Email signature. An important aspect to consider as the older forms of communication such as post and fax have fallen in use and the predominant form of communication for the written word in the humble email. Many of us are literally sending and receiving hundreds of them on behalf of our business every week.
But have you thought about what is in your email signature?
The Companies Act 2006 actually sets out the basic information that you should have included within your signature if you are sending it on behalf of a company. Failure to include this information can result in a company receiving a fine of £1,000.
This applies to all employees of a company and not just the directors.
The good news is that it only applies to emails that are sent externally, anyone who operates solely with internal email does not have to worry about compliance as it is not being seen by third parties.
Your email signature should contain the following:
- Company Name
- Company Registration Number
- Place of Registration (e.g. England & Wales)
- Registered Office address
Your registered office may actually be separate from your trading address and therefore you should also take care to make sure it is clear which is a trading address and which is the registered office.
Some of you may have links to your website in your email that contains all the information detailed above. Unfortunately, this is not sufficient. The regulations around this make clear that is must be in the email and not via a link.
Final thoughts
We recommend that you make sure that everyone’s email signature is therefore standardised and contains all the information above.
If you have any law based questions, you can contact us online using our form here.
