4 Ways to Make Grapevine Effective

Grapevine refers to a report circulating within an office or company through the mouths of employees. Traditionally, it can be either true or false, but has no official approval from the management.

Managers usually frown upon such reports thinking that employees should only be focusing on their work. They also find it dangerous in certain cases. For instance, a sour grapevine about merger can cause havoc among employees. The misconception make simply force them to not give their best anymore. Moreover, as the oral story moves from person to person, it can have a tendency to pick up more colors than needed. There is truly no way to ban such thing. Employees are just humans and they cannot always act way too formal in their conversation. So instead of trying to control the grapevine, managers should  use it in the best strategic manner. Here are four ways it can be made possible:

Performance improvement: Slipping a grapevine about a specific employee who has been praised by the management for performing well. How he did it should be included in the story. This can help others in the company learn what kind of quality is expected out of their performance.

Survey for decision making: Certain big decisions of employees are connected to the big decisions of their organizations. Fortunately, they don’t usually keep it a secret and this is where grapevine turns into a useful tool. If a manager wishes to know if such scenario may come into existence he has the option to insert possible organizational decisions into the grapevine to see how employees would react to them.

Fill in the blanks: Organization procedures are never without fault. A policy written in the most attentive manner, even after release, can look incomplete, ambiguous and lastly, inapplicable to employees. Grapevine can be used to fill them up with the correct words for clarification purpose.

Enhance Relationships: It is possible to sustain enthusiasm and satisfaction within employees through the grapevine medium. But no, the manager should not participate like a nosy neighbor in this. Instead the bold move should be made to inquire about specific ones in a friendly manner followed by a soft response. Such method would help the employees share a warm relationship with the manager which in turn would improve their ties with the company.

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