Business E-Mail Policy

What is the general business e-mail policy for most companies?

Most corporations have general e-mail policies regarding sexually explicit material, forwarding of jokes, those types of things that are generally offensive to just about everybody. Beyond that, most corporations have e-mail policies regarding such things as the use of mass distribution lists. You can't solicit to everyone within a company something. There's been stories where people are leaving a company, and so they're trying to find a new job, so they'll send a blanket e-mail to everyone. Those types of things companies have really limited, so they may not give a mass distribution list to everyone within a company for those types of reasons.

What is an 'IRP'?

An IRP stands for information retention policy. Many corporations today are instituting information retention policies around how long information can be retained for, specifically e-mail. So in other words, they may set a limit for 90 days in your inbox for an e-mail and maybe 12 months or 15 months for e-mails in your hanging folders, folders that you are storing information in e-mails.

Can I forward personal e-mail into business e-mail?

Generally from most businesses they don't have a problem with it, some have there as a corporate policy then its justs have business e-mails but they realise that Kids may be in the day care center and the day care center may be communicating with their parent via an e-mail. They may be checking upon someone, a loved one its in a hospital and suppose waiting for an e-mail from your sister in a west course, so generally most companies have a blackend policy but its not strictly enforced elastic glossary over abused

What sites are not allowed to be viewed at the office of most businesses?

Sites that companies watch or put restrictions to, or anything where you're seeing the word sex, or hot, or babes, words that are going to obviously draw attention to pornographic sites, those types of things. So, we all know what those words are, and trying to avoid sites that have those words would be in the best interest of the user.

Can I check my myspace at the office?

Generally, checking MySpace at work is not encouaged by most companies that we work with. MySpace is a forum that has loose policies, per say, to what's actually on there. There can be some offensive material in some cases, that may not be suitable for the workplace environment. So generally, staying off of those type of sites would be recommended to most business professionals, and leaving that to your personal time.

What is the 'close of business' e-mail policy?

Some companies have instituted policies to try to tame e-mail. So they will put into a policy into effect saying, "Hey, please respond to all e-mail before the close of business." The challenge with that is what constitutes a reply. So most cases where we see this instituted at about 4:30, 4:15 generally everyday people are typing back, "Got your e-mail." "OK" "Working on it." "Sure" "OK." It constitutes as a reply but it doesn't really do anything in terms of closing a loop of that communication. It actually adds to the volume. It is very difficult to understand what close of business means for most people. Close of business for someone could mean 5:00 or 5:30. It could be when I close up business later that day when I stop doing work maybe at home after I put the kids to bed and that can be 10:40 at night.

What is a 'no scrolling' e-mail policy?

Some companies have instituted a no-scroll policy, meaning the scroll bar on the side of an email. When you open up an email, you're given about four to five inches to type a message. If you go beyond that, the bar to the right begins to scroll, and you begin to move down on the page. Companies institute this because that's a pretty large space that you've already been given to type a message. If you can't fit the message in there, perhaps you should rethink the message.

What are 'No E-mail Fridays'?

No e-mail Friday is an attempt at some companies to limit the amount of e-mail and try to restore some of the face to face communications. But we are so reliant on e-mail today, and we all operate in it so much, we feel very comfortable there, so most people find a work around. So a company that institutes a policy like "Hey let's not e-mail on Friday, let's all have conversations," people tend to do all their e-mails all day long on Friday but just will use the function of delay sending them at midnight that night or Saturday morning. So what results is a huge amount of e-mails at midnight, crashing servers and IT people having to come in over the weekend to repair. Most corporations that we see that have instituted things like no e-mail Fridays are very unsuccessful because people work around them.