Nasty Emails from Colleague

Ladybird1975

Hi I need some advice, I have been covering for a colleague while they are off sick and while checking their emails I have found an email to a colleague which says some nasty things about me, the colleague in question does often put me down in front of other staff and the boss. What is the best way to handle this

starrystarry

How did you get access to their email account?

Browntoa

as above, disciplinary where I work for that !

Jordo

Ladybird1975 wrote: »

Hi I need some advice, I have been covering for a colleague while they are off sick and while checking their emails I have found an email to a colleague which says some nasty things about me, the colleague in question does often put me down in front of other staff and the boss. What is the best way to handle this

This is what I'd consider doing:

1) shrug your shoulders, say "who cares" and move on
2) play it cool, email the email to yourself, CCing the person in and say "interesting" in the subject line or something like that. Chances are they'll be mortified and that will be the end of it.

The bigger problem here is them putting you down in front of people - nobody has the right to make you feel uncomfortable at work - stand up for yourself!

Ebe_Scrooge

Depending upon the severity of the nastiness, you could always forward the mail to HR with a covering note, and ask them to "have a word" with the offender. Depends who you work for, some companies will take this sort of thing very seriously, even up to the point of issuing a written warning.

Bear in mind though, you still have to work with this person when they return, so do you really want to make things even more awkward ?

And as others have said, are you accessing their emails with formal permission ? If not then you could find yourself in hot water.

nimbo

when we worked in an office we all had access to each others emails so we could get to information for work if they were off - we had to allow this, and knew it was happening...

made for really interesting reading when one of the girls was doinking one the guys (who was about to get married to someone else) in the stationary cupboard.... our boss kept reminding us very bluntly that we shouldn't use the email system for anything private, as we all had access, and she didn't want to blush... hahahaha

andygb

starrystarry wrote: »

How did you get access to their email account?

I think you will find that some firms (who are too lazy to set up temporary logins and the like) allow the person who is covering, to sit at the absent person's workstation, use their PC and regularly check their incoming emails in case there is something urgent.
If I were the OP and this IS the case, then I would possibly copy it to HR depending on the severity.

starrystarry

andygb wrote: »

I think you will find that some firms (who are too lazy to set up temporary logins and the like) allow the person who is covering, to sit at the absent person's workstation, use their PC and regularly check their incoming emails in case there is something urgent.

That's why I was asking, to check whether the OP had permission to access the emails. Any advice offered would depend on this.

Assuming he/she had permission, I agree with others who have said it depends on how nasty the email was. It would have to be pretty bad for me to report it to HR. I'd probably just ignore it. Or I might let the person know I've seen it just to make them squirm. It's hard to say though, without having any idea of the content.

I must say, if companies want employees to be able to access each others emails they should have a proper system which only allows access to certain emails. At my previous job we had to allow a "secondary user" on our email accounts but they could only see stuff in the main inbox. They wouldn't be able to see anything that had been moved to a folder, or anything that was flagged as private/personal/confidential. It's wrong for someone to have full access to someone else's emails. They should be able to keep some stuff (eg HR stuff) confidential.

The person who sent the email was pretty stupid for leaving it in there. Should have deleted it.

brendon

starrystarry wrote: »

hTey wouldn't be able to see anything that had been moved to a folder, or anything that was flagged as private/personal/confidential.

There is no such thing as personal emails in your company's email account. If a company has trusted X employee with the private/confidential data, there's no reason they will not trust Y employee covering for that person.

starrystarry

brendon wrote: »

There is no such thing as personal emails in your company's email account. If a company has trusted X employee with the private/confidential data, there's no reason they will not trust Y employee covering for that person.

Yes there is. In my email account there are emails from HR which are very personal. There are audit results, annual review documents etc. I would consider those personal. The emails may still be the property of the company, but they're personal. There's no reason why someone covering my job would need to see them.

Tiddlywinks

brendon wrote: »

There is no such thing as personal emails in your company's email account. If a company has trusted X employee with the private/confidential data, there's no reason they will not trust Y employee covering for that person.

This is not strictly the case.

The content of each email may only be appropriate viewing for the sender and recipient.

Not every piece of correspondence is relevant or appropriate reading to every member of staff no matter how trusted.

Companies should still manage data - especially personal data - on a 'need to know' not a 'nice to know' basis.

In this scenario, it is important to know how s/he managed to 'discover' this nasty email. Rooting around in email files and reading the content of historic mail placed in 'private' folders would NOT be acceptable behaviour.