Organisations are reliant on email communication to conduct its business activities.  Email is a critical tool and has become embedded into an organisation’s communication structure.  The organisation must make better use of email communication to increase employee effectiveness and to protect the messaging environment of its workforce.  Ever increasing trends in the volume of email traffic will always attempt to reach the business worker’s inbox.  The purpose of email monitoring systems is to attempt to minimise the noise and pollution of unwanted or inappropriate emails.  Filtering out those emails which may pose a risk to the employee or to the organisation is a prime driver to reach this purpose.  The effectiveness of email communication will always mean that business to business communication will continue to use this mode of communication until an innovative alternative is found.

It is the responsibility of every employee to assist in tackling this problem in full cooperation with their employer.  Organisational policies are there to guide the employee in the rules of engagement for effective email communication.  Employees are trained in computer use and in its efficient operation of the applications that rely on this technology.  That said, there is produced evidence that computer resources are still continuing to be wasted and corporate policies are not being fully adhered to – as both companies and dismissed employees have been held accountable by the UK courts and the Information Commissioner.  This has resulted in the growing need to achieve corporate compliance and an increasing lack of trust in employees.

Organisations have now been given the opportunity to improve communication practices and to protect company assets by monitoring email communication and filtering out inappropriate content.  With the capability to monitor email communication, organisations can experiment with the implementation and running of the email system to see the effect on employee productivity.  This is a strong motivation for organisations to encourage their employees to communicate via email rather than using the telephone and other communication mediums - where the latter channels are harder to cost efficiently assess the actual reason or content for their use.

The introduction of electronic messaging has brought many benefits to organisations.  One main benefit is having the capability to monitor its use by capturing communication metrics, through which companies can then act in producing usage policies and provide education to try and reduce wasted resources and improve employee productivity. However, monitoring also has complex ramifications on the organisation and on its workforce in terms of maintaining a balance between the protection of the employer and for its employees - whilst not upsetting staff by invading their rights for private communication or by over-invasive monitoring that may affect staff morale and performance.  Careful consideration and planning by both management and staff representatives is needed to maintain this balance.