Dear Rachel,
I have to tell you, we have this really unfortunate person in our media department who could stand a course, even a semester, on personal grooming. It's as if she was taught nothing about her appearance growing up. Some days she looks like she rolled out of bed, down the driveway and right into her car. She really is a sweet person. What should we do to help her get cleaned up?-- Holding My Nose in Chicago
    
Dear Nose,
There are two takes on this situation. One is that it really is none of your business as long as the woman is doing her job. Often what's expressed as concern is simply a mask for cattiness.

Look closely at yourself and examine your own motives. A key question you must ask before becoming involved is whether her appearance is affecting your team's performance. If not, forget it. Consider it not your business.

If you truly feel it is, you can raise the issue with your boss, or you can handle it yourself.

Your better option is to take the issue to your boss. That's his or her job, handling delicate work-related issues that have a direct effect on the agency's business.

Your job, as an employee, is to alert management to issues such as this and then leave it to management to find a resolution.

Your second option is less desirable for several reasons. There's a real high risk of offending this person, whom you like, and no assurances that your intervention will have any effect.

"I almost always have found the people I talk to about these issues are very hurt and personally offended," one veteran media supervisor in Austin tells me. "They nearly always feel defensive, which is probably natural. So don’t expect your advice to be welcomed warmly."

Also, keep in mind that once you step into it, you cannot step out. It's like an army invading a country. It's easy to invade, a lot harder to leave, victorious or otherwise. If you alienate her, you'll have an enemy on your hands.

The question you must ask yourself is whether you think so much of this person that you want to assume that risk.

In talking to her, you'll want to focus on the business aspects of the problem, keeping it from becoming personal. This is about grooming as it relates to a work environment, not as a reflection of her worth as a person.

Your big challenge before you hand out any advice is to discern in talking to her whether she knows she has a problem.

If you are lucky, you'll learn that she senses something is wrong with her appearance but hasn't a clue about how to address the problem. She worries it's affecting her chances for advancement.

If you sense that's the case, it's important to get her to tell you that, which opens the way for you to offer advice about appearance, framed of course as advice on what's the right look for the office. You could even offer to take her shopping.

That opens the way to address grooming issues in the most subtle fashion, as you talk about hair and makeup.

But frame everything in terms of the right look for the office and about how the right look can help her to win the advancement she deserves.

Your challenge becomes a lot tougher if she expresses no interest in grooming or office fashion and feels that she's there to work and that her appearance, or lack of it, is no one's business but hers.

The reality is that a lot of people don't care how they appear and actually look down on people who dress well to get ahead. They see it as a form of sucking up.

If she's one of those, you may well decide to back away, realizing that your chances of helping her clean up her act are slim to none.

But say she's not just a fellow worker but someone who reports to you directly. People have come to you asking you to step in and straighten this woman out on her appearance.

Your first step is to consult HR. In these litigious times, you never know where even a casual conversation could go. Get their advice on how to approach it and maybe even ask a human resources representative to sit in on your talk with the employee.

If you get the go-ahead, you'll want to speak to her directly, as a job-related issue. Treat is as if you were talking to her about how to master a particular task on the job.

"Tell her you feel that her grooming and hygiene are a having a negative impact on the media department," advises the Austin media supervisor.

"Stress that because you deal with clients, often some pretty high-toned ones, they expect a certain level of grooming that isn’t necessary in some professions. If she is recently out of college, tell her that it may be time to move from a student look to a more professional one."

Be careful to explain to her this issue is no refection on her work but is still part of the job and needs to be addressed.

Then set up some guidelines that she can follow, such as exactly what sort of outfits are acceptable in the office and what are not. Stopping well short of embarrassing her, explain that grooming is important and that she needs to consider how she looks before she leaves for work each morning.

Express it all in the tones you would if you were explaining the time she was expected to arrive in the morning.