To think my boss shouldn't have access to my emails?

[thepartysover]

I'm soon to be going on maternity leave and as part of my handover my boss has asked for the password to my work email address "so that nothing gets missed".

I will be setting up an out of office email response (including the relevant people to contact in any instance) - am I being unreasonable to say no to this, or does my boss have the right to access my correspondence?

If it’s a work email the yes, he does.

Yes YABU. It's a work email address.

Work email account then yes. In fact IT will have access anyway he was just being polite to ask you.

Of course he does. I don't even see why this would be an issue, it's very common practice to have someone monitor emails when someone is away.

Yea, work emails can be read by anyone.

Mmm not sure about the password. We use outlook and just give people delegate access.

He has every right and yes, IT will be access it anyway.

It's your work email so he has the right to access it. At our place IT just grants access if your manager needs it for some reason. Delete all your sent items and anything he won't need to see.

Not sure on this one actually. IT should have access to your work emails, but I know it was written into my IT contract that I wasn't to give the password to anyone. So, it depends on how your system is set up and any IT policy you had to sign.

Having access is not unusual. Often email programmes allow you to set delegates to access your emails. I used to make our team assistant my delegate so she could manage my emails and diary when I wasn’t around.

Access shouldn't normally be by password sharing, though. You are responsible for what happens under your password. He should request shared or delegate access to the account under his own sign on.

No, it's a disciplinary offence at my work to share a password whatever the circumstances. If access is legitimately required then IT would facilitate this but it has to be for good reason.
Open to abuse and corruption.

He should have access to your email (make him a delegate) but you shouldn't share your password.

Thanks everyone. My boss is also the IT guy so I guess he could carry on regardless anyway. I just wondered if this was standard procedure.

Delegate access but don’t hand over passwords, and we limit it to inbox only no subfolders

Now is a good time to delete the emails slagging off your boss and applying for new jobs

Seriously - delete anything that worries you but otherwise this is the norm.

IT should give him access rather than you giving him your network password. If he has the ability to use the systems as you, he could do anything and have it appear that you did it.

It's your work email so they will need access to it because even if you do those things people will still email your address and then the team or your temporary replacement will need to get in to access the information.

Once you come back just change the password.

To be honest it shouldn't really be a problem because all the content will be work related isn't it? Even if you are in a job where you receive sensitive information from clients like for example social services or mh team etc the the relevant department managers and your replacement would still be able to know the content as part of their job.

I don’t think he wanted the ops passwords as such as was just giving the heads up hat he would be having access to her account since he is the IT guy.

Actually though others have made a valid point that it's the password that's the issue rather than the access. I don't know why I didn't think about access without the password sharing!

I think asking for your password is unreasonable, as you've probably signed security policy to say you won't dis lose your password.

IT can arrange access (and so leave a nice audit trail of who had access when) or IT can probably reassign your address to him or redirect everything sent to you to his address.

I would be absolutely fine with my boss having access to my emails this way, but I wouldn't give her my password as that's against policy.

I wouldn't give my password. We ban password sharing at work because it prevents their being an audit trial. So I would ask what alternatives their are or ask him to confirm in writing he is requiring you to do this and acknowledge your concerns

I would expect it to happen, too.

Write every email, make every diary entry, as though it's for publication!

For the poster who suggested deleting sent items. That doesn't actually do what you expect, the admin can still see them. As a colleague found when they deleted all their emails to avoid a disciplinary (and just made it all worse)

I think the concern would be what someone could do with your password, as you. Send emails as you etc.

So yes, delegating access makes more sense.