With more employees working remotely, some companies question what workers are doing with their time.
From productivity tracking software to email monitoring, employers are using tech tools to keep tabs on workers. And in some cases, these methods have led to termination when companies find things they don’t like, such as employees working two jobs simultaneously. Recently, Equifax laid off 24 workers it found were working second full-time jobs, Insider first reported, and a Utah-based software company, Canopy, fired two engineers who never quit their last tech jobs before starting at the company.
Canopy CEO Davis Bell characterized holding two full-time synchronous jobs as “theft and deception.”
“‘Working’ two full-time jobs is stealing, and it also involves a great deal of lying and deception,” Bell wrote in a viral LinkedIn post about the firings.
And Equifax, in an emailed statement, said, “These employees were terminated because of multiple factors, including in many cases their own admission that they had a secondary full-time position, which prevented them from fulfilling their full-time obligations to Equifax.”
But recruiters have a different take on the issue.
Jonathan Reynolds, CEO of Titus Talent Strategies, a national recruiting agency, said companies don’t control whether someone can be a working parent or take on a side passion project, so they shouldn’t expect to control all of an employee’s time. Instead, they should set clear productivity goals and make sure workers meet them, he said.
“When you commit to giving someone a salary, they expect you're going to pay them 100% of it. In return, we don't define what is 100% output. If we are clear on performance outcomes, who gives a flip if someone is working one to two to three jobs?” Reynolds said.
Kathleen Quinn Votaw, CEO of TalenTrust, a recruiting and human capital consulting firm, said workers often look for second jobs when they can’t financially support their families.
“If the employers are paying a fair and reasonable compensation package, there shouldn't be any issues. When they're not, that's when it opens up the door to look for other opportunities,” Quinn Votaw said.
While some companies have rules preventing employees from working for competitors, few have exclusivity agreements outside of the C-suite, Quinn Votaw said. That leaves workers, even those in at-will employment states, free to find another job elsewhere.
“The question becomes, ‘At whose will?’ It goes both ways,” Quinn Votaw said.
She recommended employers establish rules to protect intellectual property, set clear productivity goals and, otherwise, open up communication with workers to find out what they need to commit to the job, whether it’s more money or greater diversity in their daily work.
“The suspiciousness has to stop. Hire people based on trust,” Quinn Votaw said.
