09/ 27/ 2005
by Judy Artunian
Six years ago, Richard Laermer suffered an e-mail meltdown. Laermer, owner of New York-based RLM Public Relations, poured out his frustrations with an under-performing employee in an e-mail to the firm’s managing director. Unfortunately, Laermer accidentally sent the e-mail to the employee himself.
“It was a nightmare,” he recalls. “I called him every name in the book in that e-mail.”
The employee quit the next day and threatened to sue RLM for harassment if the firm didn’t give him a generous severance package. Laermer complied--and then implemented a company rule that banned employees from discussing interpersonal conflicts in e-mail messages.
The best way to reduce your company’s risk of being sued over an e-mail faux pas is to follow Laermer’s lead and establish rules that detail how employees (executives included) are permitted to use e-mail. In addition to prohibiting messages that could get personal, establish dos and don’ts for using e-mail to negotiate pricing and other matters with customers and suppliers. Then, enforce your rules. “Let employees know that failure to comply with e-mail policies will result in disciplinary action,” says Nancy Flynn, executive director of Columbus, Ohio-based ePolicy Institute.
Your rules should also cover e-mail retention. E-mail records should be saved for the same length of time that you retain paper records. Investing in software that automatically archives e-mail could save you money in the long run. Messages from corporate e-mail systems are often subpoenaed in the course of lawsuits or regulatory investigations. Companies that can’t produce e-mail records have faced costly sanctions and fines.
“There are no rules in the law that say just because you are using alternative business technologies you can disregard your recordkeeping policies and disregard your compliance requirements,” says Randolph Kahn, founder of Kahn Consulting, a Highland Park, Ill.-based firm specializing in legal and policy issues related to information and information technology.
