Here’s how using a personal email for work puts your business in danger.

Are your employees using their personal email accounts to receive work related email? That can hurt your organization in several ways, and compromise your business security. Here’s why it is in your best interest to set up work email accounts for your employees:

Turnover. If one of your employees suddenly leaves, or is fired, and there is any correspondence with your clients on her computer, what is to keep that person from spreading around sensitive information?  (I’ve seen this happen before, and it can prompt legal troubles for your business, and damage your reputation.) An employee using her personal email address for handling your business is never a good idea.

Credibility.  Besides, if you were dealing with ABC Company, or Gotham City, wouldn’t you feel like you were getting more of a professional response if the email response came from the same domain name as the company or city? For example: “mayor@gothamcity.org” is a much more legit email address than, “gotham223@hotmail”.

Security: Personal email accounts are often used by employees for things beyond personal correspondence: signing up on websites, ecommerce and more. By allowing your employees to also use these accounts at work, these addresses may leave your sensitive data and files open to virus contamination.

Viruses: Employees using their personal email may bring in viruses and other malware. Because a personal email is being used for everything from registration for websites and services to shopping and any other sort of personal online activity, you may be inviting hackers to penetrate your work email system.

Email packages are easy, and not very expensive, to set up. Also, and perhaps more importantly, if an employee leaves your organization, the passwords can be changed and sensitive content stays within the organization, rather than going out with, and continuing to be sent to, ex-employees. Here’s some email address examples: john.doe@mybusiness.com or don.joe@mycity.org. People like to have a specific person to email in an organization, and this is a good way to accomplish this. Alternatively, another option is to have a specific, yet name generic addresses like: mayor@mycity.com or hr@mybusiness.com.

There is a couple of ways that this can be accomplished: First, if you already have a domain and website hosted with a company like GoDaddy, there are email packages for little or no monthly cost.  In some cases, simply having an address that forwards to your existing email would be appropriate.

Google Apps for business is another tool that gives you a business email address and mailbox, in addition to other Google apps.  If you have claimed your Google Places page, and/or your Google+ page, your business already likely has an account, and Google Apps for business (with email) can be set up quickly, and have the full benefits of Gmail.

Organized, controlled and safe. Let me help your business or organization set up email accounts for your employees. Email me (at my business email) tim@quartzlightmarketing.com.