Can a company use your personal certifications after you leave the company?

I was hired on at a small company to be their QC. And by small, I mean I can count the staff on one hand, including management and myself. There was nothing set up for the majority of quality control, employee safety, or sanitation record keeping. I hit the ground running and was able to cobble together the majority of the necessary, documentation and record keeping systems over just a matter of months by myself while the owner did her best to sabotage the entire venture she hired me on to get her facility and SQF certification. I have to very respectfully argue for proper documentation and the integrity of those documents. we did manage to get our SQF last year, but I have a suspicion that any record that did not come from my desk, may have been falsified. Not out of true malignancy, just out of pure incompetence and lack of integrity. We are a very small scale, single ingredient processor, so I am secure in the safety of the product, just not in the integrity of the business. I need to find a way out, but I am afraid of my boss. she’s very wealthy and entitled and acts like she owns everybody. She is also very creepy.

I feel like I may have been hired as a sacrificial lamb. I was either going to be the magic bullet that got the her the the SQFcert or I was going to be demonized as the reason they didn’t get the cert. As soon as we were approved for getting the cert She immediately began devaluing me at every step. She reneged on my promised bonus, raise, and purposely left me out of a staff celebration luncheon. She finds ways every day to subtly demean me and treat me like I’m a gullible kid right out of high school, not the SQF practitioner and only person in the company with HACCP, PCQI certs needed for the SQF cert.

I am trying to find a way out, in a way she doesn’t stalk or prevent me from finding other positions. But I am concerned that she will continue to use the copies of my CERT fraudulently after I leave. I do not want my name associated with this business.

Hi WaterFeathers,

 

:welcome:

 

Welcome to the IFSQN forums.

 

What a sad state of affairs, the owner sounds like a monster!   :bop:

 

I would move on, focus on your next venture and ensure you keep a copy of your resignation letter.

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony

 

I have PCQI but I've not regularly supplied the US. 

 

It depends what you mean in a way.  Does she keep the work you did for the company?  Yes.  That is stuff she effectively "owns".  Does she then have the fact it was produced by someone with PCQI and other appropriate qualifications?  Also yes.

 

But she cannot claim you are still the PCQI accountable for that business if that makes sense?  She might try but as Tony says, keep records, make it clear you're keeping records and it might even be worth including on your resignation letter that "an appropriately trained employee will need to be recruited or appointed to be accountable for quality and food safety going forward as it will not be myself after this date but if appointed before my departure I would be happy to facilitate a handover..." etc.