July 2, 2003—E-mail is playing an increasingly common role in workplace lawsuits and regulatory investigations. A primary source of evidence in high-profile discrimination, sexual harassment, and antitrust claims, e-mail is regularly used to bolster cases. A new survey conducted by American Management Association, The ePolicy Institute, and Clearswift of 1,100 US companies reveals that 14% of respondents have been ordered by a court or regulatory body to produce employee e-mail, up from 9% just two years ago.
According to the 2003 E-Mail Rules, Policies and Practices Survey, the average employee spends 25% of the workday on e-mail, with 8% of workers devoting over four hours a day to e-mail. While failing to meet the challenges of e-mail retention, most employers are eager to keep online employees in line. Over half (52%) of employers monitor e-mail. Three-fourths have put written e-mail policies in place. And 22% have terminated an employee for violating e-mail policy. Over 1,100 US employers participated in the 2003 E-Mail Survey, a follow-up to an e-mail survey conducted by American Management Association and ePolicy Institute in 2001.
“Most employers drop the ball when it comes to educating employees about e-mail risks, rules, and responsibilities,” says Nancy Flynn, co-author of E- Mail Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policies, Security, and Legal Issues for E-Mail and Digital Communication (AMACOM Books 2003) and executive director of The ePolicy Institute. “While 75% of organizations have written e-mail policies in place, only 48% offer e-policy education to employees, and merely 27% offer e-mail retention/deletion training.” says Flynn. On the upside, e-policy training has doubled since 2001, when 24% of companies offered e-policy education to employees.
The use of technology to monitor e-mail and control message content has increased since 2001, when 24% of respondents reported using software to conduct key word or key phrase searches of e-mail and/or computer files. In 2003, over 40% of employers report using software to control written e-mail content. Only 23% couple software with education, which corresponds with the Three-E approach to e-risk management detailed in Flynn’s book:
- establish written e-mail rules and policy;
- educate the workforce about risks and policy compliance; and
- enforce e-mail policy with policy-based content security software that works in concert with the organization’s established e-mail rules and policies.
While 90% of employers have installed software to monitor incoming and outgoing e-mail, only 19% are using technology to monitor internal e-mail among employees. “Management’s failure to check internal e-mail is a potentially costly oversight. Off-the-cuff, casual e-mail conversations among employees are exactly the type of messages that tend to trigger lawsuits, arm prosecutors with damaging evidence, and provide the media with embarrassing real-life disaster stories. The fact that 90% of respondents send and receive personal e-mail at work and 66% of companies lack a policy for deleting nonessential messages, compounds the problem,” says Flynn.
