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‘The ranks of the rank’. A great unwashed workforce?

In our experience of the world of work, we have all come across colleagues who have had some rather off-putting personal habits.

Whatever the offending behaviour, if it is manifest at work it could lead an employee – and the employer – into an awful lot of trouble.

The world of work is changing. Noisy, male-dominated factories have largely given way to quiet, open-plan offices, employing roughly equal numbers of men and women. Behaviour such as smoking or telling lewd jokes, which only a few years ago would have been considered normal for the workplace, is now frowned upon or illegal.

Employees who, even relatively recently, would have tolerated such annoyances in a colleague as poor personal hygiene, serial sniffing, drink slurping, or worse, increasingly feel empowered to complain to the boss.

And the boss has to do something about it, however trivial the “offence” may seem. Otherwise, he or she could feel the force of the law.

Let’s not get carried away, here. The boss must first be satisfied that the behaviour in question really is preventing people from getting on with their work properly, and that the complaint is not simply from someone trying to settle a personal score.

If the boss is certain that there are genuine grounds for the complaint, it may be that a quiet word with the offender will sort things out. But if it doesn’t, the person concerned may have to be disciplined – particularly if he or she seems to wish to continue being irritating simply to get pleasure from the effects it causes.

The organisation’s internal “dignity at work” or anti-bullying policies will usually be the first port of call. Only if these fail to sort out the problem will more formal disciplinary procedures have to be invoked.

None of us are saints. There will always have to be give-and-take when people work in close proximity and often under pressure. But as employees get more and more sensitive to colleagues’ behaviour in the modern office environment, fewer will be prepared to “put up and shut up” for ever.

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Notes to Editors

Pearson Hinchliffe Commercial Law is a commercial law practice providing a range of legal services to business and commercial clients in Manchester, Oldham and across the North West. The firm's specialities include Company & Commercial, Employment Law, Commercial Litigation and Commercial Property matters.

As one of the leading law firms in the North of England, Pearson Hinchliffe’s mission is to be ‘the complete law firm’ providing the highest quality legal services to its clients. It does this by offering practical and cost effective, high quality legal advice for a wide range of clients.  Each client is catered for as an individual with their business and personal requirements taken into account which allows for a highly personalised service.

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