Find out why you should adopt a policy on employee use of email -- and what you should put in it.

Do you make computers and email available to your employees? If so, you should seriously consider adopting a policy explaining the rules for using email -- and reserving your right to monitor the messages sent and received on company computers.

Benefits of Having an Email Policy

There are several very good reasons to adopt an email policy. First and foremost, you need to let your employees know that you may monitor their messages. Even if you have never read employee email and don't plan to make it your regular practice, you should protect your right to do so. If you don't, you might find yourself unable to investigate claims of harassment, discrimination, theft, and other misconduct -- or threatened with a lawsuit by an employee who claims that your investigation violated his or her privacy.

Consider these statistics: In a 1999 survey commissioned by Elron Software, more than 60% of workers admitted to sending or receiving adult-oriented personal email at work; more than 55% admitted to sending or receiving personal email messages that are racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive; one in ten employees admitted receiving confidential information about another company in personal email, and a significant number admitted sending messages that included confidential information about their own companies.

If you are ever faced with an employee who uses email to transmit pornographic images, reveal trade secrets, or send racist or sexist messages -- and these statistics demonstrate that you may very well find yourself in this position -- you will have to read the messages to figure out what to do. If you don't have a policy warning employees that you can read their messages at any time, an employee might sue you for violation of privacy. Although these lawsuits are generally unsuccessful -- that is, employees have lost most of them -- you'll still have to spend time and money to defend yourself in court.