“Job Fears Make Offices All Ears”

This is the headline from a WSJ article from January 20, 2009.

According to SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), 23 percent of H.R. professionals have encountered significantly more cases of eavesdropping in the workplace over the last 12 months, while 54 percent reported a sharp increase in gossip and rumors about downsizing and layoffs in their workplaces.

Why would anyone be surprised at this “turn of events”?  There has always been eavesdropping, scuttlebutt, rumors, gossip, chit-chat, and tittle-tattle.    There have always been tattle-tales, rumormongers, big mouths, and nosy parkers.

That’s what the water-cooler was for, we even had a name for them… Water-cooler discussions.   The “smoking section” was a hotbed of rumors, employees of all shapes, sizes, colors and levels in the organization were part of the club.  What was secret talk in boardrooms was open discussion in the “southeast corner of the building”.  It seems that Salem Lights and Camel-non-filters had a way of opening up the lines of company communication.

Today, it’s the internet chat-rooms, facebook, linkedin, and these days Twitter.  Employees aren’t any more likely to eavesdrop than they were before, they just have much better tools to do it with.

It’s all about leadership, behavior is learned from watching those associates on the top floor.  Consider the following from the 2008-09 Employee Hold’em National Workforce Engagement Benchmark:

• 63 percent believe their organization is highly ethical
• 60 percent of today’s employees believe that in their organization, people are treated with respect
• 59 percent  agree their organization encourages open, candid communication
• 53 percent believe their senior leaders are people of high personal integrity
• 44 percent agree their organization involves employees in planning changes
• 43 percent believe that senior leaders treat employees like their most important asset (31 percent disagree!)

Wow, talk about a culture of trust…. NOT.

As I tell my clients, employees know everything about what is going on in their organization… or at least they think they do.  That’s the problem, and the solution.

In an absence of information, employees will make decisions based on what they think they know, which in many cases may be very different than the truth.  However companies continue to try to control these communications, telling employees what they think they need to know.  One manager (a senior director of field and headquarters human resources) in the WSJ article said that “he and management now have conversations behind closed doors, rather than sharing even benign information in public places, like the hallway or an open office.”

Yea, that’ll work. Some people just don’t get it.  They’re shocked that employees are hoping to get information on the state of the company or the possibility of layoffs.

EVERY EMPLOYEE IS THE CEO OF ONE COMPANY, AND THAT ONE COMPANY IS THEMSELVES.

The way to fix this problem isn’t with less information, it’s with more.

He who controls the pen, controls the conversation.  But you have to use the pen, not throw it away.