My colleague has a very annoying habit. What should I do?

One of my colleagues has an annoying habit of loudly clearing their throat and snorting. They do this all day, every 60 seconds or so – except when they have a cold, when it becomes even more frequent.

I have a good relationship with my colleague, but don’t feel comfortable raising this with them and I certainly wouldn’t raise this with our management.

I think they have been doing it for so long they must be completely unaware of it. It is slightly annoying to me (I have a high annoyance threshold), but I know it’s the kind of thing that other people find intensely irritating and unprofessional. I’m also concerned it presents our organisation in a bad light. What should I do?

It sounds like you’re not convinced that the managers you work with would handle this concern particularly well. You also mentioned in our correspondence that you pride yourself on your tact and emotional intelligence. Yet, you struggle to see any way of having a conversation with this person that would lead to a change. I sympathise with your doubtfulness; it’s extremely difficult to bring up sensitive matters with colleagues, whether they relate to job performance or things of a more personal nature. (That’s why good HR professionals are worth their weight in gold – more on that later.)

A while ago, a reader wrote about a colleague with noticeable body odour. Like you, they got on well with the colleague. And like you, they weren’t quite sure how to approach it, despite having acquired years’ worth of soft skills that should, in theory, have made the whole thing easier. The advice from the expert I asked at the time was to approach the problem with empathy and care for the person. They suggested starting the conversation with a genuine and gentle inquiry as to their wellbeing.

Now, I know body odour and throat-clearing are two different things, but there are parallels. And, after speaking with a friend who works in human resources, and who has dealt with such sensitive discussions in their professional life (they work for a private company and didn’t want to be named, but their advice has informed my thinking on the topic), I’m only more convinced that a compassionate, non-judgemental discussion is the way to go here.

Before I get to how to handle such a conversation, I think it’s important to talk about who should be having it. Ideally, as I hinted at earlier, it should be a member of an HR team. I know not all organisations have a dedicated human resources department – and I also understand that some HR teams aren’t quite as effective as they should be – but a good HR team will make any such discussion as professional and discreet as it can possibly be. They will also make sure of something that I know is important to you: not turning this into a big issue.

But no matter who addresses the problem, they should consider a few things before they begin the conversation. One is that the throat-clearing and snorting may be the result of a medical condition or disability (not all such conditions are obvious). If this is the case, the question of professionalism becomes if not inapplicable, at least much less clear-cut. For a behaviour to be unprofessional, there needs to be at least some element of wilfulness. If this is a tic or some other involuntary action, it may be unavoidable.