Workplace Email

I have a co-worker who doesn't seem to know the difference between a public post on Facebook and a mass email sent out to every person at our place of work.  It occurs to me that, perhaps, the etiquette of workplace emailing is not common knowledge, so I have decided to share it here in hopes that someone may be enlightened and cease bothering their co-workers with inane emails.

Do:

• Be professional with the type of language and vocabulary you use when sending workplace emails.
• Use workplace email to send specifically work-related emails to bosses, co-workers, and clients.
• Use workplace email to reply to work-related emails from bosses, co-workers, and clients.
• Use workplace email to correspond with other business contacts concerning specifically work-related matters.
• Only send out bulk emails when the subject matter contains work-related information which is relevant to everyone at your workplace.
• Use workplace email to send occasional work-appropriate emails to co-workers with whom you are also friends, even if those emails are not work-related.
• Use workplace email to share your personal email address with your work friends so that you may share personal emails with them outside of the workplace email system.
• Remember that, at most companies, workplace emails can be read by the bosses or other management any time they deem appropriate.

Don't:.....

• Send unsolicited personal non-work-related emails to co-workers with whom you are not on a personal-friends basis.
• Send fundraising messages or advertisements using workplace email unless you have first obtained approval from your boss/manager first, and send these emails only once.
• Send out the same email repeatedly.  This is obnoxious.
• Email anything through a workplace email system that you would be ashamed to have made public.
• Use emoticons in work-related emails.  :-)
• Use silly language or vocabulary in workplace emails.
• Use sarcasm in workplace emails.  It doesn't translate well in type.
• Use workplace email to send emails that are inappropriate for all audiences.  You never know who might be looking over the shoulder of the recipient.

One final thing: The words "Snoopy Happy Dance" should never, ever, ever be found in any workplace email.  Ever.