The office rumour mill

Jul 19, 2009

“GOSSIP is a universal culture that is not only common at the workplace but everywhere,” Aggrey says, adding that gossiping is mankind’s favourite pastime.

By Jacobs Odongo

“GOSSIP is a universal culture that is not only common at the workplace but everywhere,” Aggrey says, adding that gossiping is mankind’s favourite pastime.

Personally, I cannot think of any normal environment devoid of gossip. We are fascinated by it, that’s why we devour tabloids, wallow in websites and even go to watch games like rugby whose scoring system we do not understand.

The fact that gossip in an almost indispensable aspect at the workplace speaks volumes of its necessity to the organisation.

In his book, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, Ribin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology, says a group capable of language (humans) will engage in idle chatter about other members of the group. This, Dunbar says, is progress. The Oxford University professor and author believes this natural penchant for chat is not necessarily a bad thing. “Gossip is a tool for social cohesion,”he says.

Annand Patel, a human resources consultant, says idle talk (which is common at the workplace and is referred to as the office rumour mill), is also a way of enforcing social codes of behaviour.

“If people know that their reputations will be damaged by the rumour mill because they are not doing their share of work or they are cheating others, they may be less likely to do these bad things,” he says.

The office grapevine is usually triggered by many factors. From my own experience, many rumour monger to feel part of a group. If everybody else is gossiping, you might feel obliged to do the same in order to fit in.

Others seek attention. If someone knows a secret that nobody does, it can make him/her the centre of attention. A rumour is sometimes like money; telling it to people is like buying their attention. Others gossip out of boredom.

The rumour mill moves faster in office corridors, during coffee breaks, lunch breaks and over the intercom. The most common topic is the love affair. Also, you probably have a workmate who nags so much that he/she wants to tell whoever cares to listen that ‘Jerome is a pain in the a**’ and that Mable is so lazy and incomplete that the boss must have had a ‘private agenda’ for appointing her.’

The other day, I went to a certain section of our offices and the guys who sat in a circle, best known at Ajon (a local brew) drinking joints, were boiling over an employee they would skin alive for bootlicking if they had the power.

Wilbroad Kukundakwe of Ugandajobline says new appointments and recruitment policies are also often subjects of juicy gossip. Also, since the workplace is driven by impressions, a hit in the gossip circles is who is the worst dressed and most handsome? Ladies are specialists here.

While most people tend to focus on the negative face of gossip, some say it relieves stress.

According to Dr. David Basangwa of the national referral mental hospital in Butakiba, the office rumour mill helps purge excess emotional and psychological energy.

He says gossiping is an essential aspect in human socialisation and physical wellbeing. It also relieves stress and boosts the immune system.

Do you know that gossip has saved the neck of some employees? For instance, if your boss was on the verge of firing you and positive rumours about you get to him, this will make him give you a second chance. Also, if you ever feed your boss with gossip, he/she will keep you around.

However, there should be some caution while feeding the office rumour mill with information because most organisations have little room for gossip. Others even have policies against gossip.

Moses Thenge, the human resource manager of Kakira Sugar Works, says organisations have to come up with policies because of the “negative effects to the organisation like less productivity, time wastage, paranoia and divisiveness among employees as people take sides. At worst, it may lead to office cat-fights.”“If the rumour is about an individual, it can cause much pain not only to that person, but also to co-workers,” says Thenge. “Depending on the rumours, other employees may feel uncomfortable working with this person. This undermines teamwork.”

Kukundakwe says employees who spend all their time gossiping waste company time and resources, adding that if the gossip revolves around the business itself, it can seriously damage the organisation.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany recently performed an experiment in which two types of information were available to the subjects: hard data (including their own observations) and gossip from other study subjects and the researchers themselves. The majority of the subjects believed the second-hand information above the hard data.

The conclusion was that gossip is treated as more valuable information than our own observations.

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