Twitter recently added a feature that detects mean language and forces you to pause before sending.
Could a similar feature be useful for work email?
As of today, on the ethics side, we “detect” mean emails only after employees complain of receiving them. On the compliance side, in the world of data loss “prevention”, our tools only alert us to possible data losses after an email has been sent. Why not review the content of the email before it is actually sent, and give the author a chance to reconsider? Of course, there are privacy issues at play, but we can probably build a system where no human sees the email before it is actually sent.
Before the pandemic, if we were unsure about the language or the tone of an email, we could ask a nearby colleague in the office to review it before we hit “send”. With more people working remotely, perhaps a virtual Jiminy Cricket could save us from a few blunders, or worse?
The Ethical Leader 