Many employees send the odd personal email from work – but now only a third of them can confirm they’re sending only appropriate work emails.

It starts off innocuously enough. A Microsoft Sharepoint specialist company, Lightning Tools, decided to do a little research on how its customers were actually using email services. Most striking among the questions, for sheer brass neck apart from anything, was “do you feel that you use company email inappropriately?”

32% said they did.

That’s the people who admitted, albeit anonymously, that they were happy to use their work communications systems inappropriately. This is of course speculation but you can probably add a fair number to that to take account of people who use the system inappropriately but would rather not tell the boss, thanks.

Inappropriacy

So what are they actually doing – and are your colleagues doing the same?

It’s important to stress first of all that most employers will accept that people are going to send the odd email or put in the odd personal call, do the odd bit of personal web surfing, on the company’s systems. Many of the wiser ones have an actual policy in place. They allow people to use the Internet for their personal use but they ask that this happens at lunchtime or during the last hour or so of the working day.

That keeps a lid on it and it means most of the traffic the IT department or ISP has to handle during most of the day is bona fide work-related stuff. If this were all the people in the survey were doing it wouldn’t actually matter that much.

Unfortunately there’s more.

Internet humour

There’s that feeling we all get when the Office Wag sends round the latest piece of manufactured Internet comedy they’ve found. Either they’ve seen a picture of a dog falling off a skateboard or a wedding reception’s been ruined by a drunk woman attempting to pole dance in a tent and bringing the whole lot down and it’s on YouTube (no, those examples really are on YouTube) and someone’s decided to send them round.

Or there’s a picture of something funny. Or a joke doing the rounds. 41% of respondents confirmed that they were using their office Internet connection for this sort of purpose.

Gossip – is this inappropriate?

48% of resp0ndents confirmed that they used the office email system to gossip – just exchange chit-chat about what was going on. 11% said they’d used the office email to make social arrangements to meet outside of work.

Personally I find it interesting that they categorised these things as “inappropriate”. People who work in an office environment don’t usually consider that they’re abusing the office floor when they stand by the coffee machine and arrange to meet up for a drink, or that they’re making inappropriate use of the office noticeboard if they want to suggest a five-a-side football match against the company down the road. As long as it’s excessive you might even think a good manager will encourage this sort of personal interplay as it might make for a happier workforce which will therefore be more productive.

Genuinely inappropriate

Less comfortable reading is the fact that 11% of the workforce questioned admitted to using office networks for flirting with colleagues. This can be fine but it can also be a manager’s headache as it gets out of hand and the flirting isn’t wanted. Least appropriate of all was the individual who confirmed that they had used the office network to send “nude images” of themselves to a fellow employee. Guys, get a room.

A mobile complication

An extra layer of complication for anyone trying to manage this sort of set-up is that so much of office email can happen outside the office premises now. Productivity is definitely increased by the ability to work wherever you are, and the business benefits outweigh any minor drawbacks, but monitoring email activity is less simple than it could otherwise have been.

A fairly clear first step, as I’ve said on this blog before, is to employ grown-ups who are likely to behave themselves and who respond well to this sort of trust.

Policy

Another sensible precaution is to have a policy in place, as I said about social media on Monday (see the article by clicking here). There are obvious cases like Mr. or Mrs. Nudie sending pictures of themselves which will be beyond the pale, but these people know they’re doing something unacceptable to many colleagues. Most would welcome guidelines including:

• Times when they’re welcome to use the Net to book theatre tickets, make arrangements with friends.
• A clear understanding that sending a quick email to colleagues or friends if you’re delayed on a train is absolutely fine.
• Guidelines as to what’s unacceptable, either due to decency or plain costs – texting from a delayed train is likely to be fine, streaming or downloading a movie to pass the time is likely to eat into a data contract and therefore probably isn’t.
• Any sanction if these guidelines are breached.

Most employees react well to sensible guidelines like these.

Lightning Tools, meanwhile, believes part of the problem is that email itself is less appropriate for some communications and is pushing people towards a more social form of communication based around internal forums for individual companies. This sort of Intranet technology can work well and is available inexpensively at around £30 a head from Google as part of Google Apps, for example, if you know what you’re doing in setting up a shared website.

But appropriacy of Internet use, email and social media are surely managerial issues primarily. Giving people access to the tools is fine; give most sensible people guidelines on what to do with them to fulfil their contract and the chances are they’ll do it.

Guy Clapperton