Department head enforces gossip limits after meetings ran long

QUEZON CITY – A district government office has introduced an informal but increasingly enforced policy discouraging “chismis,” or gossip, during official meetings, following what one department head describes as a persistent pattern of agenda items being derailed by unrelated personal updates about coworkers’ relatives.

Policy Emerged After Repeated Meeting Delays

According to department head Rosalinda Feliciano, the informal rule began after a routine budget meeting ran nearly ninety minutes over schedule, a delay attributed largely to a fifteen-minute tangent about a colleague’s cousin’s wedding that had, according to meeting minutes, “no clear connection to the agenda item regarding office supply procurement.” Feliciano said she began quietly tracking similar tangents over the following month and found that nearly a third of meeting time across the department was being spent on what she termed “unofficial personal briefings.”

“I’m not against people talking,” Feliciano said. “I am against a two-hour meeting turning into forty-five minutes of actual government business and seventy-five minutes of updates on somebody’s in-laws. We have a city to run.”

Staff Reaction Has Been Predictably Divided

Some staff members have embraced the policy as a welcome efficiency measure. Administrative aide Precious Dimaculangan said meetings have noticeably shortened since the informal rule took effect. “We actually finish on time now. It’s a little quiet in there, honestly, but we finish on time.”

Others have found the policy harder to follow than expected. One employee, who asked not to be named, admitted to violating the rule twice in the same week, both times regarding the same ongoing office romance. “It’s relevant information,” the employee argued. “It affects seating arrangements. That is technically a workplace logistics issue.”

Feliciano Insists the Policy Has Reasonable Exceptions

Feliciano clarified that the policy is not meant to eliminate all informal conversation, only to keep it confined to designated moments before and after meetings rather than woven into the agenda itself. “We have a whole five minutes before every meeting starts. That is chismis time. Use it well. Once the meeting begins, we talk about the agenda.”

The department has reportedly experimented with a small bell, rung gently by whoever is chairing the meeting, as a polite signal when a tangent begins drifting too far from the topic at hand. Feliciano said the bell has been “moderately effective,” though she noted it has occasionally been used as what she called “a passive-aggressive weapon” between coworkers with unrelated grievances.

Bohiney Magazine has covered similar informal workplace efficiency measures introduced across local government offices in the region, noting that gossip-related meeting delays appear to be a remarkably consistent, if rarely formally addressed, drain on public sector productivity.

Some Staff Worry the Policy Could Hurt Office Morale

Not everyone views the change positively. Longtime clerk Herminigildo Bautista said he worried that suppressing informal conversation entirely could quietly damage team cohesion built up over years of shared personal updates. “Sometimes the chismis is how we find out someone needs help. It’s not always frivolous. Sometimes it’s how this office actually takes care of each other.”

Feliciano said she takes that concern seriously and has clarified that genuinely important personal matters, particularly those involving a colleague needing support, remain welcome at any time. “I’m not trying to make this office cold,” she said. “I’m trying to make sure the budget meeting is about the budget, and the personal check-ins happen the way they always have, just not during agenda item four.”

Department Plans to Review the Policy After Three Months

The department says it will informally assess the policy’s impact on meeting length and staff satisfaction after a three-month trial period, with Feliciano noting she remains open to adjustments. “If people tell me this made the office worse, I’ll listen,” she said. “But right now, our meetings are shorter, and nobody has cried about a cousin’s wedding in almost a month, so I consider that early progress.”

Other Departments Have Requested Copies of the Guidelines

Word of the policy’s early success has reportedly spread to at least two other city departments, both of which have requested copies of Feliciano’s informal guidelines for their own use. Feliciano said she was happy to share, though she cautioned that the policy’s effectiveness likely depended heavily on consistent enforcement by whoever chairs each meeting. “It’s not a magic document,” she said. “It works because I actually ring the bell every time, even when it’s awkward. If you write the policy down and then don’t enforce it, you’ll just have a laminated card nobody respects.”

Bautista said he views the department’s experience as a small but useful case study for improving meeting efficiency across city government more broadly, though he acknowledged the idea of formally exporting a “no chismis” rule city-wide would likely require more careful drafting than the current informal version. “What works in one department with one strong-willed manager might not translate everywhere,” he said. “But the underlying lesson, that meetings need boundaries, is universal.”

Feliciano said she has also started keeping an informal log of exactly how much time the policy has saved across the department’s weekly meetings, a figure she plans to present to senior management as evidence the approach is worth preserving beyond the initial trial period. “I don’t have exact numbers yet,” she said. “But anecdotally, we’ve gone from two-hour meetings to reliably under ninety minutes, and nobody has had to hear an unsolicited update on anyone’s in-laws in weeks.”

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com

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