They left and deleted all their emails

[Surreality22]

Colleague I was managing has left the company after working their notice. They have been quite problematic, lazy and making mistakes. They were supposed to send me some information I needed prior to them finishing and they didn't. I also wanted to know if there was anything outstanding which hadn't been dealt with. So IT gave me access to their emails to check for the missing info. Not only was it not there in sent/draft emails but they'd deleted everything out their inbox up until they left, along with nearly everything in the sent and deleted emails folder.

I'm just wondering why someone would do this? It wouldn't even occur to me to delete work emails when leaving a job, and these would have likely been info sent by colleagues/work requests that need dealing with. I imagine IT can retrieve them hopefully but wondering on the rationale behind doing this, is it just to be a dick and cause me more work?

It must have felt extremely satisfying

That was my thought!

Yup. Delete everything.

Have they given consent to have their inbox accessed?

I thought this was fairly normal. You needed to make sure anything was handed over before they left, which I know isn’t always easy.

Must have been a very toxic job to do that on leaving

I’m leaving next week and I’m deleting my emails. But I’m going through and saving anything key; and writing through handover notes

I’d probably delete all my emails before leaving a job just to be ‘tidy’. Wouldn’t expect someone to want to read them anyway.

I think it's sometimes down to inexperience, I've known two people to do this, both were fairly recent graduates.

The challenge in working in client facing roles, is that we rely a huge amount on the content from past conversations. If those conversations are lost forever, it makes providing consistent service difficult.

I have never wanted access to anyone's data for snooping, in fact, I actively don't snoop (ie I don't browse for what I'm looking for, I search the specific thing I need, and log out as quickly as feasible).

They dont need to.

If it's Microsoft outlook and is fairly recent you can recover deleted items. Go to the deleted items folder and there will be a button to recover all deleted items.
FWIW I would do the same when leaving a job. It just feels tidy to delete everything.

I knew someone that did this but purely because they spent the majority of their working day sending personal emails, so rather than just deleting those, just wiped everything

Your IT team should have backups and be able to restore the mailbox enabling you to locate the emails you need.

Have they given consent to have their inbox accessed?
Where I work, everything sent or received via my work email address is the property of my employers. It's all scanned for sensitive content too.

No consent is needed!

I’ve done this before. Where my boss was a complete cunt and I didn’t want to give them anything more than I already had. There is always a reason.

Check with IT but do it sharpish. Usually items that have been deleted can be recovered from the deleted folder but how long for will vary dependent on your security policy. It's 14 days at my work but could be less or more at yours. There's also the possibility that backups are still available but generally they are only kept for a very short period of time j like 48hrs.

I do this incase IT allow some random access to my email and I might have had a whine or main to someone.
One job I had they where always nosing into our email accounts so I used to delete completely everyday. Colleague had a mild moan to me the day before she left and was hauled into the office along with me the morning of her last day. I could prove I hadn't replied and there where no other emails they could pick on and she was chucked out of work without completing her last day.

Makes sense to me. Not necessarily nefarious reasons

Nutshell though, yes she did it to piss you off and it's worked

I don't think this is normal at all.

I've always done this on leaving a job, not because I've anything to hide, but because it feels tidier. I go through all my emails and check i've kept anything personal, forward or save to a shared area if I think they'll be needed and then delete all the rest. I do the same with any files on my personal onedrive. I know I've properly finished when everything is empty.

I deleted my entire email just to go on maternity. Lol

Yes, I did it. They called me asking for help too. I said no. Should have thought harder about making my life hell. 🤣

I did this in my last day at a job where I was made redundant, they were utter twats and it made me feel better.

That being said, if you are using outlook, they normally have a standard 90 day retention period of all deleted items, so they shouldn't be too hard to retrieve.