Nightly News   |  September 01, 2010

Study shows office gossip a positive

A new study in the Harvard Business Review reveals that office gossip can actually have positive effects, including helping to relieve employee anxiety and bring problems to managers' attention. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

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This content comes from a Full-Text Transcript of the program.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: OK. So Dunder Mifflin is one thing, and in real offices we've always been told that office gossip is bad behavior. But a new study in the Harvard Business Review says the opposite may actually be the case. The study found gossip helped to relieve employee anxiety and helped managers identify problems, and, perhaps surprisingly, found that a lot of gossip was actually positive. Hm.