Most offices are happy, friendly places. These are places which have teams in place, everyone gets along well most of the time, and nobody dreads going into work and having to deal with a huge disagreement or drama.
However, there are some offices which are full of gossip, arguments, credit-stealing, and general office politics which cause nothing but disruption, upset, and a huge lack of productivity.
The likelihood is that your office is somewhere in the middle. There aren’t many offices which have employees skipping to work every morning, and there are also few which are a hot-bed of malicious gossip. Being in the middle means that everyone gets along well most of the time, but that there are a few occasions when issues arise and cause the waters to be less than calm.
This is a normal situation, and one which most people can attest to.
Office politics are present in every single contemporary office environment. You cannot avoid them completely, you can only learn how to deal with them effectively and side step problems. Office politics is basically an umbrella term which includes gossip, competition, and occasional one-upmanship. This normally ticks away in the background and doesn’t cause huge problems, but when it becomes prolonged or severe, it can be a huge barrier to business success.
Check out this infographic for a little information on how to deal with office politics from an employee point of view.
Source - https://getcrm.com/blog/office-politics/
Getting involved with gossip or other politics unnecessarily is not going to show you in your best light, even if you’re not the one initiating it. It’s far better to side step issues and walk away, focusing on your work and the people within your workplace who don’t indulge in petty gossip sessions.
Of course, it’s normal for people to have a quick chat over the water cooler or in the coffee room, but do your best to keep these conversations away from anyone who sits at your office chairs and on much lighter, more positive subjects. You might not be able to banish office politics completely, but you can avoid taking part in it personally.
Why Office Politics Are Such a Risky Issue
When an office is full of gossip and too much competition between employees it becomes a negative place to work. This decreases morale and that has a direct impact on morale within the office.
When employees are focused on negativity in this way, they’re not pulling together as a team. This is detrimental to the business because new ideas and creative solutions become less and less, and everyone feels unsupported and almost as though they’re being personally attacked.
Working within an office which is negative and full of gossip isn’t something you want to do on a daily basis, and as a result you might find that you lose some of your best employees. People want to work somewhere positive, somewhere uplifting, somewhere they feel fine about going every morning, and somewhere they can have positive working relationships.
We spend so much of our time at work, perhaps collaborating with others around the boardroom chairs, that dealing with petty gossip and upset isn’t part of the plan.
In this case, it is the manager’s job to address any problems and focus on tackling them head on. Gathering everyone at the round office desk and discussing issues is a way of getting everything out in the open and showing that negative office politics won’t be tolerated. Of course, there is a way to do this, and shouting at employees as though they are children is certainly not the way to go! Instead, the focus should be on helpful discussions, with two way conversation. This allows a manager to identify the main problem underneath it all and work to solve it, rather than trying to handle a million smaller issues with the same cause.
By tackling office gossip, productivity will rise, and as a result, business success will be far more likely.