More firms sack staff over abusive emails

A joke shared with a colleague, a party invitation or an internet funny passed round the office sound harmless enough, but a third of British firms have sacked staff over alleged "abuse" of emails in company time, according to a new report.

A joke shared with a colleague, a party invitation or an internet funny passed round the office sound harmless enough, but a third of British firms have sacked staff over alleged "abuse" of emails in company time, according to a new report.

A survey of leading companies and public bodies reveals the growing numbers of people dismissed or suspended for sending "unauthorised" emails. More than half the companies surveyed are now reporting serious problems concerning email misuse.

Disciplinary action for new technology-related offences - including email and internet abuse - now exceeds the combined total for dishonesty, violence and health and safety breaches at work. The most common single reason for dismissal is the sending of unauthorised emails, usually of a pornographic nature.

The survey, called People and Technology, carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and to be published on Thursday, is the most thorough undertaken so far into email abuse in the workplace.

"We wouldn't want our organisation to impose draconian measures," said CIPD spokesman Gerwyn Davies. "That hinders creativity and trust, and there's a balance to be struck. But the legal implications are large, and that has led organisations to be more alert, more sophisticated in their IT systems.

"For many employees, email and internet abuse is a new realm, but I think the number of incidents will level out."

The new statistics underline the huge surge in recent years in cases of alleged new-technology "abuse" in the workplace. They follow the announcement of new Government and trade union codes of practice that set out the legal limits of employers' powers to covertly monitor employees' activities.

The CIPD survey was based on replies from 316 private and public organisations in the UK, and is the first to include data from the state sector.

Job search service Fish4jobs has found that a third of men admitted spending up to 40 minutes a day flirting by email with their female colleagues, while a similar number of women said they used email to organise their social lives. Most office workers said they send messages to colleagues who sit less than 10 feet away.

A study at the end of last year found that time spent by employees using the internet for unauthorised periods has risen from a total of eight to 11.5 working days a year.

A number of large companies, including Cadbury Schweppes, Hogg Robinson and Camelot have set up email-free days to encourage creativity. Nestlé has also suggested that staff send "fewer Friday emails".

A survey carried out last year among 212 businesses by solicitors KLegal and Personnel Today magazine found that nearly two-thirds of email and internet-related sackings in the UK were for accessing or distributing pornographic or sexual material. Ninety per cent of private businesses are revealed to have taken action against staff for new technology misuse in the past five years, while, in the public sector, 77 per cent of organisations reported having taken some kind of action against employees. Yet offenders in the public sector are far less likely to be dismissed - 36 per cent sacked, against 45 per cent in businesses.

The toll of British workers sacked for abusing emails and the internet has made this one of the most pressing issues for both employers and staff. The TUC has just issued its own surveillance and monitoring law update for workers.

"Most organisations will monitor to a greater or lesser extent," says Mark Mansell, head of employment law at lawyers Allen & Overy. "If there is a suspicion that someone is reading pornography, that does justify monitoring."

But porn isn't the only worry for employers. "There have been cases where someone planning to leave a company has passed information to a new employer. This happens surprisingly regularly."

Two weeks ago, the Government unveiled its 42-page code of practice on workplace surveillance. "Only in exceptional circumstances will it be appropriate for employers to monitor their employees without their knowledge," said Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas. "In reality there are few circumstances in which covert monitoring is justified."

The new code makes clear employers' obligation to comply with the terms of the Data Protection Act, and also points to the Human Rights Act, which acknowledges a privacy right for personal correspondence. Staff must be told that monitoring of emails and internet use is to be carried out, and why.

The worker fired for sending a 'pornographic' party invite

Rachael Fountain thought she was emailing the party invitation, with pictures of a bunny girl and naked men wearing cowboy hats, to her friend Jenny Allen. The internal email system at her work, however, sent it to the company's financial director, who shares the same name. The ill-directed invite to her "porn party" cost Ms Fountain her job.

The tongue-in-cheek message, sent last November, had invited guests to come to the party at Ms Fountain's flat dressed as "pornstars, prossies, pimps, flashers and slutty schoolgirls", but her employers, American Express, didn't see the funny side. Ms Fountain, who had worked in the company's accounts department for 10 months, was immediately suspended from her £12,000-a-year job without pay, then sacked for gross misconduct.

"I had no idea they shared the same name," said Ms Fountain, 23, from Brighton. "Apparently I had sent this woman emails by accident before, but she had never said anything until then."

While she was suspended, Ms Fountain's email account was thoroughly searched by her employers - an exercise to which she strongly objected. "It felt like somebody was reading my diary. There were arguments with my boyfriend in there and all sorts."

Ironically, Ms Fountain - who was throwing the party to celebrate her appearance on Channel 4'sSex Tips for Girls - is now earning more money than she ever was at American Express, after becoming a professional model.

"After I left, the company felt they had to enforce their email policy, and about 15 other people got sacked," she claimed. "Their opinion was that if you were sending emails, you weren't getting on with your work - but our managers would sit there for three hours in the mornings ordering kitchen handles from the internet and emailing their friends. It was like there was one rule for us, and another for them."

At the time, a spokeswoman for American Express said the company had very strict guidelines when it came to email etiquette: "Sending this kind of email is looked upon as gross misconduct."

Jonathan Thompson

Companies which are cracking down on cybersex in office hours

* Mobile phone company Orange sacked 45 staff for circulating pornography.

* Fifteen traders - men and women - were sacked from merchant bank Merrill Lynch for sending soft-porn emails.

* More than a dozen workers in the City were suspended after they distributed an explicit personal email sent by internet worker Claire Swire to her boyfriend at law firm Norton Rose. Some 20 million people worldwide were estimated to have seen the email within days.

* Ten staff were sacked and 77 suspended at the Royal & Sun Alliance insurance office in Liverpool after a porn version of Bart Simpson appeared on office computers.

* A senior executive at energy company TXU won an unfair dismissal case after being fired for circulating an image of a naked Arab woman. An industrial tribunal accepted that the email had been sent in good humour.

* Workers at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria were suspended for sending "sexually explicit" material.

* Three workers at computer giant Hewlett-Packard were sacked for sending pornographic emails.

* At Jaguar in Birmingham and on Merseyside 12 workers were sacked and several others disciplined after pornographic images of Snow White were found on the company's internal computer network