S6 E2: When HR Gets Personal

Podcast May 8, 2025

• Massachusetts Domestic Violence Leave Law
• AIM HR Solutions offers supervisor training and reasonable suspicion training, for more information visit our training catalog

Transcript:

Pete Wright:
This month on human solutions, we’re diving into some of the most personal and uncomfortable situations, HR professionals and new managers. Face–conversations most people would rather avoid from addressing body odor with an otherwise high-performing employee, to responding when someone discloses domestic violence, to knowing what to do when you suspect an employee is under the influence at work–these aren’t just policy issues, they’re people issues. We’ll explore not just the human side of these challenges, but also the legal implications. I’m Pete Wright, and joining me today are our heroes of the helpline, Terry Cook and Tom Jones. Hi folks.

Terry Cook:
Hey Pete.

Tom Jones:
Hi Pete. Good to hear you again.

Pete Wright:
I think we should just dive in because I feel like I’ve been holding myself back in our pre-show, not digging right into this conversation. It seems like this is possibly the most awkward conversation you could embark on. How do I bring up body odor with an employee who otherwise does great work without making it awkward? Let’s start with Terry, before we get into the law. Can we?

Terry Cook:
Of course. So I think when people think of body odor, they think of obviously the negative type of body odor, which is definitely the harder thing to bring up with an employee. But before we dive into that, just bringing up a few other things that could come up with body odor. Some people are wearing excessive perfumes or colognes that are affecting employees allergies. Some people have a strong scent of cigarette smoke. It could be any type of body odor. But I think Pete, what you’re probably bringing up is probably the one that’s most uncomfortable to bring up when somebody is being reported by other employees of having a smell that you need to address. So there are several reasons why we have to address it, and I’ll leave those legal reasons to Tom in just a minute. But as far as having the conversation, it’s important to be sensitive.
Know that it will be a difficult discussion to have, but bringing that person aside, sitting them down, having a talk with them just to say that this has been brought to our attention. It’s a tough topic, but I’d rather talk to you about it directly than for you to hear it from other employees. So we just need to talk about what’s been brought to our attention and then go from there to have these discussions. Let them know what’s come up, listen, find out if there’s reasons behind it. There sometimes are, whether there are reasons that might be financially related or reasons that might be medically related. So I would say really being sensitive, empathetic, listening are important to starting the discussion.

Pete Wright:
At what point, you’re also, I assume, bringing up cultural reasons. If you work in a cross geographic team with different expectations, sort of socio-cultural expectations of body odor gets in the way too. So, all right, Tom, why is it legally touchy ground?

Tom Jones:
Well, there’s a couple of things come to mind immediately. One of them is the employee who’s come to you and complained about this may have some form of multiple chemical, what they call multiple chemical sensitivity disorder, which could be an allergic reaction, could be some sort of very sensitive reaction to a scent or an odor, cologne, body odor, whatever it might be. But that could be one thing to trigger it. And if those two people happen to sit next to each other in the workplace, that could trigger that problem. The next segue over would be the Americans with Disabilities Act, which back to Terry’s point about people saying there’s a reason why this issue sits out there is that the person may have difficulty with an illness, something in their body and their background that causes that odor to emanate from them. Then the question becomes much more of a legal and what can the company do? What must it try and do? What can it do? What presents an undue hardship? And this is too much to do.

Pete Wright:
I would love to hear from you, Tom, some of those examples. Have you run into this specifically from a legal context?

Tom Jones:
Couple of times have come up and helpline, Terry, feel free to jump in too, but it usually goes with the Americans with Disabilities Act, rather than the chemical sensitivity disorder. People have report that they have some disability or some condition that they believe is a disability that may have caused that odor to emanate from them. So every so often it comes up on the helpline as to what may be going on with that person or not. Terry, do you have anything you recall?

