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's not a data breach to access work emails!
It's up to you if you use it for personal reasons but your employer can always access them.

one company I know, all emails are automatically deleted by IT after I think six months, maybe a year, even when you are still in employment

Yes, ours go after 18 months. If you need to keep something for legal reasons or whatever, you need to export it. Important info shouldn't be stored in mails.

IT aren't going to routinely restore mailboxes of leavers. They have too much else to do.

See Capita plc & another v Darch & others, the High Court ruled that information in emails is not company property. Servers, computers, physical things are company property. Electronic records - the data contained in the emails - are not company property.

When information is created and recorded there are sharp distinctions between the information itself, the physical medium on which the information is recorded and the rights to which the information gives rise. Whilst the physical medium and the rights are treated as property, the information itself has never been”.

Or a toxic individual.

How can you even say this? If you know anything about GDPR, you’ll know it’s only PERSONAL data, identifying data that is covered. Data belonging to a company in a company email account is not personal data. It is potentially commercially sensitive, but your work email is not your private email.

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

I was made redundant a few years ago, still on fairly good terms with my colleagues and boss. But even then, on the handover I provided information and instruction only on subjects that I was specifically asked about or that I knew would crop up in the first couple of weeks. Anything else was up to the company to manage - in the end I had to ask them at what point they'd be providing someone to train in the most important tasks, a handover needs someone to handover to.

When you're off-boarding you cannot "expect". It's up to you to get the information from them. No one working notice is focussed on the job they're working notice on. If it's important, their manager needs to make sure it happens - not sit back and expect it to happen.

@biedrona it's a pretty standard work policy for employers to be able to access employees emails to and from the work email address

Yes, but that case the claim was that emails sent from the company email account remained the property of the company after they were received by non-company email accounts. Reading between the lines, Capita was making their initial order because they had no retained copies of the outgoing emails.

Consent is not required

I had to dismiss someone, her behaviour was so bad and I had to supervise her gathering her stuff and escort her out of the building. I watched as she deleted everything off her computer and I just smiled. We had a back up and just restored it when she left. Gave us all a laugh.

I've always done that, can't think why you wouldn't?
For me it was the best way to ensure that there weren't any that needed to be passed on, go through them and forward if needed then delete so you know that one was dealt with 🤷‍♀️

@OneFrenchEgg our company deletes all teams messages after 30 days

I left a job last week, I deleted all my emails and then deleted the trash. Also deleted all calendar entries. It's normal I think

Well fingers crossed ours does too 😂

@OneFrenchEgg i know :)
If you go into them you can only go back so far with a message saying messages older than this date have been deleted as per your company policy. Its annoying sometimes when they have sent you vital info through teams and then its gone

I’ve always done it too, it wouldn’t cross my mind not too

One place that I was being bullied out of, I put in a 3000 word formal grievance and metaphorically firebombed the place on the way out. Given how cruel and vindictive they'd been to me, it seemed like the least I could do for them. Cost them thousands in HR fees alone as they got a specialist consultant in to deal with the grievance. He found in my favour and I then resigned. I mean I'm sure the company tell that story differently, but that's my side of it.

So who knows why she deleted her emails. Vindictiveness maybe. A sense of revenge. Or she thought it was the best thing to do since she was going.

Interesting. It wouldn't cross my mind to do it.

They have been quite problematic, lazy and making mistakes
So bad that I wanted access to their emails and what they'd already done to make my life easy so that I could rush in and save the day and take the credit.

I'd have deleted too. Sounds like you have a problem with them

Someone left the organisation I work for and hadn't saved anything, including current casework, on the shared drive. There were no documents attached to client files on the database, either.

Because their job was 100% remote working, it was assumed that stuff was saved directly to the work laptop, but when the laptop was finally returned (after being dropped off at a local office without anyone being told), it had been totally trashed. It looked like it had been run over by a car, apparently, and some sticky drink had been spilled on it and got into the inside.

The IT manager told our manager that it was so trashed that it was impossible to extract anything from it. I had no idea that was even possible.

And guess who's picked up most of their active casework?

Your IT team should be able to restore all emails sent and received.

They didn’t destroy anything. Unless the company had a policy in place around how mailboxes are to be used by colleagues, both on an ongoing basis, and upon leaving the business then it’s up to individual colleagues to use their common sense/discretion about how to use them.

At no point did I suggest the company don’t have the right to access the emails; they do, if they can establish a legitimate reason. And if they do choose to access them, they’re required under data protection legislation to consider the privacy of the individual in terms of who they grant said access to.

Thank you! I just assumed it was like any messaging where you could delete things oh well.

It’s not as simple as that. Some emails contain a mixture of company and personal data. A colleague’s personal mailbox may also contain copies of things such as payslips, performance reviews, manager feedback, etc. This is their personal data and it’s still a perfectly legitimate use of company email.

Hence why the individual has a right to delete the emails when they leave the business. Or else, minimally expect that random colleagues won’t be granted carte blanche access.

thanks!