When a company delivers a round of layoffs, employees are given less than an hour to pack up their belongings, say their good-byes and shut down their computers.
That's a typical exit scene for many downsized companies, where systems managers routinely disable e-mail and delete passwords while unknowing employees are diverted into meetings to receive pink slips.
"It's 'Turn in your keys, turn in your badge, turn off their accounts and disable their e-mail' when they depart, in almost all cases," said David Kovar, an IT consultant.
But even though they pack up, the employees leave a lot of detritus in their wake.
The recent exodus of dot-com workers has left a barrage of daily e-mail, faxes, snail mail and phone calls behind for systems administrators and human resources execs to sort through and redirect.
"E-mail is only one of the applications that need to be turned off when an employee exits," said Anna Petrovskaya, CEO of Eonite. "There are many other applications (over a dozen on average) that need to be taken care of. Overall, it is a laborious process and any mistakes or time delays could result in severe security breaches."
So do laid-off employees ever get to access that inbox influx?
That depends. It's standard practice to remove access for former employees, but policies vary depending on the company and management wielding the ax. Some employees' e-mail and server access is terminated immediately, while others remain active for weeks or even months after they are let go.
"We're talking about situations where the employee is using the employer's computer, Internet provider and e-mail account," said Paula Brantner, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Lawyers Association. "In those circumstances, employees don't have many rights."
While former employees might have the right to claim access to physical personal belongings from their desk, such as photos or house plants, it's hard to argue that an employee has a legal right to something that has been mailed to them at work, Branter said.
"It's completely within the employer's discretion whether or not to forward on e-mail," she said. "They may not feel it's relevant."
It's typical for downsized companies to have an IT person forward e-mail and mail to another party in the appropriate department who will filter personal and company e-mail, said Human Resources consultant Marcia Stein.
"If it's a personal note, we forward it to the former employee," Stein said. "Same routine as for a voluntary departure of if the person is terminated."
But most of the time, an employee's company e-mail is not forwarded to any other address when they depart, Kovar said.
At best, companies will provide an automatic forwarding e-mail address if requested by the departing employee. But usually, any new mail sent to the employee will get bounced back to the sender with a message such as "not a valid account" or "closed account."
Employers have reason to be wary. Disgruntled ex-workers can sell client lists, spread confidential internal information to competitors or even sabotage corporate networks.
"Giving former employees access to (even forwarded) e-mail is a big security risk," Petrovskaya said. "Confidential information could be exposed and former employees could pretend to still be with the company."
Allowing a former employee to access company resources is a liability, agreed Joe Gross, a systems manager for a small Bay Area company.
"You don't want non-employees to have access to company data and also you don't want to give them the opportunity to misrepresent the company by sending out e-mail from their former address. Keeping a company e-mail address is akin to letting them take home a stack of blank letterhead on their way out."
There are exceptions, however. While an intern or temp might be barred from e-mail, a senior executive might be allowed to access personal files after leaving the company.
Petrovskaya recalls one case where a former employee had full access to the company's systems and got back in to retrieve confidential data more than a year after leaving.
In another case, a high-level executive was recruited by the company's top competitor, yet still received highly confidential e-mail from his former employer, she said.
While some employees are locked out of their computers and escorted out by security guards, others receive more benevolent treatment from former employers.
When Cameron Brown's former company, Selfcare.com, had its first round of layoffs last October, the company forwarded all his work e-mails to home accounts.
"They were a real class act.... People still felt really loyal to the company because the company went out of its way to treat us decently. They also bundled and shipped me a couple of stacks of mail, including magazines, which was great."
But most companies don't devote this sort of personal attention to forwarding mail. Often, one or two systems administrators must support 100 employees or more.
The recent spate of layoffs and concerns over e-mail confidentiality has spawned a rise in the use of non-work e-mail services such as Hotmail, Juno, Bigfoot, and ProntoMail.
Those who are tired of registering for Hotmail accounts can sign up for free e-mail forwarding through ijustgotfired.com, an appealing alternative for those who are "scrambling to set up e-mail and maybe want to make a statement," said site operator wrybread.
Another option is alumni lists, such as Dotcom Dropout or Corporate Alumni group, where laid-off employees can locate and keep in touch with former coworkers.
With so many cheap and free e-mail services available, most security and legal experts warn that employees should be wary of the risks of using office e-mail for personal use.
"Having different e-mail accounts is inconvenient, but it's better than being cut off from your contacts when you need them the most," Petrovskaya said.
"It's prudent to limit the number of personal uses of employer e-mail," Brantner agreed. "If something is so important for you to have that it will be a problem when you can no longer access it, you should probably print it or save it to disk."
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