Office Gossip
In a recent commercial for an insurance company, a gang of meerkats quickly spread the word that “Craig and Sheila broke up!” after overhearing her side of a phone conversation. Unfortunately, the commercial may also remind you of your workplace.
Office gossip is a natural consequence of having people work closely together for 40 or so hours a week for weeks, months, and years. We want employees to interact well with each other as employees who get along are more engaged and productive. But, in doing so, they can also become more casual resulting in more time spent talking about personal matters instead of business.
So…what can and can’t you do about it before problems arise?
Limit personal phone calls during working hours: Make sure employees know that personal calls and texts should be limited to their breaks except in an emergency. Not only is it taking away from productive work time, but it can also distract everyone around. If “Sheila” wasn’t having a break-up conversation at her desk, there would be no gossip to spread.
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Discourage non-productive chatter and loitering: Be sure to correct the behavior of employees just hanging around and talking. While a few minutes here and there is usually not a problem, you need to correct the behavior of those who turn 5 minutes into 30 minutes. If a verbal reminder does not stop the behavior, continue with other disciplinary action explaining how it negatively impacts the business, ensuring you are consistent with all employees.
Make sure gossip is not discriminatory or harassing: Inappropriate talk could be a violation of your discrimination, harassment, or sexual harassment policies. When you overhear unacceptable gossip or if someone complains about what has been said (about them or someone else), be sure to take the proper steps to investigate and discipline appropriately.
As a manager, don’t get involved in office gossip: If a manager gets involved in the gossip circle, it encourages others to do so. More importantly, if there are discriminatory or harassing conversations, the company and the manager can have more liability due to the manager’s participation.
However, you cannot prohibit everything employees talk about: Under the NLRA, employees have the right to discuss certain work conditions. You can still require employees to only talk about non-business topics during non-working time but only if you are consistent in prohibiting other conversations during work time too.
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The Monday HR Minute, brought to you by Affinity HR Group, is designed to provide you with practical, applicable human resources and management advice and information in a format that will take you 60 seconds or less to read. We believe that by dedicating just one minute a week to thinking about people management practices, business owners and managers can make enormous strides in improving workplace performance. |
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