The YouGov survey of 2,000 email users found that Londoners were also more inclined to use email for backstabbing, with 19% admitting that they had emailed a colleague to criticise someone else.
Twenty-six percent of Londoners admitted that they would delete an email that they didn’t want others to find out about, as compared to an average 16% across the rest of the country, while only 1% of Londoners had reported a colleague for misusing email – half the national average.
“It’s very interesting to see such a wide variance of email practice across the British public,” said Jon Lee, Clearswift’s CEO. “But what these figures don’t reveal is the repercussions from sending an ill-judged or deliberately offensive mail. Businesses are opening themselves up to serious breaches of regulations if they allow such mails to slip through.”
The survey found that stress was a factor, with 25% of all employees who use email admitting that their guard slips when under pressure at work. In addition there were also marked age and gender related differences in attitudes to email.
According to Clearswift, younger employees who use email at work are five times as likely as their older colleagues (over 50) to send emails they would later regret when they have been out late the night before.
The survey also found that men are far more prone to corporate skulduggery than their female counterparts – 5% of male employees admitted to deliberately emailing intellectual property or private information outside their company, whereas the figure for females was only 1%.
“This statistic is particularly concerning,” said Lee. “There’s a blatant disregard for the very information which gives their employers competitive advantage and keeps the respondents in a job.”
Emma Grossmith, an employment law specialist with Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, agrees that employers cannot afford to ignore email and computer misuse. "Apart from the potential disaster of confidential information being leaked, employers run a real risk of being sued if emails sent to or from their employees are discriminatory or defamatory," she said.
She added: "the only real way for employers to protect themselves is by having and enforcing a clear policy for staff on how electronic systems are to be used and monitored and to train staff on that policy."
