Q. A new nursery nurse is proving a real gossip and it is causing upset among the staff team. She seems to have spent her first few weeks quizzing members of staff about each other, but then indiscreetly relaying who said what about whom. Staff probably did make some comments, but I think the new nursery nurse may be embellishing others. What should I do?
A. There are a number of issues here, which need to be addressed quite quickly before too much damage is done. Firstly, the new staff member may not understand the impact she is having. She may have come from a setting where staff spent their time behaving in an immature and unhelpful way, gossiping and spreading stories, and no one checked this behaviour. You, therefore, need to speak to her urgently and establish some ground rules about the expectation of professionalism in all staff within your setting.
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