Why does the College keep telling members to use their personal email addresses?

Recently, the College was asked to assist Alberta Health Services in reaching out to members with their invitation to schedule their COVID vaccine. As we have been working through this for the last few weeks, we have noticed that many regulated members are still choosing to use their work emails as their primary contact email. While it is ultimately up to you what email address you provide, we want to highlight some reasons that it is beneficial to use an email that is not provided to you by your employer.

The first reason is for your privacy. Did you know that your employer has the right to view all communications coming in to and sent out from employees using the employer provided emails. This means, if there is ever an instance where the College needs to communicate private information, such as an alleged conduct complaint against you, your employer would have the right to access that information if it is sent to an email address on their server. We believe that you have the right to privacy during an investigation, and as such recommend it is best to do this through your personal email. If the College’s contact information for you is an employer-provided email address, your employer is also privy to that correspondence.

Another important reason is that larger organization’s email servers have their own securities and emails from the College can be marked as spam prior to it even reaching any of your email folders. We have also found this has been the case for some of our members who haven’t been able to receive the AHS vaccine invite to their employer-provided email address. In our member survey, 37% of respondents said they have had issues with receiving our emails. These extra security parameters from large organizations contribute to this problem.

And last, throughout your career you may transition through many different employers and different employee emails. With these changes, previous correspondence is lost, which could mean losing important information the College had previously provided to you.

We encourage all regulated members to use personal email addresses whenever possible because of the many reasons listed above. If you choose to use your employer email, please make sure it is always up to date so that the College can contact you and that you are checking it regularly.

If you have any questions, please email communications@ABparamedics.com.