Read Your Company’s Correspondence

Your company corresponds with customers, vendors and service providers on regular basis. This communication can be spoken conversations either in person or on the phone, letters, proposals, emails, newsletters, blogs and even contracts. The written correspondence has much longer life and a poorly written communication can come back to hurt the company when a disagreement or even lawsuit arises.

Systemize a way to read your company’s correspondence that your employees use and that includes emails. I worked for a company where the vice-president always opened the mail and distributed it because it gave him the opportunity to look at incoming correspondence. When I ran the home building business I had each employee that was authorized to send letters make a copy of each letter and put it into a reading file that I would read through once a week. I found the employees took more care when they knew the boss was looking at what they wrote.

Some employees may feel that this is an invasion of privacy or that you do not trust them. It is your correspondence that they are doing for you. You need to see how they are representing you and the company.  Employees that do not like someone looking over their shoulder are often the ones that need it the most. The anger over being “spied on” can have its roots in lack of confidence in their work. If there is a problem deal with that problem but continue to monitor the correspondence. 

Is the correspondence neat, well written and on point.  It is easy to prepare a personal letterhead today using word processing programs. If you have letterhead and a particular style that you want used are they being used. Have you communicated how you want it done clearly and in writing or do you expect all your employees to do what you do without being told?

Emails tend to be informal but they are still important business correspondence. Check to see if your employee’s have added any personal stationary or pictures to their email. If so are they professional? Does the personal stationary convey the professional message you want? Is the stationary or picture so large that it is slowing your email and clogging your storage? If you are using one of the free services the service may be adding advertisements to each email based on the content of the email that are only seen by the person receiving your email.  It could even be your competitor’s advertisement.

Email stationary and formatting can be received differently by different programs. I did an email newsletter for a company for awhile and I sent it to several email programs where I had emails – Outlook, Yahoo and Gmail – to make sure I was getting the look I wanted before I send the full email blast.