Creating an email retention policy is important for companies and organizations as part of their compliance to the latest amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on e-discovery. A business simply cannot start archiving email right off the bat. It has to devise a set of rules on what to archive and how long data should be archived as well as the policies on correct deletion of old information.
Letting everyone know
For starters, everyone in the company needs to be informed that you're creating an email retention policy. People should be aware that their emails and instant messaging correspondence will be archived, accessible and discoverable for an indefinite period. Those who receive corporate correspondence from your company -? e.g. business contacts and clients -? needs to be informed that their responses will also be kept in archive. Memos have to be sent out and employees need to acknowledge the policy for it to be implemented.
Using the company email
For email archiving to be compliant, employees need to use their corporate accounts. When creating an email retention policy, it's important to incorporate clauses that require everyone to use their company email addresses for official correspondence instead of relying on their personal accounts. There would be nothing to archive if people don't use the company email server.
For this, it's important to make sure that employees will not be compelled to use their personal email accounts. According to a survey, 60 percent of employees use these accounts because the company email server is experiencing a downtime. Companies have to minimize the occurrence of email server issues that will hinder correspondence. Part of this effort relies on adopting an email archival mechanism that will free up storage space on the servers to accommodate new messages.
Sufficient education
Creating an email retention policy also covers stipulations for educating employees about email archiving. Everyone should understand the importance of the system. Training should be in place for administrators who are authorized to access the archival database and regulations on how long emails should be retained in the server before getting deleted should also be in place.
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