What to do with an employee’s email after they leave?

When an employee leaves, it can be a dirty job – and your IT resource must help you through the process.

It is absolutely necessary to involve your IT resource, because a former employee who still has access to a company’s email and proprietary corporate data, is a security threat.

For continuity, an organization may wish to take some action to deal with emails that continue to arrive at that address after they have left, either with an auto-responder message indicating that the employee has left and who to contact, or by forwarding the emails to another address.

There are several options for handling a former employee’s email address:

1. STORE, FORWARD AND NOTIFY: Leave the mailbox open, change the password and forward the mail to an appropriate employee. This can also include an auto-responder message such as “I’ve left the organization, please contact the sales department as follows…” Archiving, forwarding and auto-responder messages have no cost associated, while leaving the mailbox open will incur a monthly mailbox fee.
2. ARCHIVE AND FORWARD ONLY: Archive and delete the mailbox. The data will be backed up and you will have access to the data. CTI Technology would typically create an alias of the old address to an appropriate employee’s mailbox so that a current employee receives the former employee’s mail.
3. ARCHIVE ONLY: Archive and delete the mailbox. The data will be backed up and you will have access to it. Mail sent to the employee’s address will bounce.

As noted above, we can archive a single email address for a departing employee, however, you may want to consider implementing an organization-wide email archiving system. It is not only easier to retrieve information than it is with a backup, it will also protect against malicious, intentional deletion of email data from an unhappy departing employee.

We also recommend a yearly review of forwards and old mailboxes to lessen the number of unchecked mailboxes that could cause a missed communication with a customer or donor – not to mention avoiding the unnecessary costs of unused mailboxes.