Migrating emails for ex-employees (To do or not to do?) | C2C Community

Migrating emails for ex-employees (To do or not to do?)

  • 18 June 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 218 views

Userlevel 6
Badge +17

Yesterday during the C2C UK&I event we discussed in detail the offboarding of Google Workspace accounts, and what organisations do with users data, specifically email.

Interestingly this generated a lot of differing views, and whether it was ethical to migrate email from an employee leaving the organisation to say a colleague or a manager. 

What if there were personal conversations between the employee and HR was an example used?

From a legal perspective, and with clear employment contracts in-place the emails are the property of the company.

What are your thoughts on this, do you migrate email or just archive and only access if necessary?  

 


5 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +26

I don’t think it is ethical to migrate emails to a colleague or manager, but I don’t see any issue with having the IT or HR department having access to them when needed. Having a third party pull pertinent emails seems way less intrusive than having someone with insider knowledge go through pages of emails to find a crumb or two of juicy information. @Erika Bell Rodriguez-Morillo is this being discussed in your Google Cloud partnerships with any frequency?

Userlevel 5
Badge +11

What if there were personal conversations between the employee and HR was an example used?

From a legal perspective, and with clear employment contracts in-place the emails are the property of the company.

 

Paul, from a data privacy point of view, while yes, the email are “owned” by the company, there is a a complicated issue of “personal” email.

Unless clearly stated in the company policy that no personal email is allowed, or that all personal email must be clearly labelled  as such, then the benefit of the doubt must be given to the employee to consider that personal emails do exist in the account. from this, it is necessary to avoid a blanket migration as an inbox is considered a “personal space”. yes company's may investigate or search for specific items, but that must be done is an clearly registered and compliant manner. a generalised dumping of the email box is not.

I advise my clients to set up a clear authorisation path for searching archives, to be done by a data officer, not just another employee.

Or preferably, set up a clear rule of no personal email - nowadays have a free gmail account for personal email is standard, while many years ago, it was not possible. and ensuring separation of those accounts by using chrome profiles for example is (or should be) a standard practice/

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +26

I advise my clients to set up a clear authorisation path for searching archives, to be done by a data officer, not just another employee.

 

@alan.muntadas I can totally get behind this!

Userlevel 2

@alan.muntadas Certainly agree

What if there were personal conversations between the employee and HR was an example used?

From a legal perspective, and with clear employment contracts in-place the emails are the property of the company.

 

Paul, from a data privacy point of view, while yes, the email are “owned” by the company, there is a a complicated issue of “personal” email.

Unless clearly stated in the company policy that no personal email is allowed, or that all personal email must be clearly labelled  as such, then the benefit of the doubt must be given to the employee to consider that personal emails do exist in the account. from this, it is necessary to avoid a blanket migration as an inbox is considered a “personal space”. yes company's may investigate or search for specific items, but that must be done is an clearly registered and compliant manner. a generalised dumping of the email box is not.

I advise my clients to set up a clear authorisation path for searching archives, to be done by a data officer, not just another employee.

Or preferably, set up a clear rule of no personal email - nowadays have a free gmail account for personal email is standard, while many years ago, it was not possible. and ensuring separation of those accounts by using chrome profiles for example is (or should be) a standard practice/

 

 

Userlevel 4
Badge +6

I am so glad to hear that I am not alone here 😅

Yes, company email is company property, especially when clearly stated in contracts. 

But more importantly email is email. Emails are in a sense private by design. They should not be migrated to someone else just to ensure that some contract discussionsfor example are better transfered. If you have to rely on that: Get a better CRM!  

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