The ePolicy Handbook

Designing and Implementing Effective E-mail, Internet, and Software Policies, by Nancy Flynn, offers the tools, resources, and guidance to any company interested in managing its own e-risk.

Published by AMACOM Books - www.amacombooks.org.

Chapter 4: Developing an Effective E-Risk Management Policy.

In the age of electronic communication, there simply is no way to guarantee a completely risk-free workplace. Employers can, however, limit their liability by developing and implementing comprehensive e-risk management programs that address document creation and content, document retention and deletion, e-policy enforcement, and employee privacy expectations.

Give Your Employees Rules to Work By. To help reduce exposures and manage overall e-risks, responsible employers must establish and enforce policies governing employees' electronic writing. Settle for nothing less than good, clean commentary running through your employees' e-mail.

Good e-mail is businesslike and free of obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise offensive language. Good e-mail is well-written and free from mechanical errors and structural problems. To ensure that your employees' electronic communication is as effective as possible, institute and enforce an electronic writing policy as part of your comprehensive e-policy. To guarantee that your employees' content is as appropriate as possible, be sure to incorporate cyberlanguage guidelines into your e-mail policy.

Sample Content Statement: Employees may not use ABC Corp's e-mail system, network, or Internet/Intranet access for offensive or harassing statements or language, including disparagement of others based on their race, colour, religion, national origin, veteran status, ancestry, disability, age, sex, or sexual orientation.

Analysis: This content statement leaves nothing to chance. Employees will have no trouble understanding what they are and are not allowed to write.

Establish a Document Retention and Deletion Policy.

While originally intended to be a quick and convenient way to communicate, e-mail is being used more formally today. Contracts and other documents can be "electronically signed" over the Internet. Many organisations use e-mail to record business communications for posterity. Coupled with all that professional use, however, is an enormous amount of recreational activity.

Back in the precomputer days, space limitations forced most companies to purge their paper files periodically. Today, electronic files can be, and often are, saved indefinitely. That's a bad choice.

One of the most important components of a successful e-risk management program is an electronic document retention policy. If your company is like most, you probably don't have a formal policy for naming, archiving, or purging electronic files. Now is the time to put into place a document retention policy that spells out for employees how to categorise files, where to store files, and when and how to destroy files.

There Is No Good Reason to Save E-Mail Files.

Backing up e-mail is equivalent to tape recording telephone conversations. There is no good reason to do so. There is, however, a compelling reason not to do so. If you are sued for some sort of workplace violation, every e-mail message that is backed up, both formal and informal documents, could be subject to review.

Are you using e-mail to document or memorialise business decisions? If so, those messages probably are intermingled with less formal, potentially damaging e-mail that could cost you your case. The best advice? Some experts say you should retain nothing. After all what isn't in there can't hurt you.