05.07.03 The 1st Organisational Consequence of Negative Gossip : Stressed Workforce, Team or Community

Stressed Workforce, Team or Community

Thinking back, my first reaction to the slanderous rumour about us was fear and deep grief, I must confess. Fear of the unknown. Grief of being betrayed by people I had trusted to be on our side. Fear of a faceless enemy. That was the first mistake I made. It was so grave a mistake that it led to extremely high levels of stress leading to a series of health conditions that put me down for a good three years, as already mentioned. Visits to hospitals became the norm including a trip to South Africa and India as my condition grew worse. It reached a point where I was too ill to work. Being the visionary and lead consultant, my stress flowed through to some of our team members with visible and noticeable reactions. This also meant that I could not continue training our client-organisations to improve the services they provided; which of course curtailed their progress.

Reading the story of Nehemiah and the wall-rebuilding project, what comes out clearly is the stress and fear that Tobiah’s rumours would create, day in day out, to the extent that the workers started feeling threatened. See what Nehemiah 4:7-11 reports (AMPC): ⁷But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabians, Ammonites, and Ashdodites heard that the walls of Jerusalem were going up and that the breaches were being closed, they were very angry. ⁸And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem, to injure and cause confusion and failure in it. ⁹But because of them we made our prayer to our God and set a watch against them day and night. ¹⁰And [the leaders of] Judah said, The strength of the burden bearers is weakening, and there is much rubbish; we are not able to work on the wall. ¹¹And our enemies said, They will not know or see till we come into their midst and kill them and stop the work. Reading that account, one can begin to imagine the stress that Nehemiah’s team was going through at the time.

Looking at the JuaLink story, you may recall, for instance, how the ‘downsizing’ rumour hiked the stress levels of the entire workforce, resulting in an increase in hypertension cases, ulcers and other stress-related conditions amongst team members.

When negative gossip is rampant in an organisation or entity, a stressed workforce is more than likely. The problem with that is, and as already discussed, stress impacts on the emotional, physical and spiritual wellness of team members, thereby hampering productivity and the organisation’s bottom-line performance.