Workplace or Office Gossip Could Land You in Legal Trouble

St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pa., issued a press release on Aug. 30 advising that workers "might want to bite their tongue the next time it comes to gossiping about co-workers." This comes after a workplace survey conducted by Steelcase, a global office environments manufacturer, found that nearly 66 percent of office workers say that people they work with gossip at some point.

Sometimes, gossip is little more than a form of entertainment or innocent chatter - the thing that keeps life at work a bit more interesting. Other times, however, gossip can do a great deal of damage to the subject, and in extreme cases it might even result in a civil or criminal complaint.

Regina Robson is an expert in employment law at Saint Joseph's University. She says that people need to be careful what and whom they talk about. "Employees do have legal rights in mitigating workplace gossip. Factual inaccuracies which result in injury to employees can be the basis of a defamation action against a co-worker or the employer itself," she says.

Robson said that even if the gossip is true, employees still have rights. This especially applies if the chatter involves an invasion of privacy or the misuse of confidential information. Robson said that instances where statements impugning another person's chastity or integrity have actually resulted in findings of liability.

Times have changed in how gossip is disseminated, making legal complaints easier and often more difficult to defend or explain away. Water cooler gab sessions are often now online chat. Robson warns that employees need to be especially careful about censoring themselves when communicating online. "A defamation action can be brought against anyone who publishes the falsehood, either verbally, in writing or on the Internet."

As for employers, The ePolicy Institute states that some 21 percent of 840 employers surveyed in 2004 had employee e-mails and instant messages subpoenaed for one reason or another during the course of lawsuits or other investigations. The figure was 9 percent in 2001. The survey also found that some 13 percent of the employers had been involved in workplace lawsuits resulting from employee e-mails.

Instant messages and e-mails can be likened to "electronic DNA evidence." That being the case, it may come as a surprise that, according to The ePolicy Institute, most employers are not prepared to manage e-mail and instant message risks.

Nancy Flynn is the executive director of The ePolicy Institute. She says that what's "most alarming is the business community's failure to retain e-mail and IM according to written retention and deletion policies." Just 6 percent keep and archive business record instant messages, while 35% have a policy regarding the retention of e-mails.

Bottom line for both employers and employees is that, although most workplace gossip may be relatively harmless, everyone needs to be aware and reminded that what a person says or repeats can have legal consequences.

Sources:

Press release, Office Gossip Can Get You in Legal Trouble; http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/532964/

ePolicy; http://www.epolicyinstitute.com/survey/index.html