Office Gossip Ain't All That Bad

Office gossip isn’t always worthy of the bad rap it receives, according to a new study by sociologists Tim Hallett and Donna Eder, who researched the practice for two years. (Yes, you can get a grant for anything!) They found that gossip “serves as an informal organization chart, which can help employees understand who the go-to people are in their department.”

However, gossip can still be a productivity problem, which is one of the reasons why managers try to clamp down on it.

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