Business Ethics Conduct Guide

Best practice guidelines for using e-mail

www.thalesgroup.com

CH

Contents

PREFACE ......................................................3

DID YOU KNOW? ...........................................4

Make better use of time ......................................... 4

Manage the mass of information ............................. 5

Avoid a sense of urgency ........................................ 6

Avoid e-mail dependency ......................................... 6

Improve the quality of your communication ................. 7

Avoid confl icts ...................................................... 8

Protect against malicious e-mails ............................. 8

TOOLBOX ....................................................10

Guidelines for the proper use of NuCo ..................... 10

Guide to basic functions ........................................ 10

Guide to advanced functions .................................. 10

Thales University eLearning portal .......................... 10

FURTHER INFORMATION .............................11

France ............................................................... 11

Germany ............................................................. 12

United Kingdom .................................................. 12

United States ..................................................... 13

Australia ............................................................. 13

Other regulations ................................................. 13

Thales IT Charter and specifi c instructions ............... 14

TALK TO US .................................................15

THALES – Business Ethics Conduct Guide – Best practice guidelines for using e-mail

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Preface

‘‘ These guidelines are an invitation to ‘stand back’…

… and think about some of our daily routines – and

to see if there are things we could change or

improve.

E-mail has come to play an important role in the way

we interact with others. It can sometimes be invasive,

and we don’t always use it as responsibly as we

could!

Some of the ideas in these guidelines may sound

obvious, but they are here simply to remind us all to

think twice about how we interact with other people.’’

Dominique Lamoureux, Vice-President,

Ethics and Corporate Responsibility

This guide has been developed in close collaboration with the following Corporate Departments: Communications, Human Resources, Security, Internal Audit, Information Systems.

THALES – Business Ethics Conduct Guide – Best practice guidelines for using e-mail CH

Inappropriate use of e-mail can cause annoyance or inconvenience, but this can be avoided. By raising a few issues, this guide aims to improve your understanding of e-mail and help you make better use of it in your daily work.

Make better use of time E-mail is a quick way to communicate. You can send a message to one person or as many people you like, whenever necessary, without needing to go anywhere or wait until they are free. However, the all-too-familiar build-up of messages in people’s inboxes can cancel out the time savings.

Use the e-mail tool’s built-in functions to sort and archive your messages every day and housekeep your mailbox so you can fi nd things easily.

Be specifi c in your subject lines, because this will help your addressees to manage their mailboxes as well.

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Manage the mass of information With the widespread use of e-mail, the volume of information exchanged every day has also increased. This can lead to information overload and incomprehension.

To avoid this, ask yourself about the suitability of the channel of communication used.

E-mail is not always the best way to communicate. A telephone call or face-to-face meeting may be more appropriate.

Similarly, avoid sending too much information at the same time, or choose recipients on a need-to-know basis, rather than bulk mailing.

Also remember that using email does have an environmental cost and the more email we send, the higher the cost! In a company with 100 employees, for example, a year’ worth of email traffi c has about the same carbon footprint as fl ying from Paris to New York and back 13 times! This is due to the electricity needed to power the servers that send and store the messages.

Here are three ways we can reduce the environmental impact of our email usages:

limit the number of recipients: for example, do not use Reply All unless strictly necessary.

reduce the size of each email: include thumbnails instead of full-size pictures, and send a link (URL) instead of attaching a document if possible.

use text instead of HTML.

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Avoid a sense of urgency E-mail boosts productivity, but inappropriate use can cause stress for the people on the receiving end. An e-mail can give the impression that your request is urgent and must be dealt with immediately. Plus, if you e-mail people during evenings or weekends, it can encourage or oblige them to respond outside their normal working hours. Such practices have been condemned in courts of law.

Tips for avoiding a sense of urgency: choose the best time to send your message

and / or specify when you need a response. if a message is urgent, state this clearly in the

subject line or body of the message, or use the important / priority / urgent indicator in your e-mail tool.

However, urgent messages should be the exception, not the rule!

limit when and where you access your mailbox (see below).

Avoid e-mail dependency E-mail is so useful – and compatible with company 3G laptops, smartphones, pushmail devices, etc. – that it can be used almost exclusively, to the detriment of other tools, creating a degree of dependence and a willingness (or even perceived need) to be reachable at all times.

