Ex employer reading emails

[kayenails]

Hi, I left my last office job due to illness. I decided not hand my notice while I was off work. My HR manager cleared my desk for me and kindly dropped my things to my home. I have since found out from an old colleague that my email account for work had been accessed and read through. Surely they must ask me first before they access my emails?

Not an HR expert but if it is a work email account surely that is the 'property' of the employer? Happy to be corrected.

What does the policy say? They usually say that work emails can be accessed and you should not send personal emails.

I'm not sure either, but I'd of thought that having a password meant it was private. I had private emails, as does everyone, and I was laughed at by my old colleague because he had read my things

Your email account and all its contents are property of your employer and they can access your account at any time. That's how it works in the NHS anyway.

Password means nothing.
Check the policy.
All ours are randomly monitered and we have signed a contract for email/net usage. Also something about not using the email for personal use.
The email isn't your property. It belongs to the company.

Emails on a office system can always be read by systems administrators, who can also grant access to any properly authorised person, and this is totally normal practice.

It's almost unheard of for an employer these days to do otherwise, and it's probably stated somewhere in a staff handbook/IT policy/contract or similar.

They are not "your" emails, they relate to your work for the company and are the property of the company. Your company IT policy will probably also say something about not using your work email account to send private emails.

Sorry but it's not private and your employer has the right to access it. They should have told you this - it will be in your handbook or IT policy or etc.

I'm currently off sick, I'm taking it for granted that my email account may be accessed in my absence.

You can't expect your work email account not to be touched if you are off (presumably fairly long-term?) sick. What if you had emails that required action, which presumably you would?

In terms of reading private emails, I expect there will be a policy around this as everyone says. If you received or sent a private email with PRIVATE or PERSONAL splattered all over the subject line, there's an argument that you should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those circumstances, but basically your work email is for work and may be read. Anyway, what would you like to do about it? Mildly irritating yes, but not something you are realistically going to be able to do anything about-they've been read now.

Basically, don't use your work email for personal emails and don't put anything in a work email that you wouldn't be happy for your colleagues/boss/IT department to read.