How to Keep your Email Tool from Becoming a Tyrant™
Employers lose lawsuits when their documents are used against them in the courtroom. This is especially so for email. UPS is the latest in a string of employers hit with large jury verdicts because of inflammatory content about employees with disabilities and workplace injuries. Managers and supervisors often don't use the same level of care with business communications sent via email, resulting in embarrassment, business detriment or discredit to the author's credibility. Email is less formal, more conversational, and often sent in haste. At a minimum, this results in inaccurate, ill-prepared, unprofessional business documents. Loose language, slang and inappropriate jargon compound the problems, including references to "gimps" and suggestions such as 'we don't want that employee back."
Patricia S. Eyres has written a comprehensive guide for employers on how to identify and stop email abuse in your workplace. For the first time in a single resource, an experienced attorney/communications consultant explains everything you need to know to make your email work for you instead of against you. Drawing upon lessons learned from her consulting work with dozens of organizations in a variety of industries, the author separates myth from fact and focuses on the difficult challenges busy professionals face in today's "all email, all the time" workplace. Using insightful, entertaining, real-life examples, this absorbing guide addresses specific rights, risks and responsibilities of email users and provides specific suggestions on how readers can avoid email evidence disasters, by: