Does Your Company Have an E-Mail and IM Policy?
According to a recent survey of company practices, twenty percent (20%) of U.S. companies have had employee e-mail subpoenaed in the course of some kind of litigation or regulatory investigation. There is a reasonably good chance, then, that your organization will have to produce e-mail relating to some kind of investigation in the near future. Is your company ready for such an event? According to the survey,
less than 10% of organizations retain and archive Instant Messenger (IM) business records, and only about 1/3 of companies have an e-mail retention policy in place.
Despite increasingly heavy use of IM in the workplace, including IM attachments by almost 20% of companies; and significant numbers of company representatives admitting to using IM to send jokes, gossip, rumors, or disparaging remarks, confidential information about the company, a co-worker, or clients, and sexual, romantic, or pornographic content, most companies do a poor job of handling e-mail and IM.
Nevertheless, 54% of respondents say their organizations conduct e-mail policy training. The summary of the survey may be useful to share with others in your organization!
Here are some additional internet resources on electronic evidence in litigation. And here is a brief discussion of a recent discrimination case (Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC), in which the court had much to say about a company where employees deleted or failed to hand over some potentially relevant emails. Companies look out!