As outlined above, matters are even worse when people are receiving work e-mails outside normal work hours. For this reason, it is important to set boundaries on when you are available or can be reached, particularly during meetings and periods of annual leave.

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Try to limit how accessible you are: when away on leave, activate the out-of-offi ce

message function, which automatically replies to anyone who e-mails you, telling them you are unavailable and who to contact if their request is urgent.

don’t check your messages during meetings!

To reduce your dependence, you can also limit pushmail (which automatically ‘pushes’ messages from the mail server to your mobile device), or get your smartphone to sync messages at regular intervals instead of immediately.

Improve the quality of your communication E-mail makes it easier to contact people and allows more frequent communication, but quality of content tends to suffer. If we’re not careful, our exchanges can become depersonalised and less engaging and meaningful. Obviously you can’t say everything in an e-mail, but there’s no need to damage a relationship!

Simply identifying the person you are e-mailing at the start of the message, identifying yourself by using a signature at the end for example, and personalising the content of your message will help improve the quality of your communications.

Always ask yourself whether e-mail is the most appropriate form of communication in that particular situation.

Excessive use of e-mail for general communications can make the people on the receiving end lose interest and motivation.

Taking the time to meet your teams, encouraging them face to face, responding to their e-mails and giving them more autonomy are just some of the ways to re-motivate them.

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Avoid confl icts E-mails can be misinterpreted, resulting in misun-derstandings and confl icts. They can fi re up emotions and lead to abusive behaviour. People may feel at liberty to do / say more from behind their screens than they would if they were face to face with the person at the other end.

Be careful about what you put in your e-mails and how you put it. Don’t ‘‘reply all’’ when you only need to reply to the person concerned – it limits the number of people receiving any personal or contentious information.

The best way to defuse a confl ict is talking face to face.

Protect against malicious e-mails Because e-mail can be sent quickly and easily to any number of people at the same time, it lends itself to abuse. Phishing (1), spam and e-mails containing viruses are just three of the dangers awaiting unsuspecting users. It is therefore important to recognise the risks and deal with them effectively:

Spam: unsolicited messages, usually advertising, sent indiscriminately and often repeatedly to huge numbers of people whose e-mail addresses have been harvested without their consent.

The best advice is to never respond to such messages, but simply delete them.

(1) Technique used by fraudsters to extract personal data and steal people’s identities.

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Phishing: method based on e-mails purporting to be from banks, credit card companies and other reputable fi nancial organisations, designed to trick unsuspecting users into disclosing confi dential information.

Remember, legitimate fi nancial partners never send this type of e-mail.

So treat any such messages with caution and suspicion, particularly if they ask for confi dential details.

Also, never click on a link in an e-mail which looks suspicious.

Viruses: code carried by certain e-mails, which installs itself on your computer as soon as you open a contaminated fi le attachment or connect to a contaminated website, then executes its payload to destroy certain file types on your hard drive or spy on your computer to harvest and export confi dential information.

Beware of any e-mail that arrives from an unknown source, or that looks strange or contains anything strange even if it appears to come from a familiar address. The virus protection installed on your Thales computer is vital, but it may not be effective against unknown malware (2).

These guidelines are not intended to restrict the way that e-mail is used. They are recommendations based on broad experience that have proven useful in the past and should help us to make the most of e-mail as a quick and efficient way to communicate.

(2) Malicious software, designed to harm computers and networks, without the knowledge or consent of the infected user.

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THALES – Business Ethics Conduct Guide – Best practice guidelines for using e-mail CH

More practical recommendations for Thales employees on the use of e-mail are available on the Group IT Department intranet site.

Guidelines for the proper use of NuCoRecommendations to improve communications using the NuCo system, to be read in conjunction with this guide.http://intranet.corp.thales/isp/pub/Reglesdebonusage_en.cfm?intralang=en

Guide to basic functionsA quick-start guide to the basics of these various tools, designed to get you up and running.http://intranet.corp.thales/isp/pub/nuco_user_guide_basic_en.cfm?intralang=en

Guide to advanced functionsMore comprehensive information about organising meetings, managing shared calendars and other more advanced functions.http://intranet.corp.thales/isp/pub/nuco_user_guide_advanced_en.cfm?intralang=en

Thales University eLearning portalEmail best practices are outlined in the « Communicating powerfully by email » module.http://thales.lms.crossknowledge.com/candidat/product_sheet.php?report_id=1368139

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Rules already exist for the use of e-mail but they vary from country to country and operate at several different levels.

