Hey, have you heard about ... ?

It's at the mention of that telltale phrase that my ears instantly prick up, waiting to hear the latest juicy tidbit, freshly squeezed from the rumor mill.

From updates about my family ("Which cousin is pregnant this time?") to rumblings at work ("I hear that 2.5 percent pay raises are the norm this year. Again."), my gossip radar is often primed and ready — tuned in to the tawdry tales in the lunchroom and the surreptitiously shared stories in the women's restroom.

I think it's the pervasiveness and allure of the whispered chitchat — feeding on our need to be in the know, sometimes when we don't even know the person being talked about — that has led all of us to dabble in gossip at least once.

A recent study shows exactly how prevalent this chatter is in the workplace. A report released in July found that most employees view water-cooler chat as more informative than what the boss has to say when it comes to work-related issues.

Sixty-three percent of American employees said rumors are usually how they first hear about important business matters, according to a study by ISR, a global employee research and consulting firm with headquarters in Chicago.

"Good leaders are good communicators, and this research shows that managers in the U.S. have a lot to learn," ISR executive director Adam Zuckerman said in a statement.

According to the study, gossip seems to prevail in the workplace — even though such talk is routinely derided by bosses, human resources professionals, career counselors, etiquette gurus and your mom.

But despite its negative connotations and perceptions as merely self-serving babble, gossip serves a broader, anthropological function, explains one New York researcher.

These exchanges are integral in the study of better understanding the mechanics of how groups of people successfully interact with one another, said David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology and anthropology at the State University of New York-Binghamton.

"There's a kind of theory behind this, that a human social group, including a business organization, is much more complicated than we think," Wilson said.

While gossip can be seen as self-serving, it also serves an important "policing function" in a group, said Wilson, author of the book, "Darwin's Cathedral." People also know they're accepted in the group when they're included in the gossip.

Take away the gossiping in a group, he contends, and you take away part of its core. "You give the group a lobotomy, in some ways, when you take away the gossip."

The role gossip plays specifically in the workplace depends on whether the workers feel the company is functioning well or poorly, Wilson said. If employees like the business, then gossip is "nature's way of facilitating communication among members of the organization."

The dynamic of gossip among unhappy employees who are dissatisfied with their company can be viewed as a threat by bosses, he said, possibly because it forces the group to be more egalitarian than the employer wants it to be.

"One reason that employers don't like gossip is that it's being used as a very effective weapon, and it's one that they can't control," Wilson said.

When I asked Jay Christensen-Szalanski, a professor of management and organization at the University of Iowa, about his take on gossip in the workplace, he added a slight twist to the discussion by explaining that psychologists make a distinction between what qualifies as "rumor" and "gossip."

Rumors, he said, are usually started by individuals to help them relieve anxiety in a specific situation. Gossip, on the other hand, always concerns people, and often makes a moral judgment on someone's character.

Christensen-Szalanski emphatically believes the problems that gossip creates in the workplace far outweigh any benefits.

"I cannot see any beneficial reason to advocate the use of gossip in business," he said.

He also takes issue with people who argue that gossip is just "natural."

"Tooth decay is natural," he said, "but you don't let it proceed."

For one thing, gossip has a way of spiraling out of control, sometimes warping the initial message, he said. It's like that game "telephone" where the original message always is garbled by the time it is passed along through the entire group.

A manager might use gossip among subordinates as an indirect way to correct or influence an employee's behavior, Christensen-Szalanski said. Bosses should instead speak directly to workers regarding any concerns they may have.

Managers who keep workers in the dark about company concerns can breed anxiety and fuel rumors and gossip, he said. So it's best to keep the lines of communication open.

"You should certainly make sure that you're a source of information for them (workers) so that they don't have to go to other places for it," he said. "The information vacuum will be filled by rumors and gossip."