What are the importance of grapevine to management?

Generally, grapevine (or gossip) doesn't help management in the slightest. This is because management needs people to work together and not distance themselves from one another because of gossip and lies. However, sometimes the grapevine can help in tipping off a manager about a member of staff that may not be putting the work in or may not be acting professionally. Ultimately, the grapevine has a tiny impact on management and it's about as useful to a manager as it is to an individual in everyday life.

• Problems with gossip

Gossip is rife in most workplaces across the world. People will gossip about the company, their managers and their coworkers. They will also frequently take a small truth and turn it into something else completely. This is incredibly disrupting to the workplace and does not really offer any advantages. Gossip can disrupt a place of work and the daily business and procedures; it can hurt the feelings of employees, and can also severely damage interpersonal relationships. Relationships between employees must be maintained as these relationships will allow for better efficiency within the workplace. Gossip can also injure the motivation and morale of the people that are working together, again meaning that efficiency of the business will be damaged, customer service could be harmed and even the outcome of their product could be compromised as well.

If you're a manager and you keep finding yourself having to deal with gossip issues then you will perhaps want to consider looking at your workplace and trying to understand the theme, and why this gossip keeps occurring. Getting to the underlying cause can help you a great deal. You may find that the cause is one person and in this case you may want to put this person on a training course or take disciplinary action.