Grapevine communication happens in every organization, no matter the company size or industry. This informal type of communication may have a significant impact on the employee experience you deliver as well as your business performance and your ability to build trust with your employees. Show
Therefore, it is crucial for employers to understand the power of grapevine communication in order to be able to control and manage it effectively. In this blog, we will explain what grapevine communication is, and we will go over some tips to help you deal with this type of communication in the workplace. What Is Grapevine Communication?According to Prof. Keith Davis, a well-known professor for his research on grapevine communication, this type of communication arises from social interaction and is as varied as people are. Unlike communication via emails, intranets and other formal communication channels in the workplace, grapevine communication is the informal way of communication that happens within organizations. Even though some employers try to prevent and stop grapevine communication, it is an inevitable part of business life, with the American Management Association estimating that fully 70% of all organizational communication emanates through the grapevine. Moreover, most employees deem it trustworthy as well. As grapevine communication is mainly based on the spoken word, such as the “water cooler talks,” it can be impossible for employers to track it and understand the negative consequences grapevine communication can have on their workforce. 4 Types of Grapevine CommunicationGrapevine communication does not have one definite pattern or direction, though it is mostly horizontal in nature. However, it can go horizontally, vertically and even diagonally. In order to better understand how grapevine communication happens within organizations, it is important to be aware of the various types of chains through which information can flow. Prof. Keith Davis, who has done extensive research on the nature of grapevine communication, has classified it into four basic types:
The Negative Sides of Grapevine Communication in the WorkplaceThe main danger of grapevine communication in the workplace is that much of the information that gets spread through the grapevine is not verified. Oftentimes, such information is difficult, if not impossible, to track. Employers need to understand that when false and unverified information is being spread through the grapevine, people’s reputations, careers, and lives can be harmed very rapidly. Let’s take a look into some of the negative sides of grapevine communication in the workplace:
6 Ways to Deal with Grapevine CommunicationThere is no way to eliminate or stop grapevine communication in the workplace. However, there are ways to better understand it, control it, and eliminate the negative sides grapevine can bring to your company by ensuring proper employee communications via formal communication channels. Having dedicated employee communications channels at your workplace will help you support your employees’ productivity, all while aligning your organization. Let’s take a look into some best practices: 1. Always keep your employees informedThe best way to prevent or reduce grapevine communication is to always provide credible and easily accessible sources of important information. Yet, many organizations, especially large enterprises, struggle to achieve that. As the communication ecosystem in the workplace has become extremely complex, companies are struggling to streamline the information flow in their workplaces. As a consequence, employees often feel confused, left out, they miss out on important information, and they are less productive while wasting their time looking for the information they need. With the emergence of the new pandemic, employers are more aware of the importance of putting relevant and important information at their employees’ fingertips. Therefore, many of them are now trying to find new ways to keep their remote and on-site employees connected and informed. Within workplaces that neglect the importance of real-time communication, the grapevine effect is inevitable. Employees will talk and comment with each other about every new step and decision you make. What’s more, their opinions, concerns and beliefs will reach a much broader audience. Instead of waiting for employees to make their own conclusions, organizations are the ones who should make sure that the right information always reaches the right employees at the right time. 2. Choose the right communication channels to build trust with your employeesAs mentioned earlier, trust in the workplace has a big impact on employees’ motivation, engagement and, consequently, their productivity and success. Yet, according to the Edelman “Trust Barometer” (a survey of 33,000 people in 28 countries), one in three people don’t trust their employer. This is especially true when it comes to trusting leaders and C-level executives. The AMA uncovered some conflicting findings on the role of grapevine communication in an organization. For example, when asked if employees would place “more credence in a speech from a company leader or in a message heard over the grapevine,” 47% of respondents chose the grapevine. On the other hand, when asked if they would believe a message delivered over the grapevine or what they hear directly from their direct supervisor, 74% of respondents chose their supervisor. By directing information through informal channels, you can affect what information is spread through the office. The study also showed that when leadership and grapevine messages were conflicting, 47% of people will believe the grapevine, 42% will believe senior management and the remaining 11% are undecided. Therefore, leaders have a long way to go to build trust in order to be more credible and considered trustworthy by their employers, and effective leadership and manager communications are the only ways to achieve that. Leaders need to be approachable and communicate with an authentic voice. They need to really understand their role in internal communications and make sure that their messages don’t get unread by the employees. 