Employee sending work emails to personal account

Acting suspicious

One of our subscribers suspects that an employee is forwarding work emails on to a personal email account. Apart from potential breaches of confidentiality and the GDPR (if the email contains personal data), our subscriber is concerned about the risks to its business, for example, if the employee is considering setting up in competition.

How should our subscriber tackle this tricky situation?

Keep email access

Our subscriber’s first thought might be to completely disable the employee’s work email account and then commence disciplinary action. However, whilst understandable, this approach could potentially backfire.

If the employee’s actions are justified and can be explained, locking them out of their work email account could, theoretically, allow them to resign with immediate effect and claim constructive dismissal (provided they have the required two years’ continuous service).

Step by step

The first thing our subscriber should do is record their concerns, noting why they suspect that work emails are being forwarded on to a personal email address. Once this record has been made, a meeting should be arranged with the employee.

If few emails have been forwarded, or they don’t appear to present a business risk, our subscriber could approach the matter on an informal basis.

Disciplinary proceedings?

On the other hand, if there are many work emails being forwarded on, or genuine concerns about what type of information they might or do contain, our subscriber could move straight to formal disciplinary proceedings.

It’s important to remember that the employee may have a good reason for forwarding work emails to their personal email address.

Possible reasons

This could include them not being able to access their work email at home; not being able to print documents from their work email, e.g. their employer runs a paperless workplace or work IT systems run slowly, perhaps due to the number of employees who are using them.

So, always give the employee a full opportunity to explain their actions. If they raise an issue, such as slow broadband speed, do what you can to resolve it.

Tip. In the event the employee can’t reasonably explain, or refuses to provide an explanation, you can view the matter as misconduct. Depending on the circumstances, their actions might amount to gross misconduct.

Tip. Their actions can also fall into this category if you already have a clear policy in place which states that works emails should not be forwarded to employees’ personal email accounts under any circumstances. Once you’ve moved to formal disciplinary proceedings, you’re probably safe to disable the employee’s work email account. You can justify this on the basis that you need to protect your business.