Let's talk business

Urgent need to amend your email signatures

On January 1 the new UK Companies Regulations came into force. The regulations apply to all UK limited companies and limited partnerships with websites and that use e-mail to communicate with customers.

The regulations mean that every UK company now has to list its company registration number, VAT number, place of registration and registered office address in legible characters on its website. The regulation even says that this information must also appear in e-mails and online order forms.

This has always been a requirement on business letterheads but has now been extended to cover websites, electronic order forms and electronic documents including email. Some of this was already implied in the 2002 E-commerce Regulations Act, but this new legislation clarifies it.

Directors of companies that fail to comply face a fine.

You can read the full details of the regulation here (warning - written in legal jargon).

The regulation is as a result of a European law, the First Company Law Amendment Directive, which had to be implemented by the end of 2006. This probably means that companies in all other EU member countries have to do the same thing, although sometimes countries miss the deadlines for implementing EU law.

Later we'll post some quick updates about how to ensure your email signatures are compliant if you are using WorkgroupMail, OfficeTalk or MailDisclaimer.

 

Technorati tags: small business, SME, SMB, OMB, email

Lewd office e-mails to constitute sexual harassment

Employees who send lewd emails around the office could land their companies with unlimited legal compensation payouts according to an article in the the UK's The Times newspaper. The Equal Opportunities Commission has issued new advise to companies stating that the act of circulating lewd emails to others in the same workplace can consititute sexual harassment.

Companies would be well advised to consider setting up a content filter (such as the one provided with the WorkgroupMail mail server) in order to prevent the circulation of such emails.

Don't take risks with your World Cup emails

Today we've joined in the World Cup fever to issue a warning about the risk to small and medium size businesses if employees circulate video clips of their favourite World Cup moments. Yes it's a shameless bit of self-promotion (although not as tacky as some companies are being!) but has a serious point.

As our warning says top corporate lawyers Baker & McKenzie are already preempting any potential copyright violations by sending warning letters to websites like Boing Boing. And just in case you think your emails will be safe and won't come to wider attention just read this news story about what happened when one of Baker & Mckenzie's own lawyers sent a saucy email.

We've used Del.icio.us to bookmark and share some useful, relevant and helpful web sites related to this topic. You can see our links here or why not subscribe to the RSS feed so you'll know when we update the list.

Of course from our self-promotion point of view the most important link is to WorkgroupMail, our email server for small and medium size businesses which is what enables you to set up filters and block those pesky attachments that might get you into trouble.

This post shows how easy it is to use WorkgroupMail to filter video file attachments.

Technorati : SMB, SME, Softalk, WorkgroupMail, e-mail, email, email filters, email server, small business

Email tax: "it's a ******* stupid idea"

IT Sneak reports on a rather refreshing response when it called a 'leading global telco' to find out its stance on the EU's investigation into taxing emails and text messages.

"We tend not to comment on legislation when it is at the proposal stage," said the corporate mouthpiece. "Because what will happen is that the EU will spend two years looking at it and then come to the same conclusion as everyone else: that it's a f***ing stupid idea."

Hey, if they'd asked us we'd have given them the same response. It's much the same as what our PR man Stuart said yesterday in his blog post about the same subject - except he was politer!

Technorati : EU, Europe, IT Sneak, IT Week, Messaging, e-mail, email

EU lawmakers consider taxing email and SMS messages

Reuters reports that European Union lawmakers are investigating a proposed tax on emails and mobile phone text messages as a way to fund the 25-member bloc in the future.

A European Parliament working group is reviewing the idea, tabled by Alain Lamassoure, a prominent French MEP and member of the centre-right European People's Party, the assembly's largest group.

Personally I doubt the idea will get very far. MEPs I know tell me that such working groups discuss lots of ideas that are then rejected in favour of more practical and beneficial proposals. In fact these discussions are the source of many of the straight banana' type Euro-scare stories that appear in popular British newspapers.

Technorati : EU, Europe, e-mail, email, messaging

National Small Business Week 2006

Today is the start of the National Small Business Week in the USA. Jeff Cornwall, director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship thinks that talk is cheap and that national government structures such as the Small Business Administration need to modernize and replace their industrial era bureaucracy with something more fitting for the 21st century.

What is a small business?

The US Supreme Court might be just about to tell us exactly what a small business is. Hat-tip to The Entrepreneurial Mind for pointing to this story from Inc. 

Of course it still won't make any difference to the big IT vendors who will still continue to try and sell small and medium sized companies cut-down or restricted versions of thier bloated-enterprise offerings.

Bob Geldof rants against email

Sir Bob Geldof has railed against emails and said that his is advice is "Don't do email". He told delegates at a London conference that he dreaded seeing lots of emails in his inbox as they imposed an agenda on him and disrupted his own plans for the day.

He also warned of the perils of a badly phrased email which he said he knows from personal experience can cause serious commercial harm. Sir Bob is a successful businessman but we shouldn't forget his rock star roots and his love of strong language which has landed him in hot water before. Perhaps Sir Bob should look at using an email server that lets you to set content filters.