Use Instant Messaging Survey Results to Sell Executives on the Merits of Your Instant Messaging Program

Executive training is a good time to introduce the findings of your in-house IM risk-assessment survey (see Chapter 2). Use your survey results to demonstrate to the executive team that:

1. Employees are already using IM without authorization, rules, or policies. Drive home the point by sharing specific figures— the percentage or number of employees who have brought personal IM tools in through the back door and are using them right now.

2. Employees are regularly engaging in risky instant messaging behavior that could trigger lawsuits or other e-disasters. Did many of the employees surveyed confess to using IM to transmit adult-oriented content or otherwise objectionable material? Share your findings with executives.

3. The organization needs to manage instant messaging business records in an appropriate manner to ensure legal and regulatory compliance. Does your executive committee know that IM creates business records that can be used as legal evidence for or against the organization? Are they aware that failure to retain business record instant messages according to government and industry regulations could result in six-figure fines or jail time?

4. An investment in instant messaging tools, training, and management technology today could prevent the likelihood of a potentially costly instant messaging disaster striking the organization tomorrow.

Employers cite legal liability as the number-one reason to monitor employee e-mail. ^[6] No wonder, considering the facts. Under the legal principle of vicarious liability, an employer may be held responsible for the wrong acts of employees. One in twenty employers has already battled a lawsuit triggered by employee e-mail, and 14 percent of organizations have had e-mail subpoenaed in the course of litigation or an investigation. ^[7]

Fortunately, the courts tend to look favorably upon organizations that establish policy and educate employees. An IM policy and training program may provide your organization with a defense against a sexual harassment lawsuit or a claim of a hostile work environment.

The resources (financial and human) your organization invests today in an IM system (an enterprise system or a gateway product that enables the controlled use of consumer-grade IM software), policy development, employee education, and technology to monitor and block content, retain and archive messages, and enhance security would be dwarfed by the potential costs associated with an IM-related lawsuit or investigation that includes the extensive, time-consuming discovery of IM business records.

^[6]‘‘2001 AMA, US News, ePolicy Institute Survey: Electronic Policies and Practices,’’ conducted by the American Management Association, US News & World Report, and The ePolicy Institute. Survey findings available online at www.epolicyinstitute.com.

^[7]‘‘2003 E-Mail Rules, Policies, and Practices Survey,’’ conducted by American Management Association, The ePolicy Institute, and Clearswift. Survey findings available online at www.epolicyinstitute.com.