Checklist for an Employee Exit / Termination for Website Management

This is a helpful checklist for what types of services you need to remove someone from or downgrade access to in the event of an employee leaving the company.

Oddly enough, being a Web Dev vendor, we often end up staying with a client for very long periods of time. We have some clients coming up on a solid decade retaining us. As you can imagine, in that amount of time employees come and go. Sometimes it is a graceful exit to a new job or retirement but other times it is termination / firing. It can be critical to expeditiously remove the ex-employee access before they cause harm out of spite.

Even if post-exit malicious harm isn’t a danger, proper access-removal or privilege demotion is just good corporate hygiene and best practice for security.

This checklist can’t be all-inclusive but going through it should help you ensure you are ticking all the boxes for removing an employees web marketing / development access…

Content Management System

• WordPress – typically you would just change the user level from admin to subscriber level because deleting the user may delete posts attached to it.
• Is there an Intranet or other company websites they might be on?

Server

• For us this is WPENGINE. It could be something like HostGator, Bluehost, LiquidWeb, Flywheel, etc.

Analytics

• Google Analytics, Google Search Console, HotJar, Woopra, etc.

Marketing

• Hubspot
• Google My Business listing
• Google Optimize (or other AB testing tools)

Email

• MailChimp, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, MyEmma, etc.
• Email account for company emails
  • Change password
  • Forward their email address to an individual or team who is responsible for assuming their responsibilities
  • Potentially review recent sent email

Misc.

• Point of Sale system
• Project Management tools like Basecamp, Trello, ClickUp, Jira, etc.
• Accounting software
• Podcasting tools
• Are there “seats” or spots on software tools that can now be freed up?
• Change passwords on any shared accounts they might have access to.
• Search their name or email in your password storage vault (E.g LastPass or 1Password)
• Search their email and the words “login” or “password” in your email inbox to see what they may have been given access to.

Beyond this list, a good place to start is asking other vendors or employees that may have worked with them for other places you might need to address.