Email monitoring is a touchy subject among employees and
employers alike. Many employees feel that email is a personal matter
and that their employers have no right to take measures to monitor
email. On the other side of the fence, however, a great many employers
believe that it is fully within their right to use email monitoring
measures. The thought is: if you’re on the clock, you’re on our time
and anything you say or do can be used against you when you’re called
on the carpet.

I made the mistake of saying the wrong thing on a company email system once. I vowed to never make the same mistake. Of course, that was in the days before the Internet … and long before I left the corporate nest … I had no clue that my email was monitored …

The issue is shaking out state-by-state. A bill (SB 1841) recently vetoed in the California Senate sought to ensure that employers let their employees know–in writing–that their email is being monitored. While the email monitoring bill passed the Assembly, it needed to pass the Senate before it could have been signed into law by Govinator Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Law or not, it’s just good common sense for employees to be given written notice if email monitoring is in place. Anything less is a betrayal of a common bond of trust. And if that notice is given with a return receipt requested, there will be no question whether or not the message was received. Something this important shouldn’t be lost in the shuffle between notices for the company picnic and the cafeteria menu.

If your company is considering an email monitoring systems, you’ll find no shortage of choices, with applications like DynaComm i:mail, IntelRex, Spector Pro, Tumbleweed, SurfControl, and many others.

Use them with caution. :)