Policy Management Challenges

As your company embarks on creating policies the following guidelines should be considered when setting guidelines.

--DO create two policies: One for retention of emails and IMs, and another for company-wide usage of email and IM. These will be separate policies, but it’s important that they’re developed side by side. Both should be reviewed and updated annually.

--DO communicate your usage policy with all employees, not just through email, but through face-to-face training and discussion in department meetings. Be specific and detailed. It’s important that everyone in the company understand both appropriate and inappropriate use of email and IM, and that violating usage guidelines is a punishable offence. Employees should also know that copies of everything they send are being archived (this knowledge alone often results in fewer instances of inappropriate messaging).

--DON’T delay archiving in the absence of a retention policy. Ideally, the policy comes first and dictates the parameters of the archive’s setup. But for many companies, a policy can take months to develop and gain consensus on – and most aren’t willing to risk a damaging non-compliance situation or costly eDiscovery process in the meantime. A flexible in-house archiving solution can easily be adapted as your policy takes shape.