Here’s some sobering stats on employees’ personal use of corporate email, courtesy of the Ruth Mantell at the Wall Street Journal:
- 71% of full-time employees with a company-assigned email account at least sometimes use it for personal communications.
- 89% of workers say admit to sending email from work to an outside party that contained jokes, gossip, rumors, or disparaging remarks.
- 14% sent messages that contained confidential or proprietary information.
- 9% admitted to sending sexual, romantic, or pornographic text or images.
In other words, you employees are likely using email and other corporate technologies inappropriately. Yet, according to a 2009 survey by the the American Management Association, only 80% of organizations have written email policies, and only 47% of employers train workers about policies, risks, and appropriate use.
Are you one of the 20% of employers that does not have a policy to cover email and its appropriate use? Do you want to trust the common sense of your employees not to spend all day reading personal emails, or, even worse, divulge confidences or sexually harass coworkers?
Presented by Kohrman Jackson & Krantz, with offices in Cleveland and Columbus. For more information, contact Jon Hyman, a partner in our Labor & Employment group, at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com.