Let’s start with a riddle:
Who am I?
I break hearts and ruin lives. I’m cunning and malicious and get stronger with age. The more I’m quoted, the more I’m believed. Once I damage a reputation, it’s never the same. I make headlines and headaches. I spawn suspicion and grow grief. I maim marriages and kill careers. Even my name hisssses.
Who am I?
The answer: GOSSIP.
I personally have seen that one little word do all of the above and much much more. In fact, when you peel away the lawyers of an employment dispute, gossip is often right at the very heart of it. Left unchecked, it can destroy an entire organization.
Think I’m exaggerating? A new study by the Georgia Institute of Technology examines the effects of gossip in the modern workplace. It ain’t pretty.
The study evaluated 517,431 emails sent by Enron employees prior to its collapse. Defining gossip as “the absence of a third party from the conversation,” researchers set out to discover its role in workplace dynamics.
The average employee sends and receives 112 emails each and every work day. About 1 in 7 of those emails could be considered gossip, according to the study.
The researchers reached the following conclusions about all that gossipishness:
The study stopped short of concluding that gossip is what killed Enron. But, based on the above findings, it certainly didn’t help.
In my 20 plus years of analyzing employment disputes, it’s 187 percent clear to me that a culture mired in gossip rather than direct, collaborative communication is far more likely to find itself in court — perhaps ultimately bankruptcy court.
If you’d prefer not to end up like Enron, please please please educate your managers and employees about,
Organizations that do that will win. Those that don’t, won’t.
This was originally published on Manpower Group’s Employment Blawg.