E-Mail Policy: Avoiding Hidden Risks

In today's business environment, organizations must be aware of potential liabilities by developing and implementing comprehensive management programs that address e-mail creation, content, retention, privacy, and deletion. E-mail has replaced the telephone call as the preferred means of business communication. Through e-mail threads, employees record their thoughts and read the thoughts of others. Wrongful statements, disparaging remarks, and off-color jokes can be read at future dates. The result is written ammunition that can make or break organizations should a lawsuit or criminal action follow.

In recent litigation about diet pills, some of the most embarrassing evidence against the manufacturer came from internal e-mail exchanges among its own employees. One insensitive message reported an employee expressing her dismay at the thought of spending the balance of her career paying "fat people who are a little afraid of some silly lung problem." The remark was a reflection of the employee's attitude to a rare but fatal condition some diet-pill users developed. Of course, the judge and jury in awarding damages carefully considered these e-mail messages.

In the past, if an investigator was trying to discover what employees were saying or thinking at a given time, the best evidence would generally come from notepads, calendars, diaries, desk pad scrawl, and other informal documents. However, with the use of the computer workstation and the prevalence of e-mail in the workplace, experts can have access to a virtual library of written documents located on hard drives, file servers, and backup media. E-mail records provide important insight about how decisions were made and the timeframe in which they were made. The fact that organizations lack viable e-mail policies means that senior managers do not give it the priority it deserves. It is a mission-critical tool present in daily business and personal life. If not managed properly, e-mail can pose serious risks.