Terry Cook:
Sure. I think another example that comes up is if there is not a medical condition, as Tom’s indicating what can come up and Tom can expand on this is it can create a hostile work environment. It’s something that people don’t think of immediately when it comes to body odor in the workplace, but that is something that could come from this if there’s enough concern. And Tom, I don’t know if you want to touch on that briefly.

Tom Jones:
Sure. The discrimination laws in most states in the country, we offer some possible relief here. And certainly it’s something if you were concerned and motivated, you’d want to explore it. I mean, employees may consider exploring that as an option, be to pursue and say, “I feel like this has made me uncomfortable in the workplace.” Company fails to do anything about it. Therefore, I think it’s created this hostile work environment, whether that fully is recognized and it might be just pushing the bounds as to what constitutes a legal theory for relief. But you never know. You never know where the court may go.

Pete Wright:
Is the privacy situation kind of a fine line or is it obvious? I’m legitimately wondering if the fact that other peers are reporting a body odor issue becomes an issue of privacy for that employee.

Tom Jones:
And at least the law in Massachusetts, you think of privacy would be putting your two hands in front of you and weighing out who has the right to know who has the right to do something. Does the employee’s privacy versus the employers right to address this? So four or five employees come forward to HR and say, “This is a problem.” The company acknowledges it’s a problem, is aware of the problem, then I think the privacy side goes away and the argument is the company has to do something about it. And I think you’ll see privacy show up in the other two issues we’re going to talk about today as well. But at some point, unless the person’s working remotely isolated in some situation, then we could try and protect their privacy a bit more. If they’re interacting with fellow co-workers, customers, clients, then I think the company is effectively duty-bound to try and resolve the issue as quickly as possible and the privacy won’t be a concern.

Pete Wright:
Terry, can you wrap us up and help us think through some of the things that a company can do if company’s duty bound to take action? What is the end of this awkward conversation sound like? Because my assumption is we want to make the office environment feel safe and welcoming while going through this company awareness of my body odor.

Terry Cook:
Sure. And as you’re mentioning body odor that might not be excessive perfumes and things of that nature. We would have the conversation explain, as Tom mentioned, multiple employees have come forward. We just need to talk about this, talk about a solution. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes it’s a financial situation. There’s been scenarios where, as a company we’ve purchased products for an employee because they just admitted they could not financially afford it. So that was one solution. When it came to somebody that was using excessive perfumes or sprays of those natures, we were able to talk to that person about something significant like allergies. You’re impacting somebody’s health right now, you’re not meaning to, but there’s reasons why we have to do that. And we would put a posting up actually what I’ve done in the past, indicating that due to allergies, we can’t have any type of excess sense in the workplace.
So we’re able to attack it from that angle. But again, it’s really having that discussion, listening, being sympathetic and empathetic to people because once people hear about this, they either react one of two ways. In my experience, they’re very defensive and they get upset and they deny and there’s no way that they want to see it. And the other’s embarrassment, if somebody hears this, they weren’t aware that this was happening, they don’t want to hear it and they don’t want to hear it outside of the office. So again, I’ve actually had people say thank you for bringing it to my attention. I didn’t know. I didn’t know everybody was talking about me. And this particular scenario was the financial issue. So we were able to resolve that for him.
And then in another situation, it was more of what Tom’s mentioning. It was actually a medical condition and it was something we were able to… through discussion and exploration with their physicians, we were able to find solutions there too. So it is an awkward conversation. It’s not one to just avoid, which a lot of people would like to because it’s not anybody’s favorite thing to do is to sit somebody down and say things like this. But it’s one that in HR we have a responsibility and we have a responsibility because we need to be people talking to people. But also from Tom’s standpoint, from the legal perspective.

Pete Wright:
Terry, you brought up the reaction of somebody who responds with belligerence, right? I don’t want to hear it. This is not my thing. We’ve been talking about the more sort of delicate, congenial kinds of awkward conversations. What opportunity do you have to affect change with somebody who is ideologically disposed to not.

