Why do you need an electronic communications policy?

If your organization uses email, instant messaging or other forms of electronic communications, you have to have a written electronic communications policy. In addition, you need to properly educate your employees on the policy’s importance and consistently enforce your policy.

Lack of an email policy or the failure to enforce it can cost a company a great deal of grief, money and loss of reputation. Consider the number of high-profile court cases that have highlighted the consequences of email misuse and mismanagement.

According to a survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, more than one in five US employers have had employee e-mail and instant messages subpoenaed in the course of a lawsuit or regulatory investigation. Having an electronic communications policy that includes a retention policy will be your organization’s best defense against legal liabilities.

Create your own electronic communications policy

To get you started in building your own electronic communications policy for your organization, the Policy Builder provides you with customizable policy templates that include acceptable usage, best practices, security guidelines, sample key words to use when enforcing some of the policy elements, and sample retention policies that apply to electronic communications. Click here to view the Table of Contents of the policy template. You can add, edit and remove policy elements as necessary, as well as choose from various options that are the most applicable to your organization.

Once you’ve customized your policy to suit your organization, you can generate a PDF version of the policy for company-wide distribution. An extended PDF version can also be generated that includes administrative information such as what keywords should be used when enforcing the policy. And anytime you want to make changes to your policy, simply log back to your Policy Builder account to access your customized policy.