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Do employees step out of your workplace and into sevond jobs each day/ If so, you may need to protect your interests with rules about outside work.
Chances are, most human resource managers don't know or care whether employees work elsewhere during off-duty hours. For legal reasons, HR is generally loath to delve into any off-duty activities, including second jobs. It's not HR's business.
Or is it?
With the demand for workers high, the opportunities for employees to moonlight also appear to be growing. A moonlighting policy-to communicate performance expectations, prevent conflicts of interest and protect proprietary information-may make sense for some employers.
A substantial number of employees work for more than one employer. In 1998, 7.9 million-6 percent of the U.S. labor force-held more than one job, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than half of these "multiple jobholders" worked full time at a primary job and part time at a second job.
Take Ron Geirlack, who writes software programs, networks computers and performs related work for professors at Carnegie Melton University in Pittsburgh. He moonlights on some evenings and weekends. For one recent moonlighting assignment, he designed a web site for a commission of the U.S. Treasury.
Geirlack says he finds part-time work easily because he knows 15 computer programming languages and has broad-based computer skills. Some leads come through friends, others through the Internet. "It's nice to have that extra income," some of which will come in handy for his wedding and honeymoon next year, he says.
Geirlack says he hasn't told the university about his outside jobs, but he adds that he's only prohibited from working for direct competitors or on university-owned computers in professors' homes.
What if Ron Geirlack worked for you and you didn't know about his outside jobs? Would you want to know?
Would you need a policy to cover how moonlighters disclose those outside jobs to you, or one that limits their ability to work while on leave from your company?
Is a Policy Right for You?
Employment lawyers, consultants and HR managers disagree on whether employers need policies to specifically address moonlighting. Some believe that policies on job performance and conflicts of interest cover all the bases. Others...