Emerging technology over the years has led to communications being done electronically, one of the biggest areas being email.  Initially email was regarded as communication between ‘friends‘ to keep in touch and was not really regarded as business communication.  As time went on however, the ease and speed of sending a message was encouraging and email became more widely used in the business world.

Little thought was given to the fact that an email could be an important record and should be treated with the same ‘respect‘ as that of a paper document.  In a survey done by Mimecast SA in December 2008, it was found that … South African businesses still regard email as an operational function – a bit like ordering stationery – rather than a business critical one …‘.  Many employees are left to store and delete their own email and most companies cannot retrieve an email that was sent 3 years ago.  Considering the amount of data that can be stored on an optical disk (CD or DVD) or even a magnetic backup tape, and the cost thereof, there is no reason why an individual or a company cannot archive their email.

Another problem is that many employees now have laptops and often do emails from home or other venues.  Who then is responsible for the backup of this mail and how long should it be kept for?

Another area which poses a problem is that many people, when sending mails, write the first thing that comes to mind and send it before reading it to ensure that the receiver will understand the message correctly or use it to send confidential information (both private and work) to colleagues never giving thought to the fact that it could be used as evidence against them.  Gone are the days when we verbally expressed feelings and emotions and information and it would be ‘my word against yours‘.  Nowadays – it is – I have the email (with a date and a time) to prove it!

In June 2008, an article was published on the Bear Stearns investment bank.  The last two sentences read:  ―It took only a few days, a rising sense of panic – and a critical e-mail – to spell the end of the 85-year old investment bank‖ and another paragraph, ― … the government‘s case relies in part on e-mails that alledgedly show the managers had private doubts even as they were publicly expressing confidence …‖  (News article:  Crime and delusion on Wall Street by Colin Barr, 19 June 2008. http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/19/news/newsmakers/bear_cioffi.fortune/?postversion=20 08061914

Care should be taken to ensure that all records – both paper and electronic should be treated with ‘respect‘ and looked after accordingly.  When composing written communication, care should be taken that messages and clear and concise and are received by the people that it is intended to reach.