Terry Cook:
A lot of times it’s actually being open with them about the potential for a hostile work environment claim to come to the company, to them. So we have to address it as a company. It’s not something that we can pretend is not happening or what have you because, and I always would assure them it’s not one person complaining because the person that’s defensive will say, “Oh, I bet I know who said that about me because they don’t like me.” And I always assure them and say that the company wouldn’t necessarily respond this deeply into this if we didn’t have reason to believe it was accurate. So whether it’s our observations personally as manager or HR or it’s multiple employee complaints coming forward.

Tom Jones:
One of the other things that I think makes the difference is creating a policy upfront. Try and put a policy in your handbook to address dress code and appropriate dress in the workplace. And put something simple in there like you must have deodorant. You must use deodorant appropriately in the workplace. Or to Terry’s point about cologne, perfume, whatever it might be. That helps HR because you can then point back to the policy and say, “Here, we’ve had this policy in here a couple of years, just letting you know, reminding you.” Sometimes the remind them, sometimes that may diffuse the angry employee, it’s right. Some point the employee might just say, “I don’t care. I’m so offended what happened to me?” And you might end up with this claim somewhere or someone might quit. All those things could happen.

Pete Wright:
Let’s turn our attention to a conversation that is maybe as awkward, certainly more difficult. That is this, what should I do if I suspect an employee is experiencing domestic violence? And what if someone discloses, they need help? How do we create an environment of trust in that conversation? Terry, you want to kick us off?

Terry Cook:
Sure. And I think what you just pointed out is the trust piece and being sensitive, as we’ve already mentioned in the last scenario. So when you see something that you’re worried about or questioning, don’t make an accusation about, you must be experiencing X, Y or Z. It’s really about sitting down, talking to the employee and saying, “We’ve seen some differences here. We’re trying to see if there’s anything we can do to help you. Is there anything going on that we need to be aware of? We have leaves of absences available. We have an employee assistance program available.” Depending on what comes up in the conversation. So again, it’s listening, it’s making sure that you’re establishing a safe environment for them to share. So I think those things are really key to getting the conversation started. And if somebody does disclose that they’re in a situation of domestic violence, introducing what you can do, but also first and foremost, finding out are they feeling like they’re in danger even at the workplace? Because we as a company want to make sure that they’re safe at work.
And sometimes that has happened and some restraining orders have come into play or we’ve made sure people at the doors are well aware of a person that’s not allowed to come on site. So there’s a lot to go into here if somebody is willing to share that and if it’s something they are going through. And then again, there’s different leaves of absences available, one specifically even for domestic violence that I think Tom will touch on as well.

Pete Wright:
Let’s do that. Tom, what are your obligations?

Tom Jones:
Well, depending on the state, I was looking through this this morning. Depending on the state, you may have different leave laws that may go anywhere from three to five to 15 days, job protected time off from work. You go to court, go meet with a lawyer, take your kid out of school, move to a different house, whatever it might be, whatever you have to do. Many states who’ve got some sort of legal protection in place. And it’s true that over the last 20 or 30 years has become much more aware that this is a real genuine issue than it used to be. And so you saw much more protection being offered to folks. Many states in fact allow people to collect unemployment if they can show they had to quit their job even though it was a voluntary quit. In the legal sense, it was involuntary in the social sense that they were forced out by coworker who was threatening them by a former partner who was hanging around the workplace and they had to leave and go to a different part of the state to live in.
So there are more and more protections coming down. And what I’ve noticed though, and not all that widely known about Massachusetts has a lot. It says “If you have 50 more employees, you have to have a policy.” Some other states it’s 15, 12. I think Oregon I was looking was 12 to 50. It was a range where it ticked in depending on the amount of employees, the amount of time you got off. So its more and more states are doing it, but it is definitely not one of these things that’s publicized anywhere there as much as say sexual harassment or anything like that. And in a way that’s fortunate, you don’t want as many people being victimized in the workplace as you do is recognized as sexual harassment much more frequently. But it’s definitely an issue that’s out there. You see more and more of a problem with it.

