Ask the Experts: Hygiene, P/T Salaries, and Plus Ones

On Oct 8, 2024

In the latest installment of New Jersey Business Magazine’s Ask the Experts column, HR professionals working with the New Jersey Business & Industry Association respond to executives’ inquiries on three interesting workplace issues:

We’ve received complaints about an employee’s hygiene. What should we do? As with any sensitive topic, address the poor hygiene privately, empathetically, and directly with the employee. A compassionate and straightforward approach is usually best. Hold the conversation towards the end of the day so the employee doesn’t have to spend too much of their workday feeling self-conscious.

If this is your first conversation with the employee about their hygiene, then there shouldn’t be any need for discipline or a formal write-up. Simply explain to them how their hygiene is affecting the workplace, citing any relevant company policies.

Avoid speculating about the cause of the poor hygiene or offering suggestions for how to improve it. Instead, focus on expectations, and leave it to the employee to figure out how to meet them. On rare occasions, poor hygiene may be the result of an illness, medication, disability, or the consequence of a religious preference. If the employee brings up any of these things, you may need to consider whether offering an accommodation is appropriate.

We have an exempt employee who is going to be working part-time hours indefinitely. Do we need to switch them to hourly nonexempt or can we simply reduce their salary while keeping them exempt? You don’t necessarily need to change their classification, but the minimum salary for exempt employees – which will be determined by federal or state law – can’t be prorated based on the number of hours worked. This means you can only keep the employee as exempt if, after the salary reduction, they still make at least the applicable minimum salary. If their new pay is below the minimum for exemption, you’ll need to reclassify them as nonexempt and pay them based on the number of hours they work.

We are hosting an event and would like to allow our employees to bring a guest. Should we put limits on who they can invite (e.g., their spouse)?

The decision is up to you, but we don’t generally recommend limiting who can be a “plus one.” Not everyone has a spouse or significant other, so allowing employees to bring whomever they want is more inclusive and inviting. They’re more likely to attend and have a good time. Not placing limits on who can be a plus one also saves you from having to define terms like “significant other” or “partner” and determining whether certain guests qualify.

That said, depending on the type of event, it could be reasonable to limit guests to those who are at least 18 or 21 years old.

If you opt to restrict who can be a guest, inform employees ahead of time and be prepared to explain your reasoning.

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