by Alison Greenon March 14, 2023
A reader writes:
I work in a government office which is currently almost exclusively remote. We recently received an invitation to a not-quite-mandatory large (~50 person) in-person event which came with a note:
This is a fragrance-free meeting: Please help us to accommodate our coworkers who are chemically sensitive to products with fragrance (scented). Thank you for not wearing perfume, aftershave, scented hand lotion, fragranced hair products, essential oils, scented laundry products where the scent has not washed out, or other similar products when attending in-person meetings or visiting at [workplace].
Overall, I support the desire for low-to-no fragrance workspaces — no one wants to smell 15 different perfumes and colognes clashing with one another. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask that an employer ensure that soaps, lotions, and cleaning products used or provided in the workplace are fragrance-free, and to ask that employees not bring their own scented products into the workplace.
However, this note was followed by a link to a “fact sheet” with “tips on going fragrance free and why it’s important.” (For what it’s worth, the document was put together by the employee who made the fragrance-free request, not by HR or an advocacy group.) It is extensive, to say the least, recommending that employees should refrain from wearing fragrances to work and from using fragranced products at work. That much seems reasonable. It then goes on to ask that employees switch over personal care products to (more expensive) fragrance-free versions, including changing out laundry products (detergent, dryer sheets, softener, and stain remover), deodorant, haircare products, and lotion. That’s a bridge too far … right? Is asking every employee to change not only products they use in the workplace but also their personal care and home cleaning products really a reasonable accommodation?
Yeah, that’s not reasonable or realistic.
It absolutely is reasonable to ask that employees not wear perfume or cologne at work, and that they not bring in fragranced products like air fresheners or candles.
But asking people to change all the products they use at home is overreaching. There’s the expense, as you mentioned, and there’s also the fact that many people have chosen their products for a reason — because it’s the only lotion that works for their eczema, or the best shampoo for their scalp, and on and on (and often their product choices are the result of extensive experimentation). It also just reaches too deeply into people’s home lives; expecting an entire household to change their laundry practices, for example, isn’t reasonable.
If an employee’s fragrance sensitives are so strong that a basic “don’t wear added scents to work” policy won’t suffice, the right move is to look at different accommodations — generally accommodations that will allow the person to work remotely or from a more private space, rather than trying an almost certainly futile attempt to get dozens/hundreds/thousands of people (depending on the size of the company) to change every product they use on their hair, bodies, and clothing. In fact, the Job Accommodation Network, which helps people with disabilities find reasonable accommodations, notes that under the ADA, it’s probably not reasonable for employers “to have and enforce a total no-fragrance policy because it is difficult if not impossible to enforce.”
All that said, it’s not clear to me that your office is actually instructing people to change all of their personal care and laundry products. It sounds like the instructions from your employer were more toward the “don’t wear perfume” end of the spectrum, and the attached factsheet might have been suggestions from the employee, but not requirements from your employer. Whether or not this is reasonable would hinge on that.
