This is an example of an email policy, provided by Charles Price, barrister, Pendragon Chambers, Swansea. Charles was formerly Head of Employment Law at both Sheffield and Bristol City Councils.

The Data Protection Act 1998 and The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act 2000 have an important influence when drafting such policies but organisations should cross-reference any computer use policy with other
relevant policies, including the handling of confidential information, use and storage of personal data, consultation and communications at work, training, equal opportunities and harassment, and discipline and grievances at work.

All employees should sign the policy in order to indicate their knowledge of it.

Email Usage Guidelines

[Company Name] reserves the right to access your organisation email account and messages at any time, however you will be informed if your email account is accessed.

[Company Name] shall wherever possible not access emails that are clearly personal in nature. However shall not be liable for any breach of privacy should any emails of a personal nature be found and accessed by employees of the organisation or third parties authorised by the organisation to access your email account. Any monitoring of staff e-mails will be connected with a specific investigation of mal practice or crime.

Emails are Permanent

It is a common misconception that emails are a temporary form of communication, similar to a phone call. The reality is that any email message can be traced back to its original sender and to all recipients of the message. Copies of emails not only reside on the network and PC of the sender and recipient, copies also reside with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) through which they were sent. Even if every party in the chain deletes an email and its attachment, (if applicable) sections or the entire email and attachment can be reconstructed from the hard drives of the PCs and fileservers on which they originally resided using specialist software.

Proper Deletion of Emails from your PC

To delete a message properly it should be moved to the bin or trash folder of your email software and then deleted from the bin or trash folder. Moving the message to your bin or trash folder will not automatically remove the
email from your PC.

Email Signature File

All emails, (including replies and forwarded emails) should contain the standard email signature of the organisation. From time to time you may be requested to alter or update your email signature file, if requested this should be carried out immediately. If your email signature contains your personal contact information such as office telephone number, mobile number or pager you should ensure that these details are correct and kept up to date. Outgoing e-mails should include a disclaimer to be agreed with the
employer.

Email Etiquette

You should never send abusive or rude emails or attachments, even if you are responding to such an email received by you. Such abusive e-mails can
constitute a criminal offence and depending on the nature of the abuse, gross misconduct. This includes emails that attack the recipient directly or refer to a third party or organisation. You must never send emails or attachments that promote the following types of content:

i) sexually explicit materials
ii) violence
iii) discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age
iv) illegal activities or violate intellectual property rights.

Never send emails containing confidential or sensitive information without first checking that the recipient is prepared to receive such information via email. Such emails should be encrypted to ensure that they cannot be readily opened and read by anyone other than the intended recipient. If you wish to send a large attachment(s) via email you should contact the recipient before sending the email to ensure that they are prepared to receive it and that their email and internet connection are able to effectively download large attachments.

You must not use your email facility to exceed your authority, or use it to conduct business other than that of the organisation. Do not send, resend or forward emails that list a large number of recipients in the CC field as this will reveal each recipient’s address to fellow recipients and will breach their privacy.

ACAS has produced the definitive guide on Internet and e-mail policy:
http://www.acas.org.uk/publications/AL06.html