Company e-mail: to monitor or not to monitor. (Up front: news, trends & analysis).

Access to e-mail and the Internet has been widely considered a workplace benefit in the last decade, but some companies are revisiting their usage policies. The 2001 Electronic Policies and Practices (EPP) Survey, a recent survey from the American Management Association, U.S. News & World Report, and The ePolicy Institute, finds that employers have become increasingly aware of the dangers in workplace computer use and are taking steps to reduce their liabilities.

Of the 435 employers surveyed, nearly 62 percent exercise their legal right to monitor employees' e-mail and Internet connections. Among employers who monitor, more than 68 percent state legal liability as their primary concern.

While monitoring could seem like a privacy intrusion to an employee, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) gives employers a legal right to protect themselves by monitoring all e-mail and Internet activity on the company system.

To prevent any misunderstandings by their employees, organizations increasingly are developing computer usage policies. According to the EPP Survey, nearly 84 percent of respondents notify employees of the company's legal right to monitor online activity. Among those who monitor, 86.9 percent have a written e-mail policy, 83.1 percent have an Internet policy, and 67.5 percent have a software policy. Half of the employers (50.6 percent) require staff to acknowledge their policies in writing, which the survey creators suggest is a relatively low number when such a high legal liability is involved.

"Stave off invasion of privacy and wrongful termination lawsuits by securing employees' written consent to have their electronic messages read," says Nancy Flynn, author of The ePolicy Handbook and executive director of The ePolicy Institute. She advises employers to have employees sign and date an acknowledgment of their e-policies and to provide training to ensure the policies are properly understood.

According to a recent survey of records and information managers in the petroleum and utilities industries, 94 percent of responding organizations have or plan to have an e-mail policy, but only 30 percent distinguish between record and non-record e-mail messages, which presumably is based on content, context, and use.

"Within three to five years, we expect a solution will emerge that ensures adherence to organizational e-mail policies with enterprise-level records management tools that categorize and manage e-mail throughout their lifecycle, including e-mail retained archivally for an indefinite period of time," says survey co-coordinators Susan L. Cisco, Ph.D., CRM, FAI, assistant director of Information Management Services with the Railroad Commission of Texas, and Patricia K. Galloway, Ph.D., CDP, assistant professor of Archival Enterprise and Digital Asset Management with the University of Texas at Austin.

When the question of whether to monitor e-mail usage looms, Flynn advises taking a commonsense approach. "Settle for nothing less than good clean content, free from harassing, menacing, threatening, obscene, and discriminatory or otherwise offensive language, and you'll be on your way toward a safe and secure electronic workplace."

E-Mail Monitoring Statistics

Companies that do not monitor or monitor sparingly

* Allow unrestricted use of e-mail 39.3%

* Allow unrestricted access to the Internet 11.7%

Companies that do monitor

* Restrict access to Web sites 65.3%

* Most concerned with keeping explicit sexual content off employees' screens 76.6%

Source: 2001 Electronic Policies and Practices Survey

How Often We Check E-Mail

Two-thirds of Americans use the Internet, and
82 percent of all Internet users have e-mail.

Less than once a week    1%
Daily                   76%
Weekly                  23%

Source: UCLA Center for Communication Policy