How do you treat employees who have part-time jobs outside the job they do for you? - SmartBrief

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How do you treat employees who have part-time jobs outside the job they do for you?

2 min read

By Mike Figliuolo 05/26/16

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 160,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: How do you treat employees who have part-time jobs outside the job they do for you?

  • Supportive: It’s a tough economy, and we try to be flexible to support them: 45%
  • Agnostic: We don’t care what they do in their free time: 41%
  • Unsupportive: We actively discourage people from other employment: 10%
  • Prohibitive: We have strict rules forbidding additional employment: 4%

Tough times demand flexibility. Most of you support employees scratching out a living either by supporting them holding another job or not minding that they do. For the 15% of you who discourage or prohibit people from having employment outside your company, I encourage you to question the reason. If it’s a safety, competitive or performance issue, it makes sense. If not, question the intent behind the policy or approach. If employees have to quit your job to make ends meet by taking a more lucrative position or even two jobs to replace yours, is your policy having the desired outcome?

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of ThoughtLeaders and author of “One Piece of Paper.”