Email Best Practices - Email Policies in an Organization

Ensure that all staff members understand the need for the organization's policies and how they are affected by those policies.
Why? If staff members understand the organization's policies, they are more likely to carry them out. They also will appreciate how the policies make their work easier.
Comment: For example, when email is automatically copied and multiple people see it, it's important that each person knows what they are to do with the email and why others need to see it.
Deal with concentration-breaking remedies for email, Instant Messaging and the telephone at a policy level.
Why? By setting policies, everyone in the organization will understand the expectations of their peers.

Comment: Productivity will be improved if organization-wide policies respect interrupting staff members as seldom as possible.
Keep staff's personal email separate from the organization's email.
Why? In the future, you may create email policies that treat personal email differently from the organization's email.

Comment: Give staff members an address for personal email such as personal.burton@example.com. That mail would be forwarded to the 'personal' folder in the 'burton' mailbox. An example of such an email policy is that personal email would not be archived or copied, but the organization's email would be. Implementing such a policy is simplified by separating personal email and the organization's email.
Set up policies that define how personal email is to be used in the organization.
Why? Defining personal use of email addresses employee productivity and the organization's security concerns.

Comment: Specific items that should be addressed include the volume of personal mail, time spent on personal mail, when email may be sent, and automatic scanning of personal mail.
Define a policy that describes the kinds of email to archive and for how long. Create a policy that describes what not to archive.
Why? The courts view email as business records just as significant as paper records.

Comment: Email is as pervasive as paper and covers a wide range of company activities. Archiving too much unimportant mail makes it more difficult to find the important archives when they are needed.