How to Write an Acceptable Email Use Policy for Your Business

Sep 15, 2011
Carol Finch

How to Write Email Usage Policies - Photo by omironia

The way your employees use their corporate email accounts can have a negative impact on your company. Writing a usage policy may help. How?

Your employees may all need email accounts to do their jobs, but you need to consider how they use them. If you have no control over messages that are sent on behalf of your business or the time an individual spends emailing their friends, then you could run into trouble. Setting out a structure of acceptable usage in a formal policy that either covers the whole computer/Internet spectrum or that specifically addresses email usage can help. Why do you need these kinds of policies and what should they contain?

Why do Businesses Need Acceptable Use Policies?

If you don't tell employees what you expect from them, you cannot expect them to know how to act appropriately. Without an email use policy, businesses can fall foul of various negative situations, including:

Productivity: An individual that spends much of their day socialising by email is wasting time when they should be doing their job. While most people will naturally use this system sensibly, some won't.
Business risk: Opening up your email system for personal use and not monitoring how employees use it for business can bring a range of problems. These can include (but are not limited to) viruses, the spreading of confidential information, issues with illegal, offensive or abusive materials or messages and lawsuits.

Keep in mind that it is worth using the first section of the policy to outline why it is being implemented, especially if you will be changing the way that people are allowed to email. Employees are far more likely to accept these kinds of changes if they understand why they are happening.

Let's move on to thinking about what you need from an acceptable use policy. Firstly, consider what your staff can and can't do.

How Can Your Employees Use Email?

It is worth setting out what is acceptable before you set restrictions. So, for example, you could start by writing out how you expect them to act. Useful points to consider include whether they can use their accounts for personal purposes. Some companies prohibit this completely; others will allow it based on fair usage or limits such as times of the day or numbers of emails in a given period.

On the business side you can set out guidelines on how emails should be used generally. You can, at this point, also include recommendations on how to write an email if you feel that this will be useful. It may also be worth indicating how to use salutations and sign-offs and how to handle responses to incoming messages (e.g. how quickly a mail should be answered).

How Should Your Employees Not Use Email?

This is the most important part of your policy and you need to clearly state what an individual should not use their business email account for. Commonly prohibited actions include:

Any personal usage restrictions you have imposed.
The promotion or organization of an employee's personal business or of material that is not related to your company.
The dissemination of confidential corporate information to people outside of the business.
Any usage of images, text, links or attachments to material which could be offensive, discriminatory, abusive, illegal, indecent, obscene or pornographic.
Any action that breaches copyright laws.
Behaviour that could be deemed to be harrassing.
Stating opinions on difficult subjects such as religion or politics.
Deliberate action that compromises your computer system, such as the introduction of viruses and malware.

Your business may use some or all of these pointers depending on your requirements. It is not a definitive list and you may find that you need to add other elements if you have specific issues.

Your Responsibilities in an Email Usage Policy

You also need to tell your employees how you will enforce the policy. If you will monitor use of an account, then they need to know this up-front. You should also state if you will be using monitoring software or simply reserving the right to access their emails. They need to be aware that they may not have any privacy rights when using your business system.

It is also important to clearly state how you will deal with people who do not stick to the guidelines. This generally involves outlining the stages of any disciplinary process that will be initiated if they break the rules. If you have in-house HR and legal staff, involve them in the policy creation process; if not, it may be worth having external experts check the document before it goes live.

Finally, make sure that every employee is given a copy of the acceptable use policy and ask them to sign it to show that it has been read and understood. It should also be given to any new hire you make in the future. If you are having trouble making a start on the content, it may be worth looking at acceptable usage samples and templates online.