Best Practices for Using Email in the Workplace: Via FINS/Wall Street Journal Digital Network

Once again, I am quoted giving a variation on my golden rule of email, "Don't put anything in writing that you don't want the whole world to see." This time, the venue is FINS (a finance careers site that's part of the Wall Street Journal's online network). In, "Email Best Practices for the Workplace," reporter Toddi Gutner quotes me and Proofpoint's oft-repeated statistics on email discovery and email monitoring.

In light of recent exposures of internal emails at firms like Goldman Sachs, this article aims to answer the question, "Are there times when an email shouldn't have been sent?" While aimed at financial services professionals, this article provides some great advice that workers in any industry should consider when using email at work.

To summarize the guidelines presented in the article for using email at work:

• Keep work email for work matters. If you are using your company computer and your company email, it shouldn't be used for personal matters.
• Communicate clearly and carefully. Finance professionals, such as traders and portfolio managers who use email to verify prices of stocks and bonds, need to ensure that the information they send is accurate.
• Be professional. Don't write or send an email when you're angry or emotional. If you're upset, consider waiting 24 hours.
• Consider the telephone. When considering writing an email on a sensitive topic, consider picking up the phone instead.

There's a lot more detail in the full article, which can be found here:

Email Best Practices for the Workplace