Pete Wright:
This is one of those topics that we’ve over the last, what, 50 years, our organizations have really had to get more and more involved in these sorts of issues to protect our employees because these issues bleed into work. Do you have any comment on our current political situation? Are these kinds of protections at risk at all

Tom Jones:
At the state level? There shouldn’t be. I mean at the state level, I would think not national things that are like unemployment, which is a nationally governed program, maybe that could be an issue. But I don’t think most states seem to be the red and blue states seem to have some laws in place to protect domestic victims of domestic violence. So I’d be shocked if that was really likely to be targeted by anybody to get to weaken or get rid of in all honesty. But you never know why. You never know.

Pete Wright:
Wisdom from Tom Jones. All right, let’s turn our attention now to our final area. A manager suspects an employee is impaired. What qualifies as reasonable suspicion and what are next steps? My hunch is as soon as you say reasonable suspicion, that sounds like a legal thing. Tom, why don’t you kick us off on this one?

Tom Jones:
I mean, states have a variety of different ways you can drug test. Reasonable suspicion is probably the one that’s more complicated and implies more responsibility in the heart of the company to determine whether this person is actually impaired. I mean, pre-employment is, you can do that for everybody. Post-injury is a very small subset of people. Random tends to be safety-sensitive workplaces. And so relatively few people involved in those groups. Reasonable suspicion, however, is really what’s different about this person. I watch this coworker come in every single day. He or she does the same thing with their tools, with their clothing, with their processes at work. All of a sudden I’m starting to see changes. More frequently absent, more frequently late.
And so I begin to think maybe there’s a good thing that we’ve developed here at AIM. We have an AIM checklist, kind of a mental checklist that says, “What do you go through? What does this person walking differently? Are they talking differently?” Some people speak slowly, some people speak fast naturally. So what you’re looking at, is it different than what it used to be? If it is different, maybe that’s the time to have a conversation with someone and say “What prompts those changes going on with that person?”
The other thing about reasonable suspicion you would want to think about is, so if I’m the supervisor and I’m observing you, Pete, and you seem to be different, and I wouldn’t just rely on myself, I could have it in for you. I could be the manager who’s out to get you. So I then go, that checks out.
I want Terry to go buy independently from me and observe what’s going on. If she comes back with the same results, then say, “Okay, this seems to be something different here.” Let’s pursue that in a conversation. And in some ways it’s part of the conversation, very awkward conversation maybe upfront but still has to be had and say here’s what We’ve observed Pete.

Pete Wright:
Terry weigh in. How do you make this conversation less awkward?

Terry Cook:
I think it’s about setting up expectations for the employees. So Tom mentioned reasonable suspicion, pre-employment, drug testing, it’s about having a policy. So you’re explaining to the employees, these are the expectations at work. It’s a alcohol-free workplace and talking about when things might be addressed. So maybe a lot of employees don’t read word for word everything in the policies that we hope they do. But if you have a policy to point to, then we can talk about that and say, again, kind of combining what Tom said, having that checklist available. So training your managers or your supervisors on this checklist talking… Again, there’s a lot of different ways to look at it could be the actions, it could be their appearance. It could be a smell of alcohol or speech or walking. It could be anything so that you have this in front of you and your employees realize when you come up to them and say, “I always just reiterate, I’m not sure that I hope you know about our drug-free policy in this workplace.” And talking about we do drug testing in some instances.
One of them is when we have a reasonable suspicion. So we have reason to believe you’re impaired at the workplace, which could impact your safety to be here or the safety of others. So this is what we’ve observed, and as Tom said, this would be after you’ve made your observation, you’ve had another manager or supervisor also second that check off their items and then sitting down and talking to them about it again in a policy. The other reason it’s helpful to have the policy is it’s very clear the next step, the next step in the policy would be, now you have to be brought to this local clinic to have a drug or alcohol testing done. We will bring you, because it’s funny, some people will say, “Well, I’ll just tell them to go.” Well, if you think they’re impaired, do you think it’s a good idea that they’re driving?
So we want to bring them. And then you sit with them until they’ve had the test. And then it’s nice in a policy when you talk about what could happen afterwards, some policies say, “It might be an immediate termination. If you’re found to be impaired in the workplace and it’s proven.” Others say, “You know what? We’re going to give you a chance. We’ll give you a chance to make a change. We’ll give you a last chance agreement. If you want to go get help, we want to support you in that.” So if you have the policy, it’s a little clearer to the employee what can happen. It might not be quite as, I guess, chaotic of a situation as it could be if they didn’t know that that could be expected at the workplace.

