Stephen Woolley, a specialist in workplace privacy issues and author of the survey, says a follow-up study next month will show a significant increase in the practice. In the US about 27 per cent of companies monitor workers' e-mail. There is now a statutory requirement to keep electronic documents as long as you would keep printed documents. But the issue for employers and workers is that e-mail has proved to be a far more efficient recorder of evidence than any traditional form of written record. There's a degree of intimacy and frankness with e-mail.
People abandon the formality and prudence of other forms of written communication.
In the past two years there has been no shortage of high-profile legal cases to demonstrate the point. E-mail messages sent between Daniel Petre, chairman of ninemsn, and the Microsoft Corporation in the US provided an indisputable record of unguarded discussions that would previously have taken place by phone and never have been recorded. E-mail empowers staff enormously. It makes it far easier to work around traditional business policies, but for employers the convenience factor can really work against you. Microsoft and ninemsn both declined to comment on whether fresh advice had been issued to employees on e-mail communications as a result of both cases.