water cooler effect
water cooler effect noun: the tendency of employees to gather informally around a water cooler in order to socialize and to share information.
Noun
water cooler effect (plural water cooler effects)
- The tendency of employees to gather informally around a water cooler in order to socialize and to share information.
- The water cooler effect represents a belief that conversations that develop in and around a water fountain, or in a cafeteria, significantly enable knowledge transfer, which indirectly contributes to positive work relationships [10].2007, Geilson Loureiro, Richard Curran, Complex Systems Concurrent Engineering, page 719
- It's not hard to imagine that the water cooler effect will gradually fade in importance as workforces become more and more distributed and as technologies allow workers to collaborate more effectively across huge distances.2013, Ben Waber, People Analytics
Forms of water cooler effect
| plural | water cooler effects |
|---|---|
| alternative form | water-cooler effect |
| alternative form | watercooler effect |
Questions about water cooler effect
- What does water cooler effect mean?
- Water cooler effect means the tendency of employees to gather informally around a water cooler in order to socialize and to share information.
- What part of speech is water cooler effect?
- Water cooler effect is a noun.
- What is the plural of water cooler effect?
- The plural of water cooler effect is water cooler effects.
Words near water cooler effect in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: water cooler effect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “water cooler effect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/water_cooler_effect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.