It Shouldn’t Take Congress to Get Employees to Stop Swearing in E-Mails

You know you have big workforce problems when you have to introduce screening software to make sure that your 30,000-plus employees don’t use profanity or inappropriate language in their e-mails.

So it goes at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street giant that was embarrassed during Congressional hearings this spring when Thomas Montag, the former head of sales and training at Goldman, was “blasted by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. … over an internal e-mail … in which (Montag) described an investment the company sold to a client as “one shitty deal.”

I’ve included the wonderful video of this exchange here for your amusement and viewing pleasure, but it raises this question: why does it take getting embarrassed publicly, in front of a Congressional hearing and nationwide on C-Span, to finally make senior management enforce what seems like a sensible and pragmatic company policy?

Here’s the gist of it, from The Wall Street Journal:

A Goldman spokeswoman said: “Of course we have policies about the use of appropriate language and we are always looking for ways to ensure that they are enforced.”

The new edict — delivered verbally, of course — has left some employees wondering if the rule also applies to shorthand for expletives such as “WTF” or legitimate terms that sound similar to curses.

In the spirit of the times, there is no written directive specifying which curses now are officially cursed. But screening tools being used by the firm would detect common swear words and acronyms.”

And as the New York Daily News noted, “although there are no specific punishments for violators, repeat offenders will be ordered by their superiors to discuss their choice of words.”

Other companies have various ways to monitor foul language in online communications – and The New York Times DealBook blog relates one particularly invasive one at media company Bloomberg LP – but this makes me wonder: why does an organization need to go to such over-the-top methods to enforce civil and responsible behavior in its professional workforce?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: you must ALWAYS be careful what you write in an e-mail and online, because the person you least want to see it probably will, as so many Facebook and MySpace users can attest.

One would think that you would not need to caution highly-paid Wall Street brokers and analysts – people who make a living dealing with wealthy, professional clients – that they need to refrain from using profanity and inappropriate language in company e-mail. Yes, you would think that but you would be wrong.

Here’s my question: how do you handle this if you are the HR Vice President at another Wall Street company that is a competitor of Goldman Sachs? Do you take a heavy-handed approach with expensive monitoring software, or, do you just send a note around reminding the staff to stay professional and learn from Goldman Sachs’ bad example? Or, so you do something else entirely?

Leave me a comment here or e-mail me at john@tlnt.com. I’m dying to get some pragmatic HR and management insight into this.