When the legal department gets involved with important business or internal disputes, a lot of the concerns are rooted in "What is in their email?" The informal nature of email, often containing opinions, thoughts, concerns and contradictory positions can contradict corporate policy and undermine the organizations positions. The result can be costly settlements and defense with the possibility of losing a case altogether. The good news is that you have a very powerful and
FREE weapon at your disposal, a
PROACTIVE email usage policy. Let's explore what makes a usage policy effective and proactive so it can be deployed, be successful and a very good friend to legal.
Keys to a proactive email usage policy:
Education
: Employees must be educated to understand that email is official, never goes away and should be used as a professional communication tool. A few important guidelines should be part of the education:
- Employees' email conduct is held to the same standards as that outlined in the employee conduct agreement, including what the repercussions are. Opinions create problems when sent in email without detailed information. If you're a lawyer and your client purchased a product that is having problems, it's a good day when one of the design engineers sends an email that says: "I don't think the product will work" instead of clearly stating: "The product was not designed to work in temperatures below 32 degree."
- Employees should be consistent in their use of the correct tools for their job, like the contract system vs sending contract through email. Users must understand that existing systems provide safeguards to critical business processes and should always be used vs the temptation of using email to get it done quicker with no protection.
Persistent:
Company policies need to be persistent. New employees must be trained AND existing employees must sign electronic email policy agreements frequently (I recommend every 6 months) intervals to drive home the importance of proper email usage. Many organizations require the user sign this agreement when they start and never again, the user becomes detached from the policy over time. New employees sign a lot of documents and agreements when they start, email usage policy can get lost in the shuffle.
Enforcement
: A key problem with email usage policy occurs when it is ignored because it is not enforced. Organizations MUST enforce any behavior contradictory to the email policy and do so quickly and consistently. Some helpful approaches are:
- Create an escalation team to deliver the message to the user and document corrective action.
- Make the repercussions clear.
- Make it anonymous for a user to report issues.
Involve the employee manager to to gain constant support and training for other users.