Workplace gossip is informal interaction or communication that is not related to work activities between co-workers. Instead, it usually focuses on personal, private or confidential information. Workplace gossip is part of the job in any organization. It's an almost inevitable result of colleagues meeting and interacting regularly.
Gossip has a bad reputation (after all, no one likes to be talked about). But that's not always a bad thing. Gossip researcher Elena Martinescu discovered that gossip actually serves a useful function. He explains: “According to the theory of evolution, humans have developed gossip to facilitate cooperation in a group.
Corporate email can be a particularly dangerous method of spreading gossip because messages can easily be forwarded to unwanted recipients. For some, it refers only to malicious or actionable conversations about someone beyond what the person can hear; some believe that gossip only includes false stories, while others think it may include truthful comments. This is because gossip is often based on a story, or a partial truth, and creates unrealistic and harmful speculation. The effects of gossip on morale, the work environment and even on final results make this activity unwanted in the workplace.
When gossip gets out of hand or your assistant reports that employees are actually afraid of gossip about themselves at work, it's obvious that all that idle talk has taken an unpleasant turn. For example, Peter Vajda, an Atlanta-based speaker and author of a paper on business coaching, defines workplace gossip as a form of violence in the workplace, and points out that it is “essentially a form of attack.” As eager as you are to mitigate (and ideally eliminate) the harm that workplace gossip can cause, be careful if you plan to address it in your employee handbook. TLK Healthcare, a healthcare hiring company based in Austin, Texas, includes employees who gossip with the boss with no intention of offering a solution or talking to co-workers about a problem. However, when exchanges turn into negative gossip, an organization can quickly develop a toxic work environment.
First, the policy must explicitly state that it is not intended to limit the right of employees to talk about wages, hours or working conditions; rather, it aims to gossip about topics not related to work, Hyman said. Writing policies that prohibit gossip can be complicated enough that companies prefer to focus on educating employees about the dangers of talking about their co-workers behind their backs, Hyman said.
