Workplace gossip leads to loss of productivity

Workplace gossip can create a negative workplace climate. When left unchecked, it can threaten organisational culture and effectiveness and can lead to loss of productivity and good employee morale.

Creating a positive workplace culture free of undesirable behaviour by employees is essential for a truly performance oriented workforce.

Gossip is rampant in most workplaces. Sometimes, it seems as if people have nothing better to do than gossip about each other. They talk about the company, their co-workers, their managers – the list is unimaginable.

They frequently take a partial truth and turn it into a whole speculative truth. Lunch room talk, exchange of emails or new instant messaging on your computer, corridor talks or even wash room chats provide good breeding grounds for bad behaviour that doesn’t help anyone.

Domino effect

Gossip is what transforms a culture of recognition into a culture of doubt, which results in an unpleasant domino effect: decreased productivity and employee morale - especially for the better employees.

Some might say this is natural human behaviour. It’s natural. It exists. But, is it acceptable? No. Not if you want to build a high-performing and sustainable business and one that has engaged employees and customers at its heart to deliver results.

The key is to know when the gossip is out-of-hand. You need to act if the gossip: disrupts the workplace and business, hurts employees’ feelings, damages interpersonal relationships, or affects employee motivation and morale beyond tolerable levels.

Culture

If you assertively deal with gossip, you will create a work culture and environment that does not support gossip - one that really promotes efficiency.

If you are fretting about how to build a more engaged workforce, ask yourself if you see evidence of politics, cliques, gossip, in-fighting, jealousy and people talking about each other rather than to each other in your work place.

If you do, then perhaps ridding your company of these behaviour is a good place to start. No good and adequate work in other areas is going to make up for a toxic culture. With my experience I can say that this has to be tackled in isolation.

True, we have all been subject to gossip at work and is almost impossible to avoid – until you realise how harmful gossip threatens corporate culture, and eventually transforms the workplace into a culture of doubt – and must be reconciled for employees to drive results necessary for the organisation’s success.

Time for a culture reboot? Check and see how much value your business loses as a result of this harmful cultural element.