E-mail Etiquette for Employees and Execs

March 8, 2005 — -- It's fast, convenient and accessible. But the wonders of electronic communications -- e-mail and instant messaging -- in the workplace can also bring woes to employees and executives. Just ask Harry Stonecipher, the recently deposed chief executive officer of aircraft maker Boeing.

On Monday, the 68-year-old CEO was ousted when the company's board of directors learned he was having a consensual affair with a female executive.

Who snitched? In part, it was Stonecipher himself. According to The Wall Street Journal, a "very graphic" e-mail sent by the CEO to his paramour was discovered by another employee -- who promptly tipped off the company's board.

Stonecipher's embarrassing exposure and expulsion is just the latest example of a well-known, but oft-neglected, workplace axiom: Business and pleasure don't mix -- especially in corporate e-mail systems.

"There certainly have been a lot of high-profile cases where someone's e-mail has gotten them in trouble at work," said Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a corporate training and consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio. "You would think by now people would know that a corporate e-mail system is not a personal, secure way to communicate."

Still, sending a personal e-mail or conducting a quick "instant message" chat while at the workplace is something millions of workers continue to do on a daily basis.

While most of these personal communiqués are hardly risqué, some workers do electronically pass along jokes and gossip and sexual or even pornographic content. Companies are wising up to ramifications and taking harder stances on illicit e-mail use.

"There's a principle called vicarious responsibility," said Flynn. "Employers can be held responsible for the wrongful acts of employees. So, if an employee sends an inappropriate message, it's most likely the employer that will be sued."

Flynn says employees and executives can avoid e-mail scandals and potential legal problems if they remember some important key points about electronic office communications.

"When you're using your company's e-mail system, that belongs to the employer and they have a right to monitor messages and turn them over to investigative bodies," said Flynn.

And new laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 require companies to maintain e-mail records should questions of corporate financial disclosures arise.

"If your organization's retaining and archiving e-mail, that personal message could be archived for years and it can come back to haunt you," said Flynn. "Your personal e-mail messages could become part of the evidence pool in a case that's not even related to you."

For effective -- and safe -- workplace e-mails, Flynn offers some of these tips:

"To an employee, acceptable use might be to spend six hours a day e-mailing the members of her softball team. But to an employer, it might be [just] 15 minutes a day on personal e-mails to family and spouses," said Flynn. "Employers need to spell it out and they cannot leave that particular rule out to individual interpretation."

"Just because someone's sitting in the corner office doesn't mean they are knowledgeable about the policy. We've had many cases where the company CEO has gotten himself or the company in trouble because of what he e-mailed," said Flynn. "Whatever the disciplinary action is, it should apply to everyone, regardless of job title. [Boeing] is a case where the enforcement did apply."