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?

I would delete all the emails, just part of clearing everything. It wouldnt occure to me that someone would go into my email account. I wouldnt leave anything that needed to be dealt with, that would be forwarded to relevant people, if there was anything left.

Oh god, for completely OCD and. Asd purposes I entirely answer and clear my Inbox

They must have been a disgruntled employee. I presume they weren’t treated very nicely if they’ve been described as lazy and problematic.

I can think of several reasons why someone might have done this -
If they were bad at their job they may have been trying to cover up some of the mistakes they’ve made.

Or they may be disgruntled and it was a form of revenge.
Or they may have used their work email for private stuff they didn’t want anyone else to know about and not had time to look through individually.
Or they may be in the habit of deleting email on a regular basis.

I never bother deleting, just assume the account will be archived and if anything is needed IT could recover. They can recover easily from deleted so little point. Would handover and forward any important emails.

This. Our IT team keep all emails backed up for 12 months, and those in regulated roles, for 7 years.

Ask for help from IT

I have left a few companies, mostly on good terms, some less so. I routinely delete all my personal emails and documents (this is easy because I keep them in separate personal folders) and leave work emails for the firm to access in case they need them.

All emails and documents can be recovered at my firm as there are back ups for disaster recovery. But I don't want to make it easy to access my personal emails because inbox access will automatically be given to my manager to monitor for a fixed period of time after my departure.

If anyone deletes everything, it would be against the firm policy because all work related emails have to be kept for risk management purposes. Therefore, I would assume anyone who did that is a bad leaver and has something to hide. The firm can probably recover it anyway.

Someone I worked with deleted everything he’d worked on for over ten years, not just his emails. He was a dick, of course.

I'd delete all my own mails and docs. Stuff that shouldn't be deleted is already on shared drives.

Anyway, the most interesting stuff is in private one-to-one IM chats, not mail. 😉

I think they've done it as a fuck you.

I delete any personal emails or HR / employment emails but anything related to my work I leave.

IT should be backing up emails anyway I would think.

It’s not their inbox, computer, email etc all belong to the company. Don’t use your work email for personal stuff.

This

Most company IT departments can recover all deleted emails from a personal work related inbox after an employee has left.

You do realize that some companies have a legal and regulatory obligation to keep all records for a certain number of years right? Including worker emails, phone records etc.

I've always deleted that sort of thing on leaving a job. Not for any particular reason than that there is no need for me to leave stuff lying around computers. I know that, if there was any kind of issue that required accessing of my emails for investigative purposes, all my computer use and emails are stored on a back up system for a certain number of years. I can't think of any reason anyone would care to access my emails unless an issue came up later, which is unlikely.

I’ve always done this. It’s just tidying up, like clearing your desk.

Those of you routinely deleting emails, if your company uses Microsoft Outlook, it makes little difference. I personally can see anyone's emails even if they've been deleted. Even if you've deleted it out of your deleted items.

I don't routinely access these, it is for a purpose.

@Surreality22

as their manager you screwed up

the leaving process and hence last pay should have been linked tôo appropriate close down and you should have got the data you needed earlier versus after they left.

I'm just wondering why someone would do this?

Because they're problematic, lazy and make mistakes?

Not only did I delete the emails I went into the delete bit and made sure they were properly gone. Knowing they were also backed up onto the drive went and deleted them from there as well.

Also did the same as well as using a shredder to delete work I had created from the drives. When I started creating the work it was made clear that although they would use it, I wouldn’t be paid, so it was made clear when I left it would be leaving with me.

Same thing with some external resources I had access to. They didn’t want to pay for this training that was needed to get access to the resources.

Manager who had pushed me out reminded me on the last day to leave everything on the shared drive. Oh how I laughed when I reminded them about the contracts they couldn’t be arsed to look at. They also told anyone who would listen that I was lazy, problematic and refused to collaborate

👏

I did this when I left an absolutely awful company and it felt absolutely wonderful!! But I went much further than that! I deleted all the work everyone else had done, as well as using other people's passcodes that I had overheard over the months of hell (from absolute dicks who made my life hell) to make long international calls to my sister in the last few months of my employment. I also left teethmarks on my desk to have a permanent record of my hatred of the place which did make me laugh at loud.

This was 20 years ago and my worklife has been so much better since as I was able to doctor a very good work reference for myself too. Revenge is very sweet ☺️ and I would definitely do it again with no hesitation.

Luckily I haven't had to as the next place I worked was lovely with the loveliest people. Some places are too toxic to be true.

The person should have discussed this with their manager before deleting.
It might be a good idea to have a company policy of discussing this with leavers before they leave.

Well realistically, if it’s their individual private work mailbox rather than a shared one, they had every right to clear it down upon leaving their role. I’m a DPO and would absolutely do this when leaving any role. It’s also good practice to regularly clear down emails, because mailboxes were never designed to be long term storage of important information and they’re nowhere near as secure as e.g. a shared network drive with appropriate role-based access provision.

I’m also surprised that IT gave you direct access to the mailbox rather than searching for what you’d asked for themselves. Whilst the mailbox is the property of the company and there may be a legitimate reason to search it (which doesn’t require the individual’s consent), it’s also incredibly privacy intrusive to give an immediate colleague access to someone’s private work emails. Totally different to an impartial HR/IT colleague doing the same.

I too have deleted my emails because it was part of clearing/cleaning up what I've used not to be vindictive (!!)
Anything pertinent to clients would have been stored elsewhere in a central data system.
Your work needs to give instructions if they don't anything deleted or have IT back up and record everything in some sort of cloud arrangement on an hourly or daily basis to sync everything to the cloud.