Generic Email
I recommend generic email addresses to all clients, recommending them for a range of reasons:
- Correspondence is held in a role specific email box. When a new person starts they can catch up, or search for previous conversations.
- The generic email box means that when a person leaves the role, or doesn’t want to be working on that role, someone else can be monitoring.
- For Data Protection a subject access request means that the organisation needs to find all emails and documents.
- For Charity Governance those involved should be able to show clear communication and records.
- All of the above is easier if the emails are all in house – and not scattered over a range of personal accounts.
Sharing Email Accounts
However this becomes more complicated if more than one person will be accessing and dealing with messages. If the role is shared then some additional guidelines may be needed.
- Will one person be primarily dealing with correspondence? If so a regular update to the other members of the team might be useful.
- Will the email box only be checked occasionally, then an automatic reply saying so can be useful in managing expectations.
- If more than one person is handling correspondence then there need to be ways to ensure email doesn’t slip through the net, and all team members have the information they need.
- Adding extra email folders for specific people to look at, or communicating outside of the email are useful.
As for all team projects communication and clear expectations and guidelines help to minimise confusion.
What ways have you found to ensure that everyone is aware of what is happening in the email account without duplication of effort?
