Privacy, Business and Law

E-mail has become an important mode of communication between co-workers, especially in technology-related companies. The traditional conversations “around the water cooler” have been replaced by cyber-talk. E-mail is a wonderful, efficient mode of communication. Unfortunately, it has an incredibly long half-life.

Some companies defending employment claims have found out the hard way that it is possible to retrieve e-mail messages, even years after they have been “deleted.” While conversations around the water cooler will probably be forgotten years later, or at least their details will be fuzzy to participants trying to recall what was said, the details of a statement in e-mail form will be preserved with absolute clarity years later. One does not have to be a lawyer to imagine how damaging it might be in an age discrimination case for an e-mail message from the plaintiff’s former manager to have been unearthed that says something like “b/t/w, I think Jack is just too old to ever learn how to use our spreadsheet program.”

The advice here is easy. Managers should be reminded periodically that what they put into an e-mail may wind up in the hands of an attorney looking for ways to get rich off the company’s shareholders.

by Dan Weisberg “10 Mistakes Technology Companies Make With Employees”