Could I have picked a better week to write about company e-mail monitoring? If you were ex-Federal Emergency Management (FEMA) honcho Michael Brown, you might not think so. The news that hit the wires about Brownie’s e-mail faux pas just may prove to be the maraschino cherry on the ice cream sundae of his career. I’m not going to get political (any more than that), but it just goes to show you …

What you say in a workplace e-mail can and will be used against you … whether you’re called on the carpet, subpoenaed to appear in court, or publicly barbecued in the media.

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

Gnomie John had some thoughts to share on the subject of e-mail monitoring:

1. The computer is the companies property.
2. The bandwidth is paid for by the company.
3. The time spent sending personal email is company time, intended for company business.
4. File attachments may be proprietary company property.
5. Employee productivity is another area of great concern. Most companies have restrictions on land line telephone usage, requiring cell phones to be tuned off.

Let’s face it most companies have rules about visitors, breaks, lunches and time away during normal business hours designed primarily to insure a certain amount of productivity from employees and it’s been that way for years with nobody giving the emphasis that corporate email is receiving.

Just consider corporate email a postcard not a first class letter. Everyone from the mailman to the kid next door can read your postcards. Fist class mail is different in that it’s more private.

Businesses have every right to protect their assets and insure normal productivity from employees.

Let’s face it email and time is subject to employee theft just like any valuable other commodity and sad but true, safeguards for both areas are a necessary evil.

Like it or not, corporate e-mail monitoring is here to stay …