New research shows venting about the boss can boost coworker camaraderie and collaboration, even if it makes employees avoid their manager
Are your employees bad-mouthing their boss? That may not necessarily be a bad thing, according to a recent study.
Talking behind a manager’s back can make employees feel more connected to each other and more collaborative, found researchers from three U.S. universities.
“Even when it goes against our better judgment, we all seem to gossip about our bosses from time to time,” said Rebecca Greenbaum, professor of human resource management at Rutgers University and one of the study’s authors, in a Rutgers article.
“We often tell ourselves, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ but it also feels really good. This research unpacks why gossip gives us mixed emotions and how it can affect the rest of our workday.”
However, they also caution that this behaviour can prompt people to avoid their boss and it potentially hurts productivity.
Gossip as guilty pleasure – and bonding ritual
Greenbaum and colleagues from Utah State University and Southern Methodist University surveyed 202 office workers across a wide range of industries, pinging them twice a day for 10 days to ask whether they had gossiped about their boss and how they felt and behaved afterward.
They then ran a second study with 111 additional workers, adding surveys of their colleagues to see if others noticed any behavioural shifts post‑gossip.
The patterns were “remarkably consistent,” according to the researchers.
On the downside, employees tended to avoid their managers after criticizing them, often out of guilt, shame or fear of being discovered — behaviour that could derail timely collaboration or escalate small issues.
On the upside, workers reported feeling closer to their co‑workers after venting about the boss. That sense of belonging translated into more collaboration that same day. In short, the research found that talking behind the boss’s back functioned as a kind of informal team ritual: a shared “bonding activity.”
“This study helps us to understand how gossip affects our emotions and subsequent relational behaviors at work,” said Julena Bonner, associate professor of management at Utah State University and the study’s lead author, in the same article. “If we talk bad about our bosses, our guilt and shame may keep us from proactively working with them on a timely project. But that same gossip can make us feel bonded, increasing team cooperation that could aid in other important tasks.”
The effect was even stronger when the manager was emotionally or verbally abusive. In those cases, said Bonner and Greenbaum, the boss becomes a “common enemy,” which heightens the bonding power of gossip and the willingness of workers to support one another.
Gossip fosters camaraderie
While popular management advice tends to frame gossip as corrosive, the study’s authors argue that this kind of talk can have both positive and negative ripple effects for people and organizations.
“Much of the popular press points to gossip as a deviant workplace behaviour that should be avoided,” the researchers write in the study.
“However, it is useful for employees and organizational leaders to understand that gossip is more nuanced than this and presents both positive and negative consequences for the employees involved and the organization.”
They point out that employees may gossip about a supervisor “in order to vent frustrations or discuss common experiences, which can actually create a sense of solidarity among team members.” Being able to commiserate in this way “can bring employees closer together and foster an increase in camaraderie via feelings of belonging,” with cohesion and cooperation among employees carrying “numerous benefits to the organization.”
Deeper issue of abusive supervision
At the same time, the study makes clear that this shouldn’t be read as a free pass for whisper campaigns or a substitute for fixing deeper issues like abusive supervision.
“While it may seem intuitive to seek to quash negative talk about an authority figure within the organization, doing so may have one potential downside to the organization, which is removing gossip as a means by which employees may build collective morale and bonding,” the authors write.
“To be clear, we are not suggesting that engaging in this type of gossip is the only, or even a recommended, way for employees to bond and connect with one another. Nor are we suggesting that allowing employees to gossip about their supervisor is a sufficient remedy for addressing issues of abusive actions on the part of supervisors.”
Instead, the study positions its findings as a prompt for more thoughtful responses to what happens when people vent.
“Rather, we note that our results reveal that there is at least this one positive side effect of gossip that organizational leaders should be aware of as they balance their reactions to workplace gossip,” the researchers wrote. “There is still much to be learned about how to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of supervisor-directed gossip, but this research provides an initial step to understanding these tradeoffs.”
