The apathetic attitude of most South African employers is fuelling rogue e-mailing - using personal e-mail accounts to send and receive work documents.
This emerged from Mimecast's Generation Gmail Report investigating attitudes to work e-mail usage in SA, the UK, US and Canada.
The results for SA revealed how noticeably local attitudes to e-mail differ. Christelle Hicklin, customer experience manager at Mimecast SA, says what makes these results so interesting are the extremes.
A total of 82% of respondents revealed that e-mail is their preferred method of communication, versus only 66% of the total sample.
“An incredible 97% of South Africans consider it essential that their e-mail is problem-free. This understanding of how much South African corporate users love e-mail explains some of the other... more worrying results,” says Hicklin.
On the other hand, 81% of South African e-mail users send work e-mails from their personal e-mail accounts with one in five doing so on a regular basis. While almost 80% realise this exposes their companies at risk, close to half feel it's still an acceptable practice.
“When I first read these results I was dumbfounded,” she says. “The obvious disconnect between knowing something is bad but not changing behaviour is perplexing. That is until I realised that most e-mail users are choosing what they consider to be the lesser of the two evils.”
Corporate users are working around the e-mail policies, mailbox limitations and e-mail size restriction to get their work done, the study discovered. The reason behind sending e-mail to and from personal e-mail accounts is primarily to work from home.
It also emerged that 71% of respondents are simply trying to get the job done with 23% using personal e-mail when the files are too big to get through the corporate server and almost one in five using a personal account because the content of the e-mail is too confidential to trust the corporate network.
data leakage is the biggest risk with rogue e-mailing, it is not what the average user intends. Only 6% admitted to using personal accounts to ensure they could have the information once they left the company.
“It's funny when you think about it - it's our good old-fashioned work ethic and can-do attitude that's putting companies at risk,” Hicklin adds.
Workers' attitudes to rogue e-mailing are worsened by South African organisations not taking responsibility for their e-mail policies.
“Employee behaviour can and should be influenced by company policy and culture. With only half of the respondents confirming the existence of a policy, it's clear that businesses need to get more actively involved in communicating, educating and enforcing e-mail usage that protect the company, while supporting the needs of the users.
“It appears that often organisations fail at both - setting rules and creating an e-mail environment that truly addresses the needs of their staff,” says Hicklin.
There are technology answers to the issue of rogue e-mailing, she also notes. Addressing the issues of mailbox size limitations, message size restrictions and e-mail policy deployment can be done via technology but the human issues require a much more human intervention, she adds.
“Companies need to start with a two-pronged approach. The needs of users must be balanced with clear policies and education programmes to ensure employees truly understand the impact of rogue e-mailing.
The procedural clarity with some education and change management is the only way to protect organisations from their workaholic, productivity focused staff,” concludes Hicklin.
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