Employees are failing to properly archive emails, according to research, because they are often too busy or too unsure of their IT skills.

Over 75% of employees said they received no guidance on the requirements and methods for email storage, and more than a third said their company has no email policy, according to the survey.

A third of workers of the 260 workers interviewed said they had lost important electronic documents and never recovered them. More than half said email archiving is too time-consuming, and thirty percent find it “complicated” or “unreliable”.

Some 41 percent leave files attached to emails forever, and only half said they have an enforced limit on the storage space for their messages. Over a quarter save the files to the company system, and 28 percent save them to their hard drive.