At national level, the use of e-mail is subject to a legal framework, which varies from one country to another; list of applicable regulations in selected countries at time of publication.

France

Electronic messages can be recognized by French courts as a legitimate form of evidence, if the part which calls upon them had access there in a regular way.

Personal e-mails sent from a work mailbox are tolerated to a certain extent, provided they do not affect people’s work, do not refl ect negatively on the company’s reputation and do not disrupt the operation of its information systems.

If you want your correspondence to be considered private, you must clearly state in the subject line that such e-mails are personal or private in nature. In your absence, the company has no right to access personal e-mail folders or messages, provided they are marked as such. In any event, only the IT department would be able to access them.

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THALES – Business Ethics Conduct Guide – Best practice guidelines for using e-mail CH

At Thales, employees working in the defence sector are required to comply with national security laws and regulations. Any breaches may be subject to prosecution.

These rules stipulate, among other things, that no classifi ed defence information may be transmitted by e-mail. For sensitive but unclassifi ed information or specifi c information of a strictly national nature, refer to the instructions available on the Legifrance website (see link below) or contact the person responsible for security at your site.

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affi chTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000024892134&fastPos=1&fastReqId=275001272&categorieLien=cid&oldAction=rechTexte

Germany

Companies that allow their employees to use their work mailboxes for private purposes cannot monitor the content of any such messages unless an employee is specifi cally suspected of a serious criminal offence. Rules on the appropriate use of the company e-mail system must be approved by the works council in an agreement.

United Kingdom Employees are entitled to a private family life. In this respect, they may engage in a reasonable amount of private correspondence at work, particularly by e-mail. However, the law protects employers and allows them to monitor employee e-mails. Misuse of e-mail can result in dismissal.

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United States Private e-mails are not considered confi dential when they are sent from a work mailbox. Legal rulings have established that employees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy at their place of work. However, individual employers may decide otherwise, in which case they must specify their policy in writing.

Australia

As in the United States, Australian law does not prevent a company from monitoring employee e-mails, if the company owns the server. The workplace is considered a public place, but companies must inform employees about the specifi c types of monitoring in place.

Other regulations

In the Group’s other countries of operation, local regulations are likely to be different from those described above, particularly in the area of national defence. It is important to be aware of them and refer to them whenever necessary.

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THALES – Business Ethics Conduct Guide – Best practice guidelines for using e-mail CH

At Group level, the Thales IT Charter provides a framework and best practice recommendations for the use of information and communication systems across the organisation, including the use of e-mail. In France, infringement of this charter can lead to sanctions.

The Charter is available on intranet sites ‘‘ Information Systems ’’ and ‘‘ Chorus 2.0 ’’.

The Charter is designed to be used in conjunction with specifi c instructions relating to:

Information sensitivity

Thales has determined degrees of sensitivity for confi dential information, with corresponding pro-cedures to be followed whenever such information is sent by e-mail. These procedures are available on Chorus 2.0.http://chorus2-mod.corp.thales/modulo/webservice?database=chorus2p&servicename=fileget&number=GRP/ORGA/01053

Security

Specifi c security tools and resources to protect the information system are available to users. They are available on the intranet and must be used.http://intranet.corp.thales/isp/pub/referential_en.cfm?&page_1360=1&y=0&intralang=en

Export control for technical datahttp://intranet.corp.thales/export-control/pub/index_en.cfm?&intralang=en

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Talk to us...

For more information, details or advice, please contact:

Ethics and Corporate Responsibility Department:

ethics.cr@thalesgroup.com

☎ + 33 (0)1 57 77 82 07

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Ethics and Corporate Responsibility Department

45 rue de Villiers92526 Neuilly-sur-Seine Cedex

France

www.thalesgroup.com

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