Sharing Email Addresses? Pros and Cons.

Do you share email addresses with coworkers and staff? If you answered yes, this blog is for you. We’ve spoken to a lot of businesses in Arizona and noticed that many dental & medical practices often use shared email addresses for most of the staff. While you are likely doing this in the name of efficiency, there are dangers in lack of accountability. 

Here are the pros and cons of this practice:

Pros

• Lower email subscription costs.
• One mailbox for a team lets you collectively mark emails as unread, flagged, and move email into subfolder so everyone’s on the same page on incoming inquiries.

Cons

• No accountability regarding who did what. 
  • Who replied to that client? 
  • Who deleted this email? 
  • If you’re subject with HIPAA, not knowing who emailed a patient record is a problem.
• No privacy for one to one emails, i.e. HR, payroll, PTO requests, etc. cannot be privately communicated to management via the company provided email. 
• You may be encouraging time-wasting activities such as:
  • Simply internal requests being held off or forgotten since it is not convenient to communicate to management privately.
  • Staff possibly using their personal email on a work computer to ask a confidential question to management. Staff checking personal email is a high-risk activity that will lead to more malware infections and time wasted.
• The shared mailbox will get huge with lot of team members using it. Email is not a valid data storage platform for the long term. There are upper limits of how much data can be stored and it will be a serious bottleneck down the road.

What’s clear is that it’s a matter of WHEN not IF all staff should have individual email accounts.

As you scale, staff members only using shared email accounts is not an effective way to grow your business. While seemingly efficient in the short-term, it will hold you back down the road. 

Ready to rip the bandaid? Here’s what we recommend:

• Give all staff members an email account. It could be a lower level license with webmail access only to save on cost.
• Depending on your needs, create groups or shared mailboxes (free in Office 365) to allow for intelligent workflow between teams covering general mailboxes. This can be mapped together with an expert in business workflow and your email platform. 

Growing or planning to scale in the future? PK Tech is always here to help your business navigate growth as it relates to technology in your workplace. 

If you’re interested in getting a quote for PK Tech services, we’re here to help answer any questions and provide more information. To contact PK Tech, click here.

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