Emails "gone bad"
By Lisette Hilton
Marysville, WA - July 18, 2003-- Seems innocent enough.
You write a note to a coworker, vendor or friend saying something
you'd never say in public, thinking your note is for the recipient's
eyes only.
Microsoft's Bill Gates was probably under that impression. His
online comments, now memorialized in court documents, described
ruthless competitive tactics. Those emails proved embarrassing
during the recent well-publicized antitrust case.
In another example of embarrassing and damaging emails sent during
work is an investigation that uncovered 622 emails exchanged between
Arapahoe County (Colo.) Clerk and Recorder Tracy K. Baker and
his Assistant Chief Deputy Leesa Sale. Of those emails, 570 were
sexually explicit. That's not the only thing Baker's lawyers are
having to explain in court. Seems the emails also revealed Baker
might have misused public funds, among other things.
These seemingly innocent notes sent by email on company computers
can cost employees and their employers. According to the Scripps
Howard News Service, December 6, 2002, Varian Medical Systems,
Calif., won $775,000 from two former employees who posted thousands
of email messages accusing managers of having sexual affairs,
lying, of criminal behavior and more. The employees were accused
of defaming and misrepresenting people at the company.
Email has not only become a standard business tool but the most
commonly used form of communication, according to a November 2002
white paper by BVRP Solutions, USA, distributors of the MailMeter,
an enterprise email "analysis" tool that tracks and
analyzes employee email behaviors to address productivity losses,
competitive threats and other liabilities. BVRP's Mail Warden
product filters email.
BVRP notes that an average of 10 billion emails were sent worldwide
everyday in 2000 and that is expected to reach 35 billion in 2005.
"In today's workplace, 97% of people send and receive emails
on a daily (or near daily) basis, averaging 39 emails a day,"
according to the BVRP paper.
The problem, according to Greg Neal, vice president of Enterprise
Solutions BVRP Software, is that employees tend to look at email
as a casual, non-attributable and easily deleted exchange-not
a formal document. "Email … has replaced the water cooler,"
Neal says. "People will say things in email that they don't
expect will ever come back [to haunt them]."
One result of this wrong perception is that, on the average,
30% to 40% of all email in any organization is non-business related.
In an Elron Software Corp. study done in 1999, 62% of the employers
surveyed reported employee sex site surfing during the workday.
"We hear horror stories about what job candidates write
in email," says Frank Heasley, PhD, president and CEO of
MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and professional
community that targets jobseekers and HR professionals in biotechnology,
pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. "They should be
just as professional when corresponding with recruiters and employers
by email as they would be if were to type a formal letter. Email
can make a lasting impression, either positive or negative. And,
often, candidates fail to realize that notes they send casually
to a recruiter might be forwarded to a company CEO as part of
the entire message."
Bob Lang, president BVRP USA, says self-governance is key. Employees
who follow email rules can avoid losing jobs or job opportunities,
losing face, being sued or causing their companies to be sued
because of what they wrote ever so innocently in email.
Rule #1: Treat email as you would any corporate correspondence
Most employees would agree that it's inappropriate to loudly
tell sexual or racist jokes at the office. It's no more appropriate
to transmit the same by email, says Jon G. Miller, a labor and
employment attorney with Berger Kahn, Irvine, Calif.
Employees should not use email to spread rumors about coworkers.
They need to know that they can be sued for defamation, Miller
says. Email can last a long time. It's not like talk around the
water cooler that eventually goes away.
In addition, if you're sending company proprietary information,
it should be done within the confines of the company email system,
he says. Employees are at risk of being liable to their companies,
their companies' vendors and customers if they steal confidential
information by email. It's no different whether the information
was carried out of the building, physically, or sent by email
to a competitor's computer.
Rule #2: Assume you are being watched.
While statistics vary, the American Marketing Association reported
in its 2001 survey that nearly 50% of the companies reported storing
and reviewing email messages.
Rule #3: There is no privacy when it comes to email.
Employees have no reasonable expectation of privacy of emails
they send or receive at the office; says Mark Grossman, chair
the technology law group of Becker & Poliakoff. "The
employer pretty much has an unbridled right to monitor their email.
Employees should always assume if they want privacy they should
use email on their personal accounts from home," he says.
Grossman has seen it time and time again: employers monitor email
and learn about employees' misconduct. Employees assume their
email messages are private-just like a phone call, he says. But
the truth is that emails are black and white and live indefinitely
on the corporate hard drive.
Rule #4: Beware of email work groups-mailing lists that
send your message to multiple people with one click
Brendan Nolan, CEO of Ireland-based Waterford Technologies, makers
of MailMeter, recommends that employees and companies limit or
eliminate work group lists on email because they generate so much
unnecessary traffic. People receiving emails on these lists (unless
the lists are meticulously managed) often don't need to see the
emails. Then, if someone responds to all the recipients, recipients
have yet another useless email to open and delete. Even deleting
takes time, Nolan says, "about six seconds."
Employees should ask to be removed from CC and BCC lists, when
appropriate. When sending the emails, the best approach is to
send emails directly to people who need to read them, without
using pre-compiled CC and BCC lists.
Work groups also tend to get people in trouble because employees
often don't remember who is on the list. People who are not privy
to certain information might receive it erroneously, Lang says.
Rule #5: Use personal email for personal messages
"One good piece of practical advice for employees who often
receive off-colored jokes is to have an email account at your
home and email friends those sorts of jokes, if you want to receive
them, should be sent to your home email," Miller says.
If contents of email at work ever become an issue, attorneys
might hire a forensic computer analyst to look at the company's
computer hard drive, which will have all or fragments of those
emails.
Rule #6: Realize personal email use can get out of hand
without you realizing it.
Users need to take responsibility for personal emails they receive
and send from the office. Often, employees don't realize the volume
until BVRP shows them a report of their usage, according to Nolan.
Rule #7: Be honest but strategic in your email messages
at work
Peggy Klaus, a Berkeley, Calif. based corporate communication
consultant, and author of BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Own
Horn Without Blowing It, tells the story of an email gone
bad:
The director of development at a company needed to hire a person
to develop software. The company's COO suggested the director
get in touch with someone she knew personally and professionally.
The director dragged his feet and had not yet called when the
COO followed up a short time after making the recommendation.
When the director of development finally made the call, he found
the COO's referral was perfect for the job. In his enthusiasm,
the director sent an email to the company's CEO, claiming to have
found this excellent candidate and never mentioning the COO's
part in landing the new employee.
The COO became furious that he was taking all the credit and
sent the CEO a note detailing her involvement. The CEO responded
by sending an email to everyone on the executive committee letting
them know what actually transpired and warning employees to give
credit where it is due.
It was a slap in the face to the director of development, Klaus
says. "When a job came up that he wanted about six months
later, he didn't get it because there was still a question about
fair play."
Klaus says the director of development could have bragged about
hiring this employee but needed to give credit to his co-worker.
His intentions mattered little because the email was "in
black and white."
It's also a problem when supervisors and others send notes without
taking any of the credit for themselves. If they've led a team
to a successful quarter, for example, they should commend the
team members but mention their leadership.
"Email is powerful-often more powerful than a letter or
phone call. I always think it's a good idea to read emails out
loud before sending them. Sometimes, it helps to delay their distribution,
just in case you think of something you shouldn't have or should
have said in the email. Once you click 'send,' it's out there-very
possibly for the world to see," says , director
of marketing, MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and
professional community that targets jobseekers and HR professionals
in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science.
