RunCabin Blog · Getting chosen

Should I put my employees' names and photos on my website?

September 26, 2026 · 8 min read

Short answer: photos of the crew doing real work, yes - full names and headshot bios, only with real consent and only when you have a plan for what happens the day someone quits. A homeowner is letting a stranger into their house, and knowing a real face is showing up, not a random hire, is a genuine trust signal. But an employee page is also the one part of a small-business website that goes out of date the fastest, and it touches something a hero photo or a service list never does: another person's name, face, and legal right to control both.

Most advice on this stops at "put your team on the site, customers love it." That is true as far as it goes, and it skips the three things that actually trip up owners: consent, turnover, and the odd risk of making one employee look like the whole reason to hire you.

Why it works: the homeowner is vetting a stranger, not a company

Nobody hires "a company" to come inside their house. They hire the person who is going to be standing in their kitchen. A website with an owner's photo already does part of this job - it is the whole idea behind making a one-person business look professional online without pretending to be bigger than it is. The same logic extends to a crew: a real photo of the people who actually show up, in company shirts, next to their own finished work, answers a question a homeowner is quietly asking before they ever call - who is this, really, and is it going to be a stranger off Craigslist or someone this business actually stands behind.

This matters more, not less, as a company grows past one person. A solo owner gets to lean on "it's just me, I do the work myself." A five-person crew loses that line, and the natural replacement - a page that says "here is our team" with nothing behind it but stock-photo energy - reads as generic. A real photo of the actual four guys who work there closes that gap.

The part most advice skips: you need their permission

There is no single federal law that spells this out for a small business, but the underlying idea shows up across state law in different forms - a right of publicity, a privacy tort, or plain old "using someone's image for commercial gain without asking" - and a company website that exists to bring in paying jobs is a commercial use of whoever is pictured on it. An employee's paycheck does not automatically hand you the right to their face and name in your marketing. It is a separate ask.

In practice this does not need to be complicated for a two-to-ten person shop. A text is a real record: "Hey, ok if I put this photo of you on the website with your first name?" and a reply of "yeah that's fine" is enough for most small operations. Where it is worth being more careful:

• A prominent solo bio with a full name, a headshot, and a paragraph of biography - get a clear yes, ideally in writing, before it goes up.
• Anyone who asks not to be photographed. Some employees have real reasons - a past relationship they are avoiding, a custody situation, a general discomfort with being publicly searchable - and you are not owed an explanation to honor a no.
• Former employees. Consent to use a photo while someone works for you is not standing consent to keep using it after they leave, especially if they leave on bad terms. Treat a departure as a reason to ask again, not an oversight to fix eventually.

None of this is a reason to skip employee photos. It is a reason to ask once, plainly, and keep a record that you did.

The turnover problem nobody plans for

Here is the failure mode that shows up constantly on ordinary small-business sites: a "meet the team" page with someone's photo and title, months or years after that person left. It is one of the most common forms of stale content on a service-business website, for a simple reason - team pages get built once, during a redesign, and then nobody touches them again until the next redesign.

That staleness costs you twice. A customer who was told "Mike is our lead installer" on the phone, then sees a different name on the invoice, gets a small unexplained flicker of doubt at the exact moment you want zero doubt. And an employee who left - especially one who left on bad terms - finding their name and face still promoting a business they no longer work for is a legitimate grievance, not a technicality. Neither outcome requires malice. It requires exactly what actually happens: nobody remembered to edit the page.

The practical fix is treating a staff change as a same-week website edit, on the same list as updating your Google Business Profile and payroll - not a someday task that waits for the next full redesign.

The poaching angle, and why some owners deliberately stay quiet about it

There is a second reason some owners hold back on naming individual employees, and it is worth saying plainly: naming your best technician, with a photo and a bio, makes that person easier for a customer or a competitor to find and try to hire directly. A property manager who liked working with "Dave" can ask for Dave by name next time, which is fine right up until Dave leaves and starts his own outfit, and every customer who booked the site expecting Dave now feels like they got a substitute.

This is not a reason to hide your crew entirely - it is a reason to lean toward first name plus role rather than a full-name-and-biography treatment for anyone who is not the owner. "Our lead installer, Mike, has been with us three years" reads as personal and specific without turning Mike into a standalone brand you have to protect the business from.

What to actually put on the page

Do this	Skip this
Real photo of the crew in branded shirts, at an actual job or in front of the truck	Stock photos of models who obviously do not work there
First name and role - "Mike, lead installer" or "our five-person crew"	Full last names and personal biography paragraphs for non-owner staff
A group photo plus the owner's individual photo and story	Individual headshot bios for every employee, by default
A quick written yes from each person pictured, even just a text	Assuming a paycheck covers consent to use someone's image
An update the same week someone joins or leaves	Leaving a departed employee's name and photo up "for now"

If your crew is genuinely one or two people, skip the "team" framing entirely and lean on the owner's own story instead - it is a stronger trust signal than an inflated "our team" section for a company that is really just you and one helper. That distinction is covered in more depth in making a one-person business look professional online.

When a real team page earns its place

A dedicated page with individual names, roles, and a line or two of background is worth building once a crew is big enough that customers are genuinely curious who they might get - typically five or more field employees, or any business where a customer specifically requests a technician by name because of a past job. Below that size, a single group photo with first names in the caption, sitting on the homepage or an about page, does the same trust-building job without creating five separate profiles you now have to maintain, get consent for, and remember to update.

Where RunCabin fits

We build RunCabin's done-for-you websites so a crew photo or a first-name-and-role line is just another thing you ask for - "add a team section with our crew photo and everyone's first name" is a complete instruction, done in moments. And because staff turnover is exactly the kind of update owners put off, the fact that a change costs nothing but asking matters here more than almost anywhere else on the site: "Dave left, take him off the team section and add Priya" is a text-length request, not a project.

It is $39.99/mo, flat - your domain, professional email, a free AI logo, and hosting included, no setup fee, no contract. Whether your crew is one person or ten, and whether the team section changes once a year or every month, the price does not move, and every inquiry from your site lands straight in your inbox with no lead fees.

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Related reading: making a one-person business look professional online · do I need permission to post before-and-after photos of a customer's property?