Hey friend,

I shared something on LinkedIn this week that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. It's part of my Black History Month series, and based on the responses, it clearly hit a nerve for a lot of people.

Here's what I wrote:

That's tokenization. And it happens more than most people realize.

But here's the thing I want to dig into with you today, because I know a lot of you work in HR, TA, and employer branding: 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀. Sometimes it IS tokenization. But sometimes? It's just a broken process. And if you're the one responsible for employer brand content or offboarding, you need to know the difference — because the fix is different too.

Think about your offboarding checklist right now. I'm willing to bet it includes things like collecting the laptop and badge, revoking system access, conducting an exit interview, and processing the final paycheck. Standard stuff.

But does it include removing that employee from your careers page photos? Pulling their videos from recruitment content? Updating team bios and "Meet the Team" sections? Checking social media posts that feature them? Reviewing any Employee Generated Content they created?

For most companies, it doesn't. And that's how you end up with former employees still representing your brand months or years after they've left — sometimes in roles they no longer hold, sometimes at companies they left on bad terms with, and sometimes after they were laid off. It's not a good look for anyone. Not for the company, and definitely not for the person whose face is still being used without their knowledge or consent.

Here's a question I've been sitting with lately: should employee-created content have usage rights the same way influencer and creator content does?

When you hire an external creator, you negotiate usage terms upfront. How long can you use the content? On which platforms? Do they get notified when the agreement expires? But when employees create content for your brand — whether it's a recruiting video, a LinkedIn post for your company page, or a photo for your careers site — most companies assume they own it forever with no expiration and no conversation needed.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with employment lawyer Heather Bussing on the Workfluencer Podcast. We were talking about compensating employee creators, but she broke down something relevant here: the legal concept of "work for hire." Basically, if someone pays you to create something, they own it. But she also pointed out something important: employees CAN ask for usage limits. Time-based expiration. Notification when content is used. The right to request removal after departure. These aren't outrageous asks. They're standard practice in the creator economy. We just haven't brought that thinking into employee content yet.

And honestly? As more companies lean into EGC and employee advocacy programs, this is a conversation we need to start having before it becomes a bigger problem.

I want to challenge you to pull up your offboarding checklist and ask yourself a few questions:

If not, add one! And assign it to someone specific (marketing, employer brand, HR ops) so it actually gets done.

Careers page, social media, recruitment videos, blog posts, internal comms, sales decks... it adds up faster than you think.

Even if you legally own it, is it ethical to keep using it indefinitely, especially if they were laid off?

Transparency builds trust. Let people know what happens to their content if they leave.

This isn't about being paranoid or adding bureaucracy for the sake of it. It's about being intentional. Your employees are often your best content creators; they know your products, your culture, your customers, and their content feels real in a way that influencer partnerships rarely do. But that content comes with responsibility.

You can't manufacture representation. And you shouldn't keep using someone's face to represent a company they no longer work for.

Fix the process. Have the conversations. Treat your employee creators with the same respect you'd give any external creator you work with.

If you want to go deeper on the legal side of this, the Heather Bussing episode of the Workfluencer Podcast is a good one. We covered work-for-hire doctrine, what employees can actually negotiate, and why these laws weren't really designed for our digital reality. Watch here — jump to 17:02 for the content ownership part

 Until next time.

𝗣.𝗦. If you've experienced something like this — your content or image being used after you left a company — I'd love to hear your story. Just reply to this email. Your experience might help someone else.