Q. Your company has announced a policy to monitor all outgoing e-mail, including personal e-mails. How concerned should you be?

A. Don’t panic. Mary Crane, president of M.C. & Associates, a training and consulting firm in Denver, said that if employers monitored outgoing e-mail traffic, messages about anything other than work might attract attention. “The last thing you want is making your employer think you’re slacking off,” she said. “Nothing you are doing on e-mail is worth jeopardising your career.”

Q.How common is monitoring of e-mail?

A. While companies in many European countries are not allowed to monitor employee e-mail, a vast number of companies in the US do it. Jeanniey Mullen, founder of the Email Experience Council, an e-mail marketing organisation in New Jersey, said the extent of the monitoring varied by industry. Many companies monitor e-mail with attached files, while others may monitor every single message.

The reasons for monitoring e-mail differ. Some do it to control the information that employees send through the corporate network. Others do it to make sure employees stay on task, or as a measure of network security. Still others monitor e-mail to see how employees are communicating with customers.

Logistics make it nearly impossible for companies to police every note. Kevin Kalinich, national managing director for professional risk at Aon Financial Services, an insurance company in Chicago, says that many companies establish these policies because they believe that simply having them reduces the possibility of misuse.

Q.To what degree is personal e-mail acceptable at work?

A.Personal e-mail messages are like personal phone calls, even the most stringent companies may allow them in moderation. But Cherie Kerr, founder and president of ExecuProv, a consulting company, who has helped clients deal with e-mail issues, said that as soon as personal e-mail begins to take more than a few minutes a day, employees may need to reorganise their priorities.

“If you have to wonder whether you’re writing too many personal e-mails on company time, you probably are,” says Kerr.

Whatever kind of e-mail you are writing at work, it is important to consider the content before you hit the send button. Obviously, pornography should be off limits. Employees should also avoid distasteful jokes that could be construed as harassment.

Q.Are there any ways to protect personal correspondence from an employer’s eyes?

A. Perhaps. E-mail systems like Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail all operate through a standard web browser, meaning that employees may be able to send and receive messages free of corporate watchdogs.

Use of even these sites might lead to trouble. Some companies monitor all outgoing Internet traffic, meaning that they can read messages from these sites as easily as they can read regular e-mail. Other companies restrict the Internet addresses to which employees have access, banning web-based e-mail services completely.

David Ries, a partner at the law firm Thorp Reed & Armstrong of Pittsburgh, said that employees might be safest saving personal e-mail for personal time. “The messenger doesn’t matter; it’s all about the message,” he said. “You have plenty of time to send personal e-mails when you get home.”

©NYTNS