Why office gossip can be good for the workplace (if it’s the right kind of gossip)

Rumor has it that gossip can be a positive force in workplace cultures, under the right circumstances.

While talking smack behind a colleague’s back likely won’t produce any personal or organizational benefits, research suggests sharing neutral or positive information outside of official workplace communication channels will.

According to a study published in the journal Group and Organizational Management, those who feel like they’re in the know tend to stick around for longer. The study of 338 nurses found the ones that shared work related intel felt a sense of social power and ultimately had lower rates of voluntary turnover.

“When you positively gossip about your workplace, that tends to make people associate you with ‘expert power perceptions’—that you have some expertise—and that makes you less likely to quit,” says Allison Gabriel, a professor of management at Purdue University, the director of the Purdue Center for Working Well, and one of the study’s co-authors. “Why would I leave this organization if people think I’m in-the-know, and think I have good things to say?”

Those benefits, however, did not extend to those who complained behind or spoke negatively of others behind their backs.

“Interestingly, we didn’t find any of those effects for negative workplace gossip, which is probably the kind that people engage in more of,” Gabriel says. “There are some personal benefits to gossip for the person engaging in it, as long as they’re positive.”

Whether positive or negative, Gabriel says gossip is inevitable whenever a group of people work closely together, and the nature of that gossip can play an outsized role in dictating culture.

“If everybody’s sharing positive stories that can really boost morale,” she says. “If everybody’s complaining, talking about how anxious they are, that’s going to create problems, and people are more likely to believe bad things are happening.”

This is how rumors get started

That rumor mill, says Gabriel, tends to spin up when there is an informational void in the workplace. When workers feel like management isn’t being sincere or withholding workers instinctively look to each other to fill the gap.

“Gossip really serves as a mechanism for people to make sense of the world around them,” says Allison Howell, the vice president of market innovation for workplace personality insights provider Hogan Assessments. “When there’s challenges with trust around the organizational leadership, gossip is a way for people to keep a finger on the pulse.”

Howell says gossip has been used throughout history to push beyond the official narratives shared by those in power in search of some greater truth. She explains that it was a vital survival instinct in some of the darker periods in human history, when information really was a matter of life or death.

“There’s been a whole lot of [efforts to] control how people are allowed to communicate and share information, especially women, and punishments throughout history for sharing whispers and alerting others to potential dangers or risks,” she says.

Gossip continues to provide that unofficial communication channel in the workplace, which Howel says can be vital in a world where people are constantly bombarded with “official” messaging.

“There’s a natural tendency to be a little bit skeptical of any sort of messaging that’s coming from official channels,” she explains, suggesting that instinct is adopted from our ancestors. “One of the best mechanisms for bringing people around to a certain idea is to have unofficial communication.”

Can negative gossip have a positive impact?

The line between helpful and hurtful gossip, however, can get blurry, and that’s where things tend to get messy.

While Howell says anything that would get you in trouble with HR—such as outright harassment, abuse, or inappropriate conversations—are a clear violation, she suggests there could be some value in venting behind a colleague or manager’s back.

“There’s a bonding mechanism: teams tend to bond when they share frustrations,” she says. “It’s a mechanism to have a little bit of catharsis, a little bit of bonding, and building a little bit of trust.”

Joseph Grenny, however, is trash-talking the idea that gossip helps build trust amongst colleagues.

The social scientist for business performance, co-founder of Crucial Learning and author of Crucial Conversations says the hush-hush nature of gossip frees the smack-talker from taking responsibility for their disparaging comments, which doesn’t exactly build credibility.

“It creates a feeling of connection without real trust,” he says. “The fact that I’m gossiping with you is evidence to you that I’ll also gossip about you—if I’ll do it with you, I’ll do it to you—so there’s actually an erosion of trust.”

Managing gossip

Grenny believes gossip serves as an indicator of organizational health, and suggests rumors tend to fly more frequently in less positive work cultures.

“The problem with gossip is that it reinforces the sickness that generates it,” he says. “The more I value gossip and receive informal communication access in an organization, the more it reinforces mistrust in the formal channels.”

Breaking that cycle, Grenny says, requires leaders to be more forthcoming and transparent with information. That, he suggests, shuts down rumors before they circulate and establishes more trust in official communications.

“The two options for leaders aren’t sharing or not sharing, but sharing or gossip,” he says. “They need to understand that by not being quick to disclose information they’re choosing for the gossip channel to prevail.”

Though leadership can’t put a lid on gossip entirely Grenny says they can help promote some of the more positive side talk by filling information gaps proactively.  

Specifically, Grenny recommends giving some of the organization’s opinion leaders an open forum for asking difficult questions from leadership, and receiving candid answers.

“When they feed the correct information to that opinion leader group, those opinion leaders start to have confidence that this is a trustworthy channel, and the need for gossip channels decreases,” he says. “You’ve got to create and nurture those alternative channels to push all the demand to the healthier ones.”