what are the negative consequences of rumours or grapevine in an organisation?

Question

what are the negative things that can affect your organisation because of grapevine communication?

Answer 1

Wrong information being passed on!

Answer 2

Lack of attention to job at hand (preoccupied with rumours).
Resulting in lower quality and quantity of work.

Incorrect information being passed down, could be to do with the job itself and become distorted. Eg - bosses in talks about pay could become 10% paycuts for everyone once passed around. This will decrease morale and therefore motivation to perform tasks.

Rumours against one person or a group can ostracise the group so negative working patterns and diffuculty working together to complete a superordinate goal means lower productivity and possibly bickering or fighting (which could impede health and safety codes) between workers.

Externally, business could recieve bad publicity due to internal conflict between workers. Bad publicity is devastating for a business, losing market share and position over competitors and also losing repeat buyers and no longer appealing to prospective buyers.

Answer 3

The wring message gets out, the real message gets distorted by chinese whispers. It creates a negative feeling that grows - even when the facts are finally presented.

Answer 4

Negative information tends to travel faster than positive, I guess because people like to complain, and they like to feel they know something others don't.
Can hurt company morale.

Answer 5

A lot of time is wasted discussing rumors that may or may not be true.

If the rumors are negative, morale is negatively affected.

Answer 6

I think it's called "The chinese whisper effect"
The story starts as one thing and by the time it's gone round for a day or so it is totally different.

Answer 7

the consequences are that its 2007 people are crazy and someone will **** you up