Workplace

Gossip in the workplace can be a weapon in reputational warfare or a gift and can offer clues to power and influence not found on organizational charts. New research from Indiana University details how the weapon is wielded — and its influence muted — in a rare study that catches this national pastime on video.

The study, published in the October issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, identifies subtle ways that people who are targets of gossip are negatively evaluated during formal work meetings, including veiling criticism with sarcasm or talking up another colleague for comparison. It also discusses how efforts to embark on negative gossip can be effectively — and again, subtly — derailed, by changing the subject, targeting someone else for criticism or by pre-emptive comments that are positive. [continue reading…]

Disability discrimination and mental health

Paul Davidge, Employment Law Consultant, writes in the Manchester Evening News about mental health and the law surrounding disability discrimination:

The UK Government has announced this week that people with mental health problems will receive help to manage their condition enabling them continue to work.
Pilot schemes carried out in conjunction with the mental health charity Mind have achieved a 90 per cent success rate in helping people with fluctuating mental health conditions retain their jobs.
Regrettably, despite its prevalence, there is a huge ignorance about mental illness in general and the effect this has on particular individuals. This can lead to those suffering from such conditions being stigmatised and sufferers being discriminated against, not only in day to day life, but also in the workplace. link to continue reading

Source: Manchester Evening News

Twenty minutes per day of guided workplace meditation and yoga combined with six weekly group sessions can lower feelings of stress by more than 10 percent and improve sleep quality in sedentary office employees, a pilot study suggests.

The study offered participants a modified version of what is known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a program established in 1979 to help hospital patients in Massachusetts assist in their own healing that is now in wide use around the world. [continue reading…]