Pete Wright:
It’s such an interesting perspective. I wonder if you have recommendations because I keep thinking about if you’re impaired and somebody approaches you with this suspicion. It’s possible you might be one of the belligerent respondents to this too. And so the policy is what dictates, “Hey, we have the agency and authority to request this test, and you agreed to that, whether you read it or not.” On the backside of this though, we’ve created policies that are employee forward for body odor. We’ll buy products to help with that. If we can. We’ll change work environment, we’ll do that. Someone’s experiencing domestic abuse, we’ll go the extra mile to help make sure they feel safe and comfortable. What is your recommendation around a policy stance on helping employees get sober if that’s what they need, which side of that policy works best? The conservative well, no strikes like “You’re just done.” Or a little bit more progressive. “Hey, we’re going to help you figure this out.”

Tom Jones:
One of the things that often comes up on the helpline is that people will say, “I’m sure that employee’s drunk impaired.” I say, “Are you going to test them?” “No need to.” Say, “Well, that looks like a real risky statement because that’s going to come back and if the employee pushes back.” So you’ve got to give them at least an opportunity to try and clarify their status because sometimes you get false positives. Most times companies are right, but not always. And so that’s one thing you could do about it to help. The other is that the Americans with Disabilities Act, offers people protection legally if you’re in a program. So if you go sign up for a last chance agreement, you’re disabled within the eyes of the law. So if you have to spend the rest of your life going to AA meetings, so be it.
That’s a reasonable accommodation the employer has to try and make in the workplace. Some of these new state family and disability leave, family leave laws have the same sort of provision in their regarding rehab programs. So you started to see more and more protections emerge for people, and that helps a lot. I think you’ve got to have a policy in place to start the ball rolling. Well, as Terry and I were talking yesterday necessarily, OSHA has a rule that says employers have a general duty to maintain a safe and healthy workplace. So if you don’t have a drug testing policy in a bind, you could fall back on that and say, “Well, look, I think your impairment may well cause injury to yourself or other coworkers, therefore, we’re going to act based on that.” Then going, I create a policy afterward, but in that particular panic moment, you have something to fall back on.

Terry Cook:
I think the policy to your point Pete is, and Tom is it’s the better way to go if you can because it’s an expectation and the employee knows what they’re doing. And going back to what you said, Pete, “Which way do you go? Do you go the hard, everybody’s terminated if they’re positive, or do you go down the road of if they want help, they can get it?” In my experience, when I’ve worked in different companies, the road of “If you want help, you can get.” It seems to be a better conversation with somebody. I mean, even if they know that they may have a problem, they know that they’re not necessarily going to lose their job over it when they think they’re going to lose their job over it, they become more belligerent. They become more argumentative in your office because they think they’re saving their job, which is understandable.
So having that policy where you say, “You know what, if this comes back.” And all of a sudden they start saying, “I don’t have a problem.” “Well, it came back positive. You have a choice. You can take a termination or we can work to help you and do a last chance agreement with you. Talk about what you need to do in order to stay employed with us.” And I’d say over 90% of the time, people take that last chance agreement, and I’ve seen people definitely get through it, go for the help, get what they need. And then in some instances you have a positive that’s related to a medical condition like Tom’s referring to. So it’s not always because something’s wrong that they’re doing, it could be something medical.

