"The dangers attached to improper business e-mails have been growing in recent years with the arrival of new technologies and a cultural change in methods of communication. Credit crisis or no credit crisis, businesses would be well advised to remind themselves of the pressing need to address this issue" – as Paul Tombleson of KPMG’s Advisory practice explains.
Many people will have heard at least one story of some poor unfortunate who was caught out, using business e-mail in an inappropriate or misguided fashion. Remember the lawyer whose e-mails to his secretary, insisting she recompense him for a small dry cleaning charge after an accident with a bottle of ketchup, became a matter of public record? It was no laughing matter for him when the subsequent furore over the treatment of his PA forced him out of his post.
Neither is it a laughing matter for the hundreds and thousands of businesses who run the risk – on a daily basis – of an employee using business e-mail for something inappropriate. Too few businesses treat e-mails as genuine business documents and therefore fail to appreciate the full risks inherent in this ubiquitous form of communication.
There is a degree of familiarity which pervades the way many people use e-mail – in terms of the information they happily divulge or the more relaxed style which they often employ – that would rarely be replicated in other forms of communication. Yet millions of e-mails are constantly circulating (and billions more are stored on servers and back-ups), many of which could potentially expose businesses to risks connected to data security or data privacy or which could result in law suits, libel cases, personal harassment cases and the like.
The feeling that businesses should get serious on the issue of inappropriate email usage has been building for some time. To a large extent, that concern has been firmly sidelined by the credit crisis; after all, senior management has bigger things to worry about.
There is an argument that certain risks can be glossed over in happier economic times; with the fall-out absorbed by healthier looking profit margins and a rather more positive business outlook. That luxury is now long gone. The risk of an inappropriate email may seem trivial or inconsequential to a corporate suffering from the effects of the economic downturn, but it could cause very real damage; the metaphoric straw to break the camel’s back. Paradoxically, the advent of the credit crisis actually provides the justification for tackling this issue, not for sweeping it under the carpet.
One of the greatest dangers to business is a cultural one - the relaxed style in which people use e-mail and the way other alternative, personal e-mail accounts are employed while at work. The latter rarely have the sorts of security controls in place which you would find around a business e-mail account, providing hackers with a handy way of circumventing corporate firewalls. As for the style in which we communicate, that’s surely a direct result of new mobile devices and the prevalence of information around us which has created a culture of abbreviated, rapid-fire communication; a sort of “saw it, sent it” approach to our personal communications.
Finding an answer to this problem can prove challenging. No business wants to enter ‘Big Brother’ territory, implementing endless rules and guidelines which can only serve to stifle creativity. However, neither do they want this culture of e-mail over-familiarity to expose the organisation to further risks. There has to be some sort of sensible middle ground. In a time when the accumulation of e-mail can lend a near-claustrophobic feel to any office environment and can create a “cover your back” mentality which perpetuates the e-mail merry-go-round, anything which reduces the amount of e-mail traffic and the volumes of data stored should surely also be welcomed. The resulting productivity improvements alone would prove valuable to any business right now.
However, if a tougher regime is the answer, then changes need to be implemented sensitively as a person’s email account is, rightly or wrongly, seen as a natural extension of their work persona. Many businesses may feel that now is not the time to be concerning themselves with this issue – but I can assure them it is not about to go away.
Paul Tombleson is an Advisory partner with KPMG in the U.K.
