Here has been a lot of talk recently about whether businesses should prevent their employees getting emails whilst on holiday, but it is it time for the construction industry to take the same approach?

Daimlers has announced they've been deleting the emails sent to employees whilst they’re on holiday. Essentially the sender will get an automated out of office response saying the employee is on holiday (as is fairly standard) and then adding something like “your email will be deleted, please email XXXX or resend it” on the employees return.

Although it’s getting better, construction is still some way behind other sectors when it comes to information technology and communications. With the exception of the bigger companies, we still find a large proportion of people in the construction industry still use the telephone as their only method of communication and many of those who do choose to communicate via email are still doing so using less than secure personal accounts.

So although it’s potentially the right time in many industries to call for responsibility over what emails employees are reading on holiday, in the construction industry we need maintain a focus on creating professionalism in the way we use emails in general (and that may include being responsible about what employees do with them on holiday).