Work - Mind Your Business

It is now the law in the UK that companies must keep their websites and email signatures updated to include certain information.

This includes the company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its website and in emails. Such information is already required on 'business letters' but the new regulations extend it to websites, order forms and electronic documents, including email.

Small and medium size companies are particularly at risk of fines as many are unaware that they need to include all of the essential information in their email signatures.

Basically, every company email signature should now include:

• Company name and geographic address, including both the trading and registered names if these are different. Both the trading address and the registered office address must be give, although for most micro companies the two are likely to be the same.

• Company registration number and place of registration (e.g. company registered in England and Wales).

• If a business is a member of a trade or professional association, membership details (including any registered number) should be shown.

• If the business has a VAT number it should be stated (prefixed with GB if it trades outside the UK)

In addition, keep an eye on your email disclaimers because when a disclaimer or confidentiality notice is added to every email a company sends out then there is a risk that a court would consider that the warning has been diluted.

This means that it might be better to have a selection of email disclaimers in your saved signatures, or for different employees or departments (if such things exist in your home business!), which of course means you need to use mail software that allows you to set different disclaimers for different types of email.

 
 
 
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