05.07.10 The 8th Organisational Consequence of Negative Gossip : Employee Turnover, Migration or Defection

Employee Turnover, Migration or Defection

As the rumour ravaged our business, our revenues plummeted at that time, thence leading to the need to downsize our workforce. Some employees left since, I guess, they were worried that we would not survive the fire. However, we thank God that we eventually went through it.

In Nehemiah’s case, we see, as already discussed elsewhere, that the labourers and other wall repairers were starting to get threatened by Sanballat and Gershem’s gossip. And although the bible is silent regarding whether some builders could have been so terrified that they left; I would not be surprised if some did.

As already discussed elsewhere, there are two scenarios through which negative gossip could lead to employee turnover: firstly, by driving the ‘best performers’ to resign; and secondly, where the organisation dismisses a chronic gossiper in an effort to curtail the habit within the workforce. Both these scenarios can have noticeable and negative repercussions on an entity.

For instance, as already mentioned, when ‘best performers’ leave, the organisation remains with an unproductive workforce which could drive an institution out of business, as at JuaLink Media.

In addition, again, as already said, the dismissal of chronic gossipers wastes resources that the organisation may have invested in those team members through ‘human resource development’ initiatives such as on-the-job-training and the like.

Another repercussion stems from the fact that many customers prefer to deal with the same person for continuity. Therefore, employee turnovers tend to disrupt existing ‘customer-client’ relationships given that the customer will have to deal with a new employee each time, than the one that she or he (customer) was used to, before the employee left the organisation.

Lastly, a high turnover-rate sends an undesirable message to the community, as it signals that the company is unstable. Such a tag can dent the brand image of that organisation.