in love with my straight married colleague and also thinking of having a sex change, what should I do?’.
In fact, the smelly colleagues quandary won by a landslide against the alternatives provided by researchers. Telling colleagues their clothes are inappropriate came in at 4%, as did chastising them for not working hard enough (4%), and finally bringing up bad time management (2%) crawled into a not-so-awkward conversational last place. Now, on to the really practical research: if you have a smelly colleague, what should you do? Across the board it seems that employees struggle to confront the issue head on. According to the Cardiff study:
- 19% of office workers tattletaled to the boss
- 15% went the passive route and moved their desks to escape a stenchy colleague
- While a brave 12% confronted the offending colleague directly.
“Often individuals don’t realize that they have body odour,” said Sue Ingram, founder and lead facilitator of Converse Well, a communication training provider. “The individual will be subtly excluded from the team, people will physically give them a wide berth. If the employee is unaware of the reason for this they will start to create their own explanation, such as favouritism, ‘my face does not fit’, ‘hard work is not noticed or appreciated here’, eventually they will become embittered and cynical.
“You can change an individual’s life by letting them know there is an issue and supporting them in resolving it,” she said.
For the more fragrantly discriminating among us, it’s further important to know that sweaty odours were found to be the most offensive of office smells, ahead of even smelly feet, fishy foods and bad breath.
Originally published in volume 18 issue 1 of Your Workplace magazine.
Originally published at www.yourworkplace.ca on February 9, 2016:
