by Amela Piric

Created on: August 16, 2011   Last Updated: March 13, 2012

Gossip is unhealthy especially if it is pursued in the workplace.  It can damage someone’s reputation and go that far towards ruining someone’s career.  Gossip is usually not based on the facts, but on the transfer of information from one person to another.  In the end, the original peace of information looses its meaning and context and meaning which can be deadly, costly, and traumatic for the person concerned. 

Gossip has a tendency to spread its seeds and roots around in the workplace.  After the gossip is spread around, no longer can anyone feel safe and protected much less comfortable in the workplace.  Usually, all of us wound up becoming victims of unethical and unhealthy communication in the workplace. 

In this kind of environment, no one is to flourish.  Personal relationships get broken and everybody gossips behind everybody’s back.  This kind of atmosphere is unhealthy and is not conducive to employee production and satisfaction in the workplace.  Even religious books including but not limited to the holy Bible condemn gossip and talk about irreversible damage that it can cause to people’s lives, relationships and careers. 

The biggest thing about gossip is that it ruins healthy communication and relationships between coworkers that are such an important basis and ingredient on which employee satisfaction and increased production is to be built.  The environment is which gossip dominates is devoid of trust and confidence.  Working environment devoid of trust and mutual confidence can easily become hostile and dangerous for everybody involved.

Taking into consideration how much damage gossip can incur in the workplace for each one of us, it is quite a wonder as to how come it is so widespread and overused.  The one and main reason for this is that gossip is so easily used and gets around so fast without all that much effort.  It is like the black or white thinking and transferring negative energy without much contemplation.  Usually things are way more complex than being just black and white. 

Gossip doesn’t require much thinking, only talking and transferring the information further down the line.  Gossip is also known for getting a hold of curious, negative, and voyeuristic side of us and we all have this side in us whether we are aware of it or not.  It is so much easier for us to become envious, pitiful, depressed, and anxious than to understand other people, their motives, and their actions.  And if we manage to understand others, we are half a way to solving a problem.

When faced with gossip, remember to think that you could soon become its next victim if you take part in it freely.  What makes you think that a person rumoring behind someone’s back won’t be rumoring about you the next day.  Don’t be too sure.  Thus, if you do not desire to be the next victim in the line, then don’t gossip about other people either.  Simply ignore the gossip, defend the person being gossiped about, or turn attention of the gossiper to other brighter and happier things in life. 

Sometimes even if you are only listening to the gossip being spread, you are still participating in it by becoming a part of a negative vicious circle.  In such instances it would be best for you to leave if you can not turn the gossiper’s attention to something else.  That would be the most ethical thing to do in the situation and would surely save your back the next time gossip is being spread around.

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