Former Employee Email Continuity and Mailbox Access Procedure

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Purpose

This procedure defines how IT handles a former employee's Google Workspace email when continued delivery of new email or temporary access to historical email is required for business continuity.

Continued email delivery and historical mailbox access are treated as two separate requirements:

• Continued Email Delivery — New messages sent to the former employee's original email address are routed to designated employees through a Google Group.
• Historical Mailbox Access — Approved employees receive temporary delegated access to the former employee's existing mailbox and email history.

Neither option is automatically required for every departing employee.

When This Process Should Be Used

IT should evaluate the employee's role and business responsibilities during offboarding.

Continued email routing and/or historical mailbox access will generally be considered for employees with significant:

• Customer communication
• Vendor communication
• Sales or account responsibilities
• Accounting or financial responsibilities
• HR responsibilities
• Management responsibilities
• Active project or contractual correspondence

Employees whose responsibilities are primarily internal, such as many production positions, will generally not require continued email routing or historical mailbox delegation unless a specific business requirement exists.

The determining factor is the business need, not simply the employee's department or position.

Authorization

Requests should be documented through the Hatteras IT Service Desk and identify:

• The departing employee
• Their final working date
• Who should receive future email
• Who, if anyone, requires historical mailbox access
• The requested duration of historical access
• The manager or department responsible for the transition

Historical mailbox access must be specifically requested and authorized.

Continued Delivery of New Email

When the former employee's original email address needs to remain active:

1. IT renames the former employee's Google Workspace account to preserve the historical mailbox while freeing the original email address.

   Example:

   Original address: user@4hatteras.com
   Preserved mailbox: userold@4hatteras.com

2. IT creates a Google Group for the former employee.
3. The employee's original email address is assigned to the group.
4. The employees responsible for future correspondence are added to the group.
5. IT sends a test message from outside the 4hatteras.com domain to verify that external messages are successfully delivered to the designated recipients.

This allows customers, vendors, and other external contacts to continue using the employee's original email address without maintaining the former employee's mailbox as the destination for new mail.

Historical Mailbox Access

If historical correspondence is required, IT will provide approved employees with delegated access to the preserved mailbox.

Historical mailbox access is configured using the Gmail Delegation Manager maintained by IT on the FORGE management server.

This administrative process does not require IT to reset the former employee's password, bypass 2-Step Verification, disable sign-in protections, or log directly into the former employee's Gmail account.

Standard Access Period

Historical mailbox delegation must have an expiration date.

The standard transition period is 90 days unless a shorter period is appropriate or a longer period is specifically requested and approved.

When access is granted, the requester and affected manager/department should be informed of the expiration date.

Unless an extension is requested and approved before that date, IT will remove delegated mailbox access when the approved period expires.

End of Transition Period

At the end of the approved period:

1. IT removes historical mailbox delegation.
2. IT verifies that delegated access has been removed.
3. The former employee's mailbox is transitioned to the appropriate archive or retention state.
4. The action is documented in the associated Freshdesk ticket.

The Google Group handling new incoming email may remain active after historical mailbox access is removed if there is still a business requirement for the former employee's original address.

Important Distinction

The easiest way to distinguish the two functions is:

Google Group = New incoming email

Mailbox Delegation = Temporary access to historical email

A department may require one without requiring the other.

Documentation Requirements

The associated Freshdesk ticket should document the original and preserved email addresses, Google Group and recipients, external delivery testing, approved mailbox delegates, authorization, delegation start and expiration dates, any extensions, delegation removal, and final mailbox disposition.

This ensures former employee mailbox access is authorized, documented, time-limited, and removed when the business requirement ends.