3. Eliminate information overload in the workplaceEmployees are dealing with an extensive information overload in both their private and professionals lives, especially during the past few months. Sometimes, it can be extremely hard to filter through that information and consume only the content that comes from credible sources. In this information chaos, grapevine communication will happen no matter what. Therefore, it is the employer’s responsibility to share the most relevant information from credible sources with the employees. This, however, is not an easy job at all! Imagine going through every single source of information every time before you want to share external content with your employees. Unfortunately, this can be a very time consuming job for your internal communications departments. Instead, IC departments should be able to automate the content import from sources they have identified as trustworthy and relevant to their employees. That way, there will be much less room for rumors and grapevine communication in the workplace. Furthermore, internal communications departments, leaders and managers should have the ability to easily filter and segment their internal audiences so that information that employees get is localized, relevant to what they do, their locations, job functions, and the languages they speak. This is how Haiilo does it! Today, when workplaces are highly dispersed, it is crucial to stay relevant while providing timely, accurate and personalized communication. 4. Engage your employees in two-way daily conversationsHierarchical companies with closed company cultures are much more likely to experience the negative sides of grapevine communications. Within such organizations, employees don’t feel like they are free to share their voice, raise questions and talk about their needs and concerns. However, employees will still talk among each other about those matters, and the information will spread more quickly that you can imagine. Wouldn’t it be better to build a company culture of honest and open communication where employees feel safe to speak up, a culture where two-way communication comes before one-way communication? Now is the time for employers to understand that the days when we would just send out a newsletter with company updates to the entire workforce are over! If this is how you approach employee communications, you have probably already realized that such information is often ignored and has very low consumption rates. Internal communications professionals are now looking for ways to create more engaging content, give employees the ability to join the conversation and drive healthy workplace relationships among peers and managers no matter where they are located. 5. Spot your internal influencersYour internal influencers — your employees that other people listen to and trust —, have a big impact on how grapevine happens and how it influences other employees in your organization. Even though spotting those influencers may be impossible through informal communications channels, your formal channels can be very helpful. If you have an internal communications solution that tracks likes, shares, and other engagement metrics, it can be pretty simple to spot and identify those internal influencers. If you have a person who is very engaged with your internal content or a person whose content is liked by others, the chances are that this person also has a big influence on how grapevine happens in the workplace. Having such data is extremely useful as it helps employers get a feeling about how people connect and communicate in your organization. 6. Implement the right communication technologyAll the above mentioned tips are impossible to achieve without having an appropriate technology in place. Using various formal communications channels has made communication in the workplace very complex, resulting in more conversations via grapevine communication than via formal communication channels. When employees are unable to find the information they need to do their jobs successfully, or when they feel like they are left out of the important company updates and conversations, the natural thing to happen is for them to turn to their peers sitting next them. Modern employee communication solutions enable organizations to connect all the communication channels into a single platform within which they are sure to reach every employee with the relevant content that they will actually consume. What’s more, such technology is the only way to track and measure the impact and effectiveness of your internal communications efforts, enabling communicators to make data-driven communications decisions with the goal to create more engaged workplaces and eliminate the negative sides of grapevine communications. Tackling Grapevine with Effective Employee CommunicationsIf you feel like you have no ways to control or manage grapevine communication in your workplace, you are wrong. Employers need to take a different approach when it comes to employee communications. In today’s world where information is all around us and we are dealing with extensive information overload, grapevine communication is inevitable. The solution to this is to turn grapevine to your advantage. Instead of fearing the negative impacts grapevine communication may have on your business, employers need to use it to boost collaboration at the workplace. At the same time, it is essential to provide employees with one trusted source of information. This is why we’ve built Haiilo Home. With our employee communications solution you will be able to:
Which of the following is an informal communication network?A grapevine communication is a form of informal communication by which people communicates each other without any formal line of communication.
What is informal communication in an organization?Informal communication is casual communication between coworkers in the workplace. It is unofficial in nature and is based in the informal, social relationships that are formed in a workplace outside of the normal hierarchy of business structure.
What are informal networks within organizations?Informal networks are much broader than formal networks and can include casual conversations with people who you may meet in all kinds of circumstances. For example, you may meet someone new while out in your daily life and realize they have a connection to a company that you are interested in.
Which of the following is an example of informal communication?Informal communications include speaking to a person about the weather, writing an email about your holiday, sending a birthday card or talking to someone at the grocery shop. Informal communications can also be gestures (with no words). Informal communication in the workplace is often called 'the grapevine'.
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