When Your Web Guru Leaves the Company

We’d all like to keep our best and brightest talent on the payroll for as many years as possible. It’s a hassle to retrain and retain new talent, but employee turnover remains a fact of life. With changes in human resources comes a loss of institutional knowledge and necessary transitions and handoffs in information, processes and responsibilities.

There are a few things you’ll want to consider when your web developer leaves the company.

Security and Ownership

Too often, small businesses defer to their web admins to handle registry of domains, hosting, and additional necessary accounts. Many may not even know what web hosting is, no less where their site is hosted. If the accounts are registered under the admin’s email address, this can cause ownership issues and confusion should your web admin leave later on.

A simpler solution would be to create a generic company email like admin at company email dot com and make sure that a higher-level executive, ideally the company owner, is the person whose name is associated with all digital accounts, including social media. All account information should be limited to the admin and a few need-to-know higher ups. When it becomes necessary to transition the web admin out, all passwords should be reset for each account, and all new account information should be handed off to the new admin.

Your Web Presence: What Now?

Every few years, it’s important to refresh your web presence. As you consider a new web guru, inventory your existing service. Does it highlight goods and services in the way you still intend? Is content in need of a refresh? Is your page optimized?Is the technology dated and driving potential clients into the arms of your competitors?

While you inventory your site, take the time to review your competition’s sites. See if there are design elements or highlighted services that tell their story well and determine how your own site compares.

When the time comes to hire, review your new web admin’s portfolio and skill set to verify that they can deliver an updated site that meets your needs.

Shopping for Services

When you’re changing web admins, now is an excellent time to shop for new services. You may wish to reconsider your hosting platform or web hosting domain. Prices and services may have become more competitive over time, so it might be beneficial to research the potential of transferring your domain.

Change Becomes Opportunity

While it’s not ideal to lose a key part of your communications personnel, changeover is a time of opportunity. You place your company’s storytelling capability in a good position by evaluating service needs, billing requirements and account security while making adjustments that best position your firm for success.

There’s no need to wait for personnel to change, either. You can take all of the above steps as part of an annual review of web policy, in addition to documenting procedures and maintaining standards for your site.

Don’t let your web communications policy be an afterthought in the pursuit of new business. A few hours of precaution will help set you on the right path when the unexpected happens.