Send the Right Message

Q: My employees are sending out unprofessional e-mails. Are there any guidelines they can follow?

More than half of the office workers in a recent survey say they lose up to 30 minutes a day trying to decipher disorganized, too-long or incomprehensible e-mails. One in five employers had employee e-mail and instant messaging subpoenaed in the course of a lawsuit or regulatory investigation.

Employeesshould take e-mail etiquette as seriously as standard business etiquette, according to Jim Jacoby, executive consultant with MCC Training, a division of CNO Inc.

He suggests four key solutions to help improve your employee e-mail-and protect against legal actions.

>Establish a company policy that specifies how employees are to use the Internet.

>Train employees in business writing to ensure their messages are understood the first time.

>Remind employees that the firm monitors their e-mails.

>Follow up by coaching employees to ensure they follow the rules.

Jacoby recommends The ePolicy Handbook by Nancy Flynn, executive director of The ePolicy Institute, as a resource. It's a management business guide to help your firm have clean, compliant, safe and secure e-mail use and content, and it lays out rules that you can easily adapt for your firm.

Another tip: Remind employees to keep it simple. "Technical or complicated messages have a very good chance of being misunderstood," says Jacoby. "And don't use e-mail to explain the rules-better to do it in person or during a class."

Q: What information should I have before meeting with a Web design company?

Harry Casimir, co-founder and director of business development for Unique ID Web Design, says to first take time to think about what you want your site to accomplish. Then identify some key details, such as your intended audience and what makes your company unique. If you are in the position to do so, find out what your customers would like on the site and how they would use it.

The more information you can bring to an initial meeting, the better.

"Nobody knows your business, your product or industry like you do," Casimir says.

He also suggests doing research on the Web designer you are going to hire. A good designer, should have a portfolio you can view. You may pay a premium, but looks are only part of the cost.

"A lot of time [designing the site] should be spent on structure, such as how well it's coded for search engine optimization," he says.

Casimir's company uses a 10-page questionnaire to get as much information as possible from a new client before starting the process. "But keep in mind that not every Web designer has the same approach. Whether big or small, each has [its] own way of developing a site and asking questions. Not everybody approaches the project the same way."