Email mistakes that can hurt your business
Email is both a boon and a real hassle for businesses. It allows you to send a quick message to your customers or your employees at a branch hundreds of miles away. But it can also leave you vulnerable to viruses that can crash your server, spam that can consume much of your day, and can put sensitive company information into public cyberspace. What should you do to protect your business?
1. Mistake #1: You don’t have any policies in place for the use of your email system. If you don’t want your employees to use company time and resources to send pornography, bad jokes, or company secrets, your company needs a written policy that all employees must follow. It should start with who can use the email system and for what purposes. You should consult your attorney (and you should have a business attorney as part of your team) who can advise you on privacy and compliance issues. The written policy must be distributed to all employees as part of the employee handbook or on its own if you do not have such a handbook or handbook. Its content should be part of the training that all employees undergo when they start working in your company. And your policies should be reviewed once a year to make sure they’re up to date with the law.
2. Mistake #2: You don’t have any security for your business emails. We have all experienced. Spam wastes hours of your employees’ time, even if they are smart enough to delete it. They waste even more time if their employees open up and read them. You need security systems that filter and monitor your email so that viruses and spam have a harder time getting through. There are companies you can hire, or computer hardware and software you can buy. The form of protection you choose will be a balance between the size of your company, the size of your IT department (if there is one), and the amount of money you want to spend.
3. Mistake #3: Your employees use the company email system for private purposes. If your employees are using the company’s email system, the recipient of the email assumes that the employee represents the company in relation to the content of the email. But what if your employee is using the company email system for their own private business and there is a legal issue between your employee and the recipient of that email? Your company will be part of any lawsuit that arises because the recipient of that email believed, correctly or incorrectly, that your employee was acting as a representative of your company. Even if he can get his company dismissed from this lawsuit, he has now spent time and money on attorneys to clear his name. And all because he had no policy against the use of the company email system by his employees for private purposes.
4. Mistake #4 – You monitor your employees’ emails without their knowledge. You are curious about whether an employee is looking to leave the company and take company secrets or client lists with them. So you start opening their emails to read them without their knowledge. You may be in legal trouble, called an invasion of privacy, if you have not created and informed your employees of a policy that allows them to read any and all email that is sent or received on the company’s email system. business.
5. Mistake #5: You don’t have a company policy on email storage. Most companies delete emails after they have been on the computer server for a period of time. But emails are increasingly being used as evidence in court. Additionally, certain industries are required to retain emails, such as the financial and health care industries. Your company should have procedures and policies in place about what types of email should be kept and archived and which can be deleted.
As a former general counsel for a national mortgage lender, Ms. Gronsky has experience in corporate matters, national mortgage licensing, and all facets of real estate transactions.