Tom Jones:
But it’s more they deal with this whole issue of medical marijuana. It becomes more of a challenge because alcohol is relatively easy to determine its impact, the impairment smell it, and it goes away relatively quickly. Marijuana is often just told, stays in your body a long period of time. You may use marijuana the weekend three weeks ago. It’s still there. And so the company has to make a decision about what they’re going to do with that.

Pete Wright:
Right. And we’re in a state where it’s legal for recreational use. Right?

Tom Jones:
Right. Exactly.

Terry Cook:
Absolutely.

Tom Jones:
We’re seeing more and more companies in fact, take that out of their drug testing protocol.

Pete Wright:
Take marijuana?

Tom Jones:
Medical marijuana, yeah, cannabis being removed from the drug testing protocol. So they’ll be focused on amphetamine, the “harder drugs” and not because they figure that exactly what you said, “So many more people are using it. It’s so much more available. And 30,40 states have medical marijuana laws.”

Terry Cook:
When we’re talking a lot about expectations of employees, Tom and I both are, but it’s also important to make sure your managers are trained on the policy on what to do the right way to handle it. Because a lot of times, if they don’t know how to handle it, if they don’t know there’s a reasonable suspicion checklist, if they don’t know to bring it to HR, obviously things can happen. People can get hurt, and if somebody else hurts somebody different, there’s still liability involved.

Pete Wright:
Right? Right. Well, what a timely answer to a question that actually came in from the comments in addition to a handbook policy update. What about proactively training managers to understand how to handle this stuff?

Terry Cook:
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Wright:
Part of the challenge with proactively training people is when they don’t have context to understand what happens, it can go one ear in, one ear out the other, so ever vigilant.

Tom Jones:
Unfortunately, more and more people nowadays are starting to have that experience where they had someone work for them and they were impaired. And oftentimes someone in the room would said, “Oh yeah, we had this guy so-and-so he or she was here and they did this, that we had to take the following steps.” So it’s getting more and more familiar for a lot of managers, unfortunately, but it is.

Terry Cook:
And I think the training’s important. So as you said, Pete, “Reasonable suspicion training isn’t just to train the HR people, it’s to train your managers and supervisors.” They’re the ones interacting with everybody and making sure, I know when we do a lot of our reasonable suspicion training, we do get to commonly get the HR audience because they need to understand what to do if they want to put that policy in place. But it’s even more important to get the managers trained too. It’s good to, for an HR person to have that knowledge and how to put it in a policy, but if the manager doesn’t know how to take that and run with it can be difficult. And like we just said, it could cause liability issues.

Pete Wright:
Institutional awareness, word of the day.

Terry Cook:
Yes. There you go good one.

Pete Wright:
We’ve got some links in the notes that we’re going to be putting in there. First of all, Tom’s given us the Massachusetts Domestic Violence Leave Law. You’ll be able to find that in the notes. And as always, members can reach out to the HR helpline. You might get the famous Terry Cook or Tom Jones when you call this number (800) 470-6277 or email helpline at aimnet.org Inquiries Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern time. Thank you, Tom and Terry for this conversation today. I’ve learned so much.

Terry Cook:
Good. Glad he enjoyed it.

Pete Wright:
And thank you all for downloading and listening to this show. Don’t forget, if you have an interest in past conversations, you can find them, these webinars on our YouTube channel. You can also subscribe to our podcast anywhere your favorite podcasts are. Just Search for, Human Solutions and you’ll find it. We’ve got season after season of these kinds of conversations, and we would love you to use them as a library to support your work as an HR professional. On behalf of Terry Cook and Tom Jones, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you next month right here on Human Solutions.