Jokes and Personal Email at Work

We use email in our business to rapidly communicate with our coworkers without interrupting their work flow. Email used properly is a valuable and productive tool. Email that is misused distracts others from their jobs.

Company email is not to be used for sending or forwarding jokes to coworkers. “Jokes” includes links to funny web sites, funny pictures, etc.

Having fun at work is fine, but receiving and forwarding jokes can lead to lots of people spending lots of time every day reading and forwarding instead of working. Do not do this. We are being paid to work while we are here, not to read and pass around jokes.

If there is someone (even a vendor or customer) who sends you jokes, political information, or ANY internet info to your work email, ask them to stop. Have them send it to your home email instead.

Never send or forward anything to anyone that could be considered offensive or inappropriate from your work email or from the company computer network.

Personal versus work email

Your email account at work is provided by the company so that you can send and receive business-oriented communication from coworkers, customers and outside business contacts. It is not appropriate to send, receive, or forward personal emails from your work email account.

Personal email includes email to and from friends and family. Email sent to coworkers can be “personal” email if it has no business purpose. Examples are pictures, jokes and links to YouTube and other web sites that are not business-related.

If you have a cell phone with internet connection, you can access your personal email account during your lunch or breaks, but no other time. The company-owned computers are for business use only and may not to be used to access personal email accounts.

Summary

• Do not receive, send or forward jokes to your coworkers or friends at work
• The use of email is for business purposes only
• E-mail that includes jokes or content that could be deemed offensive is prohibited
• Personal email should not be sent, received or forwarded from your work address
• The Company has the right to monitor and review all e-mail sent and received by company employees using company-owned computers

See the section in the Employee Handbook entitled, “ELECTRONIC MAIL MONITORING” for more information.