What happens to company content when employees who created it leave?
Content is a unique “product” and who produces it matters.
For many this presents a bit of a conundrum especially with regard to content ownership. Hubspot holds that employees have as much ownership over content they create as the company that pays them to create it. As such, even when an employee leaves, their byline remains, creating persistent attribution which allows the company to continue leveraging the former employee’s personal brand.
Co-ownership of content can get messy however and rules should be established at the outset so that all have an understanding of what each party retains rights to.
According to ACH Communications, there are a few things a company can do when an employee leaves:
- Take down the author’s bio and change the byline to a company byline
- Leave the byline and author’s bio as is
- Change the author’s bio to reflect employment status
What would you do?
