It’s smart business practice to keep all blog posts on your corporate website even after the employee who wrote them is gone. Whether they quit or get fired, the quality of their written work should stand alone. Some business owners want to erase all visual evidence of a person’s existence once they’ve parted ways with the company. Reasons for doing so range from fear of getting screwed over long-term in some unimaginable way to just plain old bastardly keeping an ex-employee from getting any credit to help further their careers elsewhere.

A word to employers: Grow up! Realize that any quality blog posts written by an ex-employee still benefit your company by remaining visible. Those are searchable pages containing industry specific content that can still make you look good. But what about when the employee joins another team? This is your big PR opportunity to look like a mature corporate entity – one that embraces career development and speaks well of employees as they continue to pursue their dreams. It doesn’t hurt you to have an ex-employee’s name on your blog archive bylines. In fact, that employee may go on to be more successful somewhere and his/her name could become a valuable commodity to have in your archive. So don’t jump the gun by erasing ex-employees’ blog posts or by removing their names from the bylines. That’s just childish. And think of all the people those ex-employees may point out your faux pax to. Do you really want a whole group of people knowing that your company is so small minded that it feels threatened by each employee that leaves? Or would you rather be known as the employer who is proud of giving some future stars an excellent opportunity to hone their skills? Seems to be a rather obvious choice here.

Now, a word to ex-employees: Do not fear. WaybackMachine is here. If past employers delete your valuable blog posts from their corporate sites to “stick it to you” for whatever cheesy reason they might have, you can still get credit for them forever. Simply visit WaybackMachine online and search archived versions of your ex-employer’s site. This is especially effective if you make sure to get your name posted in the bylines of every site you write for. Simply pull up archived photos of your blog posts through the WaybackMachine and save screen prints of the actual pages with your blog titles and name in the byline. It will serve as absolute proof of your prolific blogging abilities regardless of whether your ex-bosses are savvy enough to keep them visible.

Take those screen prints with you to interviews in case a discussion should arise concerning the validity of your claims to have blogged professionally. Not only do the WaybackMachine screen prints give you credit, but they prove to your prospective employer that you are intelligent and creative enough to find the means to prove your work history in the midst of adversity.