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The Unspoken Rulebook: When Informal Communication Backfires at Zeplitta
Jagrati Gupta and Vijay Lakshmi Singh
Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow, India
Volume 18: 2025, pp. 223-228; ABSTRACT
Zeplitta Limited was a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company established in India. Priya
Sharma, with eight years of experience, joins Zeplitta as a Project Manager. Priya uses casual,
informal interactions with her coworkers to encourage open and honest communication within the
team. In the beginning, her teammates admired her communication style as it enhanced relationships
among team members. But later, some coworkers criticized her communication style and filed a
grievance against her with the HR Manager. The HR department publicly criticized Priya’s
communication style. Following the incident, colleagues started avoiding Priya by deliberately
ignoring her and not inviting her to social gatherings. These incidents reduced Priya’s psychological
safety and performance. She lost interest in work and was not an active participant in extra job roles.
The management at Zeplitta later struggled to understand why a high performer like Priya was
working as an average performer.
Keywords: informal communication; organizational culture; psychological safety; hierarchy;
empathy.
