Only 40 percent of organizations surveyed by AMA, ePolicy Institute, and Clearswift use software to control employees’ e-mail content. More troubling is the fact that merely 19 percent of employers use software to monitor the internal e-mail communications that take place among employees. [4]
Management’s failure to check internal e-mail is a disaster in the making. Off-the-cuff, casual e-mail conversations among employees are exactly the type of messages that tend to trigger lawsuits, arm prosecutors with potentially damaging evidence, and provide the media with headline-making e-disaster stories.
The facts paint a disturbing picture of workplace electronic communications: Two-thirds of employees use IM for personal conversations during working hours; [5] 90 percent of employees send and receive personal e-mail at work; [6] 66 percent of companies lack a policy for deleting nonessential e-mail messages; [7] and 43 percent of regulated businesses have no e-mail retention policy in place. [8]
[4]Ibid.
[5]Silicon.com press release, ‘‘Flirting, Pornography, and Bad Language—How Staff Use IM’’ (September 15, 2003). Blue Coat Systems commissioned the survey of 200 workplace IM users in the UK. www.silicon.com/news/500012/1/6004.html.
[6]‘‘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.
[7]Ibid.
[8]Jeff Brandes, ‘‘The Role of Secure Archiving in the E-Mail Life Cycle,’’ Infostor (November 2003), www.infostor.com.