Office Bitching 2.0

It seems the 21st Century way to solve office politics is via email and MSN with an increasing number of companies now allowing MSN messenger within the workplace. 18% of managers find it easier to sort out work problems virtually but the majority, 63% confess that a virtual disciplinary is much less effective than a face to face meeting.
The UKís leading recruitment scoring website, www.HireScores.com, has found that 1 in 6 office managers now allows MSN messenger in the workplace; 96% of which expect it only to be used for work purposes.

Staggeringly, almost 20% of managers confess that the majority of their office politics is either discussed or sorted via MSN or work emails, meaning that for 1 in 5 companies, problems within the office never or very rarely get raised face to face.

Almost 1 in 3 managers also confess that problems within the office could and should be dealt with more professionally, with 31% admitting that sorting out problems online can sometimes make things worse and 16% admitting that this approach can result in Chinese whispers if the problem is not sorted in one face to face meeting.

Members of staff are also at fault when it comes to virtually solving problems, with 74% confessing that they are much more confident to initially raise problems with their manager via an email but 68% do not believe this actually fully resolves the problem.

On the other hand, 38% of staff members also confess to using MSN messenger and emails to moan to other employees about problems within the workplace regarding management, other colleagues and workload.

Lisette Howlett, the founder of HireScores.com comments on the findings;

ìGenerally, office problems can be resolved through good communication and therefore the main problem when dealing with complaints via email or MSN is that members of staff are never given the opportunity to fully express their thoughts and therefore whoís to say the problem will not happen again in the future?

ìMeetings have proven to be much more effective when trying to ascertain the facts, not only by making the member of staff feel at ease but also by watching their body language and prying all of the relevant information from them to resolve the problem efficiently.

ìAt the forefront of every managers mind should be the prevention of such problems. Therefore, having a communicative and transparent relationship with your employees and leading by example is always the key to a happy workforce.î