Have you seen some one let the cat out the bag like this before?
This time the Outlook email “Recall This Message” didn’t work. Rosy Zory, a top HR exec, at Aegis Group’s media-buying division of Carat, accidentally sent an email to the entire company (meant for top managers only) detailing a restructuring plan that includes many of layoffs. AdAge reported this on the 3rd.
Ms. Zory quickly contacted the IT department to recall the email, but the damage was done. The email contained PowerPoint and Word documents that included a script detailing how employees should be let go and scripts on how to tell them. AdAge received a copy of the email.
“If you would like to go home today and come back tomorrow to clean out your desk or office, you are free to do so. We would like you to meet with your manager following our meeting to transition your work. We will be communicating to your team today. Your manager will be contacting clients. We ask that you do not contact your clients to discuss this situation.”
The remaining employees were to get a pep talk:
“Let them know we are building for the future. The actions we had to take, although unfortunate, were necessary to right-size the company and … bring in the skill sets we need to effectively service our business and future client needs.”
The press would be only addressed if they contacted the company. I guess they did not expect this email blunder to be part of the script for the press. They are likely working on another script, I wonder if we’ll get it via an email error.
“This is a tough one. Since we’re not opting to get out in front of the press, we will be left to defend. I think we may need to prepare for different contingencies depending on how they may hit us — because they will hit us. RISK assessment.”
What can we learn from this?
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October 22, 2008 at 12:55 am
Who hasn’t been on either side of a layoff in their career? No matter whether one is on the management side or on the employee side, it’s always a stressful experience. And who among us has not come close – or worse – to sending an email by mistake? Given our very human weaknesses, the only lesson one can and should learn here is that we must find a better technical solution to shield us from this type of major embarrassment as well as potentially serious damage. We need to find a way to avoid accidentally giving the wrong people a plan in progress or anything else that they don’t have a right to see. What we want is to maintain control over the info we send out – way beyond Microsoft Outlook’s “recall” which, practically speaking, may only eliminate the confusion people have when they accidentally receive some email really not meant for them.
Fortressware, my company, developed an anti-data leaking technology specifically to block both accidental and malicious acts of passing files of any type, including PowerPoint and Word, to the wrong people. Furthermore, even if the “wrong” individual should receive the email, the files remain invisible and inaccessible to all but authorized recipients. This solution does not require users, such as those in an HR department, to understand encryption or any other security technology. And it doesn’t require any more effort than would be involved in sending files out without any protection.