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 am well aware of this and haven’t said otherwise.

When I say I would not expect, I mean in the sense that I cannot think of any reason why they would need or want to. And likewise as a manager I have never needed or wanted to read through somebody’s old emails.

But you said you thought it was low. Why would it be low?

I am in a similar position, in that there’s nothing in my emails that would be useful to the company that is not stored or shared elsewhere. It would be completely pointless for anyone to read through them. Emails are for day to day processes and issues, updates on things, letting staff know there are new links, general communications etc. Documents or files aren’t attached to emails. We are expressly not allowed to do that.

This isn't just about a "what do you do when someone leaves" company policy, but a "what do you expect people to do with emails on a day to day basis" policy.

I delete emails when they are no longer relevant, I've actioned them or if they are one of many in a long chain (just keep the last). So, when I leave, I won't have huge numbers of emails left, even if I delete none of them. If my company wanted me to have emails for someone else to refer to when I left, they would have to have already made it clear that I was expected to keep things and not delete them as I went along.

IT should have back-ups of all their emails anyway so you should be able to get them if you really need them.

I loved deleting all my emails when I left my last role. Extremely toxic workplace though