Formal Email Policy

Question: Write a report about the Formal Email Policy. Answer: Executive Summary: Communication in business has become quite convenient with the use of electronic mail. Daily activity in business is carried out through emails. The benefit that the firms accrue with this medium is that it helps in sending message in the form of text and pictures. There is a need for the free flow of information with the growing competition. This would help a company to progress. With emails in business, the employer of the company communicates with the different subsidiaries of the organization around the world. This report will help in understanding the development of a formal email policy by an organization. The various elements that are to be discussed include the importance of an organization to develop a formal email policy and the issues and the benefits faced by the organization with the use of email. Additionally, it would also state as to how the policy is to be introduced and implemented in an organization. The organization selected for this report is IBM, an IT company. Analysis: Requirement of a Formal Email Policy: A company due to several reasons designs email policy. The threats that a company face through email can be prevented by an email policy. This would help in ensuring that the employees are conscious about the instruction and the rules of the corporate world (Holtbrgge Weldon and Rogers 2013). This will help an organization to prevent any type of leak in confidential matters or hacking of important documents and reduce the legal responsibility. The email policy can be helpful in overcoming any type of misconduct (Sampson, Barbour and Wilson 2016). Legal liability can be avoided when following an email policy. The email policy will help in ensuring that employees effectively handle the use of the official email (Pignata et al. 2015). The policy will help in informing employees of the organization that the higher authority monitors their use of email. The employees are asked to avoid the use of offensive and the racist comments as this cause the company name to tarnish. Email policy wil l be effective to let the users know regarding sharing of any type of confidential data or if there is copying of any type of information then the company and the sender both are liable for copyright issues (Paczkowski, Parsel and Rajagopal 2015). The using of the email id by users for the purpose of business must also understand the legal risks. The email policies are published so that the users are aware of the legal requirements of using an email ID (Liebmann et al. 2015). The legal policies will not allow the employees to send a message through email without the consent of the sender. Email policies are developed so that it helps in prohibiting the use of the other employees email id for the official purpose without prior consent. The email policy will help in developing a consciousness among the people so that the professional id is not used for other purposes. Among one of the top IT companies lies IBM (ibm.com 2014). Hardware and the software is manufactured by IBM which is used in the business servers. Through the development of the PCs and Microchip, the company has emerged as one of the dominant IT companies. The operation of the company is carried throughout the world with 377757 employees in the year 2015 (ibm.com 2014). Millions of employees around the world to communicate use the official email. The well-being of the company and satisfaction of the employee is handled by the company. IT companies assists different clients by providing various IT solutions to them. This results in handling of confidential data. The email policy will make the employees aware of sharing of the data (Pignata et al. 2015). The email policy is developed so that the employees able to use it as effective means of communication. The email policy is necessary for IBM to see that the employees are using the tool in a responsible, effective and lawful manner. There can be any type of link or attachment from the outsider through email to hack the information of the company (Franssila, Okkonen and Savolainen 2014). The formal email policies will help in making the employees aware that they should not click on the suspicious links. This is an ideal way for the hacker to retrieve the financial details from the user. This might cause viruses to enter. There is a huge concern by IBM about their employees to safeguard the interest of the employees, thus it is important to keep them safe against cybercrimes so there lay the importance of email policy (Graus et al. 2014). The employees are made aware of the legal and the safety aspects so that the employees can avoid the risk by following the policy guidelines (Joyia et al. 2013). The organization of IBM then can protect them from potential danger. Problems faced while using the Electronic mail: The use of the email is cost effective and a quick communication method. There are a issues that is derived from the usage of email. There cannot be personal connection established with the receiver and the sender (Pardo and Schneider 2014). The message that is written may not convey the real message. The meaning of the message might be misinterpreted, as the message does not provide facial expression to the sender (Yu 2015). The emails do not bear the emotion of human, sarcasm or humor. The use of wrong punctuation marks and upper case letters can convey a different message altogether. There is need for a business to develop and work as a team with the employees (Cailleux, Bouabdallah and Bonnin 2014). The use of business emails for communicating is not that effective in creating a corporate atmosphere. The use of business emails involve that the information is overloaded. Too many emails occupy time and huge space for workers. The personal time is also taken out from their life and their office time. There has been disadvantage of information over load. There might be wastage of time due to the use by the employees. The employees might spend unnecessary time sending personal notes and jokes to co-workers (Kim, Song and Choi 2013). This may result in distraction in the place of