Let Employees Know How Much Personal IM Use Is Allowed

IM Rule # 19: Use instant messaging policy to provide clear guidelines for employees’ personal use.

Employee use of IM for personal communications raises two significant concerns:

1. Abusive or otherwise inappropriate language can trigger litigation.

   Scenario: When writing a personal instant message to a buddy, an employee might be tempted to disregard your organization’s IM content and language rules and send a message that contains an off-color joke, racy language, or otherwise inappropriate or offensive content.

   If that personal message were to trigger litigation (a sexual harassment or hostile work environment claim, for example), the organization likely would be held responsible for the violation, not the individual employee. The burden of legal fees and settlement costs, lost productivity, and damaged reputation would be shouldered by the organization, not the employee who wrote the message.

2. Personal information may be retained, unwittingly, along with business records. The result: Employees are embarrassed, and the organization possibly damaged when a personal instant message is found with business records.

   Scenario: In a personal instant message to a spouse, an employee discusses private or sensitive information about a child’s behavioral problems, the couple’s pending bankruptcy, or a family member’s arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol— confidential information intended for the reader’s eyes only.

   That sort of highly confidential, sensitive information could come back to haunt the sender, the recipient, and the organization were it to be intercepted on the public Internet, or subpoenaed as evidence in a lawsuit or regulatory investigation.