5 percent of people scolded for inappropriate email use

Contributed by Charles Nguyen (Lundi, 23 août 2010) | Category : Email messaging trends

As more companies have opted to implement email archiving solutions and other measures to monitor employee correspondence, examples of email abuse have received greater attention. A survey recently revealed 5 percent of people in the UK have been scolded for inappropriate corporate email use.

The survey was conducted in conjunction with the DVD release of Going Postal, a fantasy film with a central plot involving mail. Among the actions receiving reprimands were the sending of inappropriate jokes, angry emails and other issues that could bring negative publicity to their employer. Furthermore, emails mistakenly sent to someone being criticized in the message was the reason several people were punished.

Twenty-eight percent of men admitted to sending a message to someone they ridiculed in the email, whie 17 percent of women reported doing so.

A number of instances of corporate email abuse have been noted in 2010. Most notably, an employee of Air New Zealand, who worked with the company for more than 20 years, lost his job when he responded to an email from a superior with a series of rude comments. The employee, Grant Fife, intended to send the message to a coworker, but included his supervisor's email address in the message instead.