E-mail sounding death knell for office gossip

THE increasing use of electronic e-mail for information exchange between office workers is killing office gossip by eliminating face to face communication and this is seen as bad for business. A report from a British research institute this week postulates that email users tend to stick to facts and formal reporting of information. As the system can retain messages, email is generally shunned as a conduit for rumours, gossip and hunches, the business lubrication that can help make a company run more efficiently. Although this so called "soft" information is perceptual and not as valuable as hard facts, it has a useful role in informed evaluation of possible new sales leads, unofficial trends in markets and observations about customer relations, the kind of vital work related chitchat now locked in employees' heads. The report considers the company grapevine to be still "the quickest channel of communication".