How to Implement Email Retention Policy in the Workplace – Part I
Email is a vital communication wheel for most businesses, and ensuring that it is in good shape and well-maintained is essential, despite the brutal loads of email coming in or going out on a daily basis. For a sense of the volumes of email likely to be handled over the coming years, read this recent report by Radicati-Email Statistics Report, 2012-2016.
From humble beginnings of 50 email accounts in 1980 (Source: International Center for Integrative Systems) the number of email accounts have exploded to 3.3 billion in 2012 and are expected to grow to 4.3 billion by 2016 (Source: Email Statistics Report, 2012-2016).
Impact of Email accounts on businesses
So, what do these numbers mean to a business owner or the head of data retention?
Nearly one-fourth of these accounts are corporate accounts, which translates to nearly 750,000,000 business email accounts.
Secondly, in the Radicati’s report there are several pointers on how there will be further pressure on corporate emails as the load continues to grow in the coming years – corporate emails are likely to increase faster than consumer email accounts. This process will happen naturally as a result of the extension of emails to all employees, even those who did not have access earlier.
Organizations should take a hard look at their current email archiving process with a focus on these key retention points:
- Understand email retention regulatory requirements in the state
- Review internal email retention policies and adapt.
- Review the tools currently in use for email retention.
- Review disaster management policy.
- Introduce a disciplined auditing processes
In our next post (link below), let us explore more on retention trends.
How to Implement Email Retention Policy in the Workplace – Part II 
