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. But not all gossip has to be bad. Workplace gossip is a form of informal communication between colleagues that focuses on the private, personal, and sensitive issues of others.
Gossip is almost universally viewed as a negative process because it can introduce falsehoods, rumors and slanderous statements into the work ecosystem and cause conflicts in interpersonal relationships. Depending on the type of gossip and the way it is transmitted, the subject may feel anxious, unhappy, and even harassed, defamed or slandered. Start by determining the intention, veracity, and impact that workplace gossip could have on the subject or on your company. This is because gossip is often based on a story, or a partial truth, and creates unrealistic and harmful speculation.
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, some workplace gossip is actually healthy, according to Rieva Lesonsky, executive director of GrowBiz Media, a media and personalized content company for small businesses. 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. If you've noticed several instances of harmful gossip in the workplace, you might want to talk to the whole team.
Sometimes, gossip “is a harbinger of something that is true and makes you realize something, as a manager, that you should work on,” he added. Corporate email can be a particularly dangerous method of spreading gossip because messages can easily be forwarded to unwanted recipients. Promote positive gossip by establishing employee recognition initiatives, such as awards, bonuses and surprise gifts, and encouraging people to share positive feedback and applaud their achievements. 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.
If you think the effects of workplace gossip are getting out of hand, you can take action. 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. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled several times against companies that try to prohibit all types of gossip.
