It's easy to take your corporate email system for granted, but security and privacy concerns of your work email system are extremely complex. Even small accounting firms and corporations have found themselves having to pay big money to settle sexual harassment cases and other crimes that were conducted via email by staff and employees of a company. Financial damages are also caused by email that brings down the entire company server, sometimes making it impossible to access your entire local area network for hours or days at a time. Email policies are not just for big corporations.
Implementing an email security policy will help control your accounting firm's ever growing volume of email and prevent bigger problems, too. You are likely using your email all the time, both for personal use and in your professional life. You've probably agreed to a few email policies throughout your working life, but does your accounting firm have it's own email policy? Internet communications are economical and a simple technology solution that increases productivity and efficiency when used correctly. Without a formal email policy, however, your accounting firm is at risk.
The email policy itself is a simple document that clearly spells out what your accounting firm considers acceptable and professional use of the company email. The policy indicates the type of content allowed over the company email servers and who emails can be sent to or received from. An accounting firm email policy does three main things:
- Ensures email use by staff and employees of the firm professionally represents your company
- Increases productivity in the workplace by cutting down on distractions
- Protects your firm from liabilities associated with in appropriate email use
Email Policies For Professional Representation of Your Accounting Firm
Obviously if you require staff and employees of the firm to agree to using the work email for work related purposes only, you ensure that the email going out of your office is presented in a professional tone. When people switch back and forth from personal emails to professional emails, there is a tendency for the professional emails to become more informal. There is also a risk of a personal email getting sent out to clients or vice versa!
Increase Productivity by Limiting Email Distractions
When you set restrictions on acceptable use of email, your workers and staff will become more productive. It's easy to give into the urge to send emails to a friend while on work time, but if the policy states it's not allowed, you know the staff and workers will find more productive uses of their time, instead.
Protect Accounting Firm From Liability
Email policies can help protect your firm from liability. If a client's confidential information is accidentally emailed to the secretary's boyfriend, your employee and firm is open to a breach of confidentiality suit. If you can document that the employee went against the explicit requirements of the firm's email policy, your company shouldn't be held liable for the action of the employee.
Because an email policy is a document that helps provide your firm with legal protection, many organizations choose to have a lawyer write their email policy for them. If you choose to write your own email policy, take a look at the policies of other accounting firms to establish useful parameters to include in your own policy.
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