|
The first level of defense seems simple: a written policy that frames how employees should use electronic communication tools. A good one mitigates risk by spelling out what company equipment can be used for and what kind of information can and can't be disclosed. It also serves to keep employees focused on their actual jobs while on company time and equipment. Even the best policies won't prevent honest mistakes and poor judgment, and many lack enough detail to be truly effective. But they do get employees to think more carefully about what they're saying or sending.
In a survey last year, the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute in Columbus, Ohio, found that more than 80% of the 526 responding companies had written policies governing the use of email and the Internet, though only a quarter had a policy that covered blogs. More than half of respondents said they had disciplined employees for improperly using email or the Internet; about a quarter had fired employees for such behavior.
Very public examples of poor judgment and even illegal actions aren't hard to find. In 1999, British law firm Norton Rose was humiliated worldwide when one of its junior lawyers, Bradley Chait, forwarded a lewd email discussion that started out as a private sex joke from his girlfriend. The email made the rounds of millions of inboxes around the globe, to the embarrassment of both Chait and his employers. (Chait was disciplined but kept his job.)
Former Credit Suisse Group Inc. banker Frank Quattrone fared worse. He was convicted of obstruction of justice and witness tampering after he circulated a fellow executive's email encouraging colleagues to "clean up" their files on the eve of a government investigation of his firm in 2000. (A federal court recently overturned Quattrone's convictions because the jury had been given faulty instructions; a federal prosecutor will decide if Quattrone will be retried.) In addition to suffering a massive blow to its reputation, the firm has paid millions for Quattrone's legal fees.
Another big issue is porn. Whether or not it's practiced on company time with company equipment, it makes an employer vulnerable to costly allegations of sexual harassment. That's why the Automobile Club of Southern California fired 27 employees who posted comments about their co-workers' bodies and sexual orientation on the social networking site MySpace.com.
To get a better idea of how midsized companies are managing employee use of electronic communications, we asked the experts: midmarket IT executives. And their approaches depend largely on their industries. The strictest policy we found was in place at an investment bank; the most lax at a Bible publisher. Here's what we found.
|