work. The employees will be using their official mail for sending personal emails numerously. There might emerge mismanagement in the business with the use of the emails. This would arise when the employees do not read the emails. For example, the top management has delivered news but due to technical issues the employees receive no email. The task would not be amended and this would be resulting in a loss, as this would be done unknowingly (Martin and Nakayama 2013). The task if it is urgent then the failure to amend would result in loss for the company. When there is no internet connection then there will be no exchange of the messages or the news. Thus, it would affect the operation of the company (Paczkowski, Parsel and Rajagopal 2005).While-using business emails viruses and spam are a very big issue. The systems of the office would be destroyed when viruses or spam emails are opened. This might destroy the information that is already there in the laptops or the desktops. This would be affecting the performance of the company and work in progress (Franssila, Okkonen and Savolainen 2014). There can be sharing of sensitive information through the email, which might be intentionally or deliberately but the consequence is the same. The employees might feel it is too problematic for using business emails as there is constant vigilance by the upper management. The higher authority has the right to access any type of email. All type of mails is accessible by the higher authority and so there is no privacy. Benefits of the Formal Email Policy: There are a number of drawbacks in the use of the business email yet it is widely used due to its convenience. The use of the email is not prohibited or restricted by the company but the significance of using the email is continuously increasing day by day. The speed at which message is delivered is incredibly fast. Communication will arise with the use a single message to a number of employees of the organization. A message can be sent from the top hierarchy and the employees they receive and communicate further with the employees (Sampson, Barbour and Wilson 2016). The gap between the management and the employees is reduced with email. Communicating with the employees, the managers will be able to get the feedback on the service that is provided to the employees. The email usage will help in sharing of the information with everyone. The use of the business email is not only used for communicating with the employees but it is also used for communicating with the customers. The custo mers can be approached through emails by the sales department. The customers they can offer their requirement, feedback and complaints through the office email id (Icaew.com 2014). They can solve the problem through the interaction through the email with the customer support team. Creating an email account is free of cost and is hassle free. This will require access to the internet (Martin and Nakayama 2013). There records are permanently stored in the email. There is no fear of losing data through the emails. The information can be retrieved conveniently. There are message and replies saved which would help in the future references (Kalia et al.2013). Enforcement or implementation of Email Policy: The training to the users will help in implementation or enforcement of the email policy. There is a regular need for training to the employees. Jokes or any type of offensive comments can be quite harmful. Offensive remarks can be a distress to the other employees. Training will help the employees to understand that they should not click on unknown links, which asks for the personal information (Kalia et al.2013). The management can take prompt action when employees complain about offensive email. The internal management must look into the matter very seriously. The legal cost is reduced when there is use of an email policy. There is a need for arranging meeting within 10 days of hearing the complaint. The monitoring of email will help in no breaching of the email policy (Cornwalls.com.au 2010). The user of an official mail can block the unwanted emails. Those who do not adhere to the policy of the company a strict action would be taken against them. During the time of the formulati on of the email policy, the suggestion of the employees should be taken into account. Legal advice can also be taken from them. There is a need for the company to revise the policy as this might affect the liability. Conclusion: In the discussion above, the report has informed on the formal email policy and its usage in an organization. The importance of email usage in IBM has led to the development of the email policy. The benefits and drawbacks are equally present in the usage of the official mail. The organization must see that the maximum benefit is derived from the use of the email through the implementation of the email policy. This report has helped in identifying the benefits of the use of business email. The formal email policy has been developed so that the risks related to the use of emails are minimized. The training provided to the employees will help the employees understand the use of email and what care and precaution is needed while using email. There is a need for the formal implementation of the email policy. References: Cailleux, L., Bouabdallah, A. and Bonnin, J.M., 2014, May. Building a Confident Advanced Email System Using a New Correspondence Model. InAdvanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA), 2014 28th International Conference on(pp. 85-90). IEEE. Cornwalls.com.au. (2010).The Benefit of Workplace Policies when Communicated Effectively and Applied Consistently :: Cornwall Stodart Lawyers. Franssila, H., Okkonen, J. and Savolainen, R., 2014, November. Email intensity, productivity and control in the knowledge worker's performance on the desktop. 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Technical Report HPL-2013-4, HP Laboratories. Kim, D., Song, S. and Choi, B.Y., 2013, November. SAFE: Structure-aware file and email deduplication for cloud-based storage systems. InCloud Networking (CloudNet), 2013 IEEE 2nd International Conference on(pp. 130-137). IEEE.n,13, pp.72-79.