Would you be suprised to learn that 58% of emails handled by your corporate email system were non-work related? Would you be surpised to learn that 25% of the mail your corporate email system handles is personal in nature? How about the fact that 33% of all email messages are spam? Add them together and 58% of the email you handle is non-business related.

According to a new study, 72% of employees use their work email accounts to forward “jokes, photos, video clips and other nonwork related messages to coworkers.” More worrisome is the fact that 12% of workers ‘admit’ to sharing music files through their company email address “violating copyright laws, occupying server storage and eating large amounts of bandwidth.” This can be bad for business. Ask yourself:

• If my employees are writing emails personal emails during work, are they working?
• If my employees share illegal music on my network can I be sued?
• If my employees share explicit or insensitive jokes or photos can I be sued?
• If half of my resource are tied up with non-work related business am I paying too much for my systems?
• If my employees open personal messages with virus, worms and spyware does that create downtime and work for the IT staff?

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