Ways Poor Personal Hygiene at Work can negatively affect your Career

Don’t hurt your career with dirty habits

How possible is it for an employee to have a stunted career because he/she has a poor personal hygiene? According to study and reports, about 23% of employers affirmed that bad breadth and certain aspects of a worker’s physical appearance would make them less likely to promote that person. This poor hygiene can serve as a road-block to one’s career irrespective of the effort an employee puts into his/her job. 

You could be punctual to meetings, meet deadlines, complete and follow up on all tasks and even suggest good ideas to the management in helping the company rise to greater heights, if your hygiene is not good, it means no promotion.

It should be no news to anyone that maintaining a good personal hygiene at work not only increases the employee’s confidence but also has its positives for the organization’s reputation. Keeping a good personal hygiene within the workplace impacts directly on physical, social, health and psychological part of your life. 

This personal cuts across your eyes, hair, body, oral care, clothes, hands, feet and also your choice of cologne as well as how you wear them. This article has been prepared to help take a look at the few things that can be done to correct the situation in cases where the personal hygiene is on the poor side.

1. It gives negative impression about you. There are always two possibilities in any job interviews. Firstly, the hiring manager will be seeing and meeting you for the very first time and will have his/her impression of you at the interview. Secondly the person in charge of having the interview with will rightly and will have every access to check and assess you physically, from the head to toe. And this that is mentioned above really counts, the first impression and how you look as a very long way in convincing the hiring manger or it may also serve as a medium whereby you are knock out of the job, the choice is definitely yours.
2. It won’t be overlooked. Thinking your colleagues and managers at work who constantly get assaulted by your unclean outlook will simply ignore it and imagine it does not exist, trust me you are very wrong, it won’t work that way. Personally for a manager, they really pay much attention to the personal hygiene of their workers rather than CV. You can’t look awful, having a awkward breath smell and even a body odour, and think they will only focus on your CV, that’s the biggest lie anyone can ever tell you, no matter what certificate you held, or how competent and experienced you are, if you are not careful of your personal hygiene, it can certainly knock you out of any job, trust me.
3. People will start avoiding you. I tell you not everyone can tolerate things for too long, if you are the type that has a halitosis, the smell of garlic at work, wear unclean clothes or smell offensive at work you will notice your mates start avoiding to have anything with you, they will start cutting out of discussion to keep you away from them, some may be diplomatic about it and there are some that will certainly avoid you to your face and not caring about what could turn out of it. That is how bad poor and unclean hygiene can get you.
4. You will become daily gist. The moment one, two, three or more discover that your have a very poor hygiene or smell uncomfortable to them, they start gossiping about you, you will become the gist they daily talk about, talk about your dress and all sorts will not be found wanting in their mouths.  Some will make jokes about your hygiene habits and standards and might go as far as saying nasty things about you; many of which may not be true. As expected, your self-esteem will take a bashing and don’t expect to be a darling in the circle of colleagues who belong to the opposite sex; you won’t want to try that.
5. You will start imbibing negative thoughts. As soon as your self- esteem take a good and enough bashing in the hand of your colleagues, you have to start dealing with all sort of thoughts about yourself. In some cases you may find yourself having issues with feeling of hopelessness, insecurity, the envy of friends and colleagues who have extremely good personal hygiene and dress well, frustration, embarrassment and all sorts. In isolation, these feelings cage confidence and career growth. When combined, the results may be causing big setbacks on your professional growth.
6. Damaged reputation. One of the few things that is very hard to build up when dash is reputation, no matter how hardworking you are, how great you are at what you do, just as small as good hygiene maybe you can loss a very good reputation because of this and can sustain it forever. So if your appearance is predominantly not presentable or you constantly stick your hand into your nose, the story will spread and it would take a lot of work to redeem such a reputation.
7. Socializing might not be fun. All work requires isn’t just about being good at your job, constantly hitting your KPIs and nailing your performance reviews. When you socialize with your colleagues in and out of the office, speaking confidently and making others feeling confident around you. If your colleagues have to sometimes ask themselves if you remembered to wash your hands after using the toilet or see you wearing the same shirt three times within a week, then you will not enjoy a great social life with them, because they won’t having any talking terms with you and you may end up being the only one to yourself.

To combat this problem, you should:

• Wash your hands regularly especially before and after eating and after using the toilet

• Bathe regularly

• Get enough sleep

• Brush and floss regularly

• Keep your nails trimmed

• Use a hand sanitizer regularly

• Clean your ears

• Walk barefooted at home if you always wear stockings to work

• Wear clean clothes

• Wear a clean pair of socks every day

• Makeup hygiene is a must

• Drink a lot of water

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