Workplace Gossip: The Negative Impact and Ways To Tackle It

You may witness employees huddle together; whispering & laughing while hovering over a desk. If you ignore this behaviour continuously, employees grow non-serious towards their job roles. But, modern human resources management tools tackle it effortlessly.

However, first, understand other negative impacts workplace gossip has. Then, move ahead to studying ways of dealing with it using uKnowva HRMS systems. 

This practice has to be consistent. If you think monitoring your employees once for curbing workplace gossip is enough, that’s not a fruitful mindset. Employees will be inclined to gossip frequently in informal groups.

After all, employees are humans, and they need to interact. That is okay and acceptable to a certain level. But if such interactions impact workplace productivity, it’s time to enact. 

5 Negative Impacts of Workplace Gossip:

1. Toxic company culture

If the workplace gossip continues, toxic company culture takes no time to surface. Corporate politics, mistrust, miscommunication, and unhealthy competition start taking place. 

The origin of the misjudgement and confusion between employees is difficult to trace in informal groups. You cannot trust a single word if someone blames the other without the correct evidence. 

Such a negative company culture must not be tolerated. It creates more negative impacts written below. Thus, it’s best to tackle it by using intelligent human resources management technologies.

2. Productivity decreases

When employees indulge in workplace gossip more often, their focus shifts. They do not work with dedication and sheer respect for their roles and responsibilities. The autonomy given to them impacts and suffers. 

They indulge in excuses and are in no mood to accomplish daily predefined tasks. Without strategic planning and execution of human resources management, this behaviour decreases productivity consistently.

3. Breach of trust, respect, and mutual understanding

When human resource managers ignore workplace gossip, teams do not trust one another fully. Employees can’t be taken seriously for their word if they are known for indulging in gossip and corporate politics. 

And if teams do not trust, understand, and respect each other, the productivity of the organisation hampers. Managers must ultimately depend on HRMS systems to strengthen internal communication and digitally transform purpose-driven conversations. 

Otherwise, because of loss of trust and understanding, there is a delay in the timelines of projects. It could impact the external rapport with clients and customers. 

Ultimately, the profit and revenue of the company will impact significantly. This is not what CHROs and CEOs would ever want to happen. 

4. Increased attrition rate

Employees participating in workplace gossip connect less with their job roles. They grow insincere and achieve less than what’s expected from them initially. 

This leads to reporting managers giving them fewer reviews or ratings in their appraisal despite several warnings or suggestions. 

If employees still do not listen or want to improve, they will have to leave the organisation. 

On the other hand, if sincere employees feel there is too much mistrust, they won’t want to work there. They will depart from this firm which allows workplace gossip to impact the culture negatively. 

Hence, the attrition rate increases and grows, seemingly challenging to manage without intelligent human resources management tools.

5. Negative mental health

Not every employee can tolerate workplace gossip. Instead, they might end up becoming mentally disturbed and distressed. Other staff members might isolate or boycott them because of rumours. 

This could lead to serious social anxieties and traumas in employees. Ultimately, such a working environment is not favourable. No high-performing employee would want to stay in such a firm.

The mental pressure leads to an increase in grievances, queries, mistrust, and lower productivity. Employees might start doubting themselves because of someone else’s crude remarks. 

This behaviour should not be acceptable at all. It hampers the diversity and inclusion aspects of a sustainable modern company culture.

HRMS systems with interactive and quick grievance redressal portals can help address growing mental distress. 

5 Smart Ways to Tackle Negative Workplace Gossip:

1. Clearly define and communicate company policy

There will be less gossip if you use human resources management systems to define and communicate company policies clearly. That is because employees are aware of the consequences of the unacceptable behaviour in the firm from day one to their last. 

uKnowva HRMS offers portals and panels to upload company policy. Each registered employee is encouraged to pursue it. They can even download it to read at their pace when oriented in the firm.

2. Overview team and individual performance

Team leaders and managers must use performance management tools often. From there, they are on time to recognise weekly and daily performance ratios. They must at any point know and access their teams’ performance reports. 

Human resource management software with embedded PMS and VB allows the same. If they know each individual’s competency at a given time, a sudden dip or rise can alert them. 

Later, they communicate about such fluctuation openly without delays in tackling unwanted behaviours at the workplace. 

3. Catch up with your team members regularly

Another smart way to deal with boiling workplace negativity and gossip is to catch up with your team members. But don’t suffocate them with micromanagement. Instead, use smart social intranet features. 

From there, invite employees to talk about their issues and bounce off new ideas. That’s through polls, discussion forums, details or pulse surveys. These virtual practices keep employees positively busy and engaged with the company culture. 

Later, they don’t have time to even gossip about anything negative. They can approach their HR helpdesk or suggestion box to talk it out. That’s a more positive approach to blurt out all confusion and distress.  

4. Form an internal redressal committee

If workplace gossip has been quite a severe issue in your organisation, it’s better to form an internal committee. This could also be established on the human resources management tools. 

It’s necessary when you’re working with hybrid staff: contractors, remote workers, in-house employees, and freelancers. This way, every registered employee gets to raise a ticket and get their issue resolved. 

If the committee takes fast action and responds quickly, there will be no need to involve in negative workplace gossip.

5. Encourage positive gossip

Not every workplace gossip is negative or discouraging. Rather, as a team leader, you can encourage fostering relationships with positive gossip. It is just another term for positive review and feedback. 

It can be on the HR management system. Otherwise, team members can indulge in positive activities. Such a task encourages employees to talk about each other’s positive traits. They can list negatives too. 

But those negatives would be out in the open so the concerned person can work on them. It builds more trust and respect amongst teams instead of gossiping around for no reason. 

Conclusion:

Workplace gossip is unstoppable. You cannot force your employees to stop talking and interacting with each other. Instead, work on smart ways to enhance and transform HR communications digitally. 

From this topic above, it must be clear how human resources management software does precisely that. Your firm can leverage that too. For that, use uKnowva 360-degree solutions, backed with intelligence and on-cloud security.