The recent sackings at Orange, the mobile phone company, for E-mail abuse demonstrates the need for clearer guidelines and more formal documentation to be produced. These sort of incidences also emphasise the importance of awareness training of e-mail usage within every organisation.

Around 50 workers at Orange were sacked for downloading pornography from the Internet and then sent around the organisation via e-mail.

This demonstrates that e-mail is now an accepted and standard method of communication within most organisations, people tend to forget that they can be used as legally-binding documentation and as evidence to support disciplinary procedures, industrial tribunals and even in court.

These e-mail guidelines need to be clear, concise and let the employee know what could happen to them if they are caught breaking such guidelines. This message should be clearly stated within appropriate training programmes and a copy of these guidelines should also be part of an induction package in case the employee is not able to attend such training within their early days within the company.

Such measures are becoming more important as access to the Internet is also growing, are there any other areas that you feel other trainers should take into consideration as part of their training delivery? Please add your comments below.