How to Create a Workplace Personal Hygiene Policy

Imagine that you are an office manager overseeing a department of 25 employees. One day, an employee comes to you and complains about his coworker's unpleasant body odor and how difficult it is to work with him in the same area.

How would you handle this situation?

Generally, this kind of situations happens in overcrowded offices where many employees share the same kitchen space, restroom, or work area.

If at least one employee leaves the facility dirty it starts accumulating. The unhygienic workplace increases the dissatisfaction among coworkers and they start complaining.

Here is when having a workplace hygiene policy comes in handy.

A company-wide policy requires that all employees follow personal hygiene, cleanliness, and behavior standards, despite their cultural differences or personal intolerance to certain hygiene factors.

These guidelines ensure that all employees benefit from a safe working environment.

That’s your main job, as an HR manager.

You need to maintain a safe and healthy environment in the workplace to ensure that employees focus on the most important tasks that move the company forward.

The question is how do you create a personal hygiene policy in the workplace and what do you need to include in there.

Keep employees satisfied at work with satisfying hygiene factors

By following personal hygiene standards, each employee helps to maintain a safe and healthy environment in the office.

This is one of the two motivational factors that keep employees satisfied at work according to Herzberg’s Two-Theory of Motivation.

In 1959, Frederick Herzberg, a behavioral scientist proposed a two-factor theory or the motivator-hygiene theory, which states that there are some job factors that result in satisfaction, while other job factors prevent dissatisfaction.

According to Herzberg, the opposite of “Satisfaction” is “No satisfaction” and the opposite of “Dissatisfaction” is “No Dissatisfaction”.

Herzberg basically meant that job factors can be classified into two categories:

Hygiene factors: reduce the pain and friction in the workplace environment which keeps the employee satisfied. The absence of these job factors leads to dissatisfaction among employees. And working in a clean and comfortable office among well-groomed and good-looking coworkers is one of those hygiene factors that keep the office a comfortable working place.

Motivational factors: are those job factors that yield positive satisfaction from achieving superior performance. These are factors involved in performing a better job.

The importance of cleanliness and personal hygiene in the workplace is also supported by showerstoyou.co.uk.

They conducted a survey that received 932 responses from office workers in a range of professions to find out the biggest personal hygiene issue they faced in their workplace.

The findings from the survey interestingly revealed that bad body odor was the biggest personal hygiene and appearance issue that employees face in the workplace at 70%.

Now that I hopefully convinced you that it's easier to approach an employee about his personal hygiene issues based on a company-wide employee hygiene policy. So, let's create one.

What should a personal hygiene policy include

A workplace hygiene policy should include hygiene and appearance rules that every employee must follow during his employment in the company.

Here is what a workplace hygiene policy for office workers should include:

Personal hygiene: employees are expected to follow proper hygiene in the workplace during regular business hours for the duration of their employment.

maintain personal cleanliness by bathing daily.
maintain oral hygiene by teeth brushing.
use deodorant, antiperspirant to prevent unpleasant body odors.
don't use heavily scented perfumes, colognes, and lotions. These can cause allergic reactions, migraines and respiratory difficulty for some employees.
maintain clean and trimmed fingernails.
wash hands after eating or using the restroom.

Dress code and uniform: staff that maintains regular, in-person contact with customers are required to wear appropriate business attire.

Men - dress shoes, jackets, shirts, ties, slacks, sweaters.
Women - dress tops, dress pants, dresses, skirts, sweaters, pant-suites, dress shoes/sandals.
staff that is not direct contact with customers are allowed to wear business casual attire.
sales employees are encouraged company-branded shirts or colored shirts as part of their casual business attire

Grooming and facial hair:

clothing must be clean, pressed, in good condition, and fit appropriately.
neat and well-groomed facial hair like mustaches, sideburns, and beards. (no artificial colors e.g. pink, green, etc. that would be deemed unprofessional).
moderate make-up
tattoos that are perceived as offensive, hostile or that diminish the effectiveness of employee's professionalism must be covered, and not visible to staff, customers or visitors.

Employees must maintain the workstations clean

Restroom facilities

employees keep the restroom clean and use it appropriately

Kitchen

employees must avoid warming up smelly food in the microwave as it release strong unpleasant odor.

Over to you

It's easier to handle complaints about personal hygiene issues once everybody knows what is the benchmark of hygiene mentioned in the workplace hygiene policy.

So, whenever an employee doesn’t follow the guidelines you can remind him that everybody should follow the employee hygiene policy guidelines.