Avoiding side hustle conflicts with your day job (Part I)

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of the newly published SIDE HUSTLES FOR DUMMIES (Wiley, 2022). Additional excerpts from Chapter 11 will be published in subsequent LinkedIn posts.

In the old days, the classic example of misappropriating - okay, make that stealing - your employer's resources was taking home office supplies: pens and pencils, printer paper, paper clips, maybe a red stapler…

These days, with computer technology so pervasive throughout all corners of almost every company on the face of the earth, the concept of misappropriating your employer's resources is not only broader, but perhaps even a bit fuzzier. You need to be especially aware of the following types of company resources and keep them far, far away from your side hustle:

• Computers
• Company Wi-Fi networks
• Audio-visual resources
• Official company work hours
• Your company's location 

Computers

Oh come on, you might be thinking. If I use my work laptop or iPad for a couple minutes to fix my side hustle's website, or to answer an email or other message from one of my customers, or to place an order with one of my suppliers, what's the real harm? It's not like I'm stealing some physical item that the company paid for - like office supplies.

If you are tempted to dismissively shake your head at the "morality factor" of using your company's computer for your own side hustle business, then maybe you'll be persuaded by a couple of more tangible, more personally impactful considerations:

• You might lose your job. Whereas you may not see any real impact or harm by borrowing a few computer cycles and a little bit of laptop storage here and there, your company sets the rules. Whether or not you agree with their restrictions, you still signed your employment agreement. They may exact all sorts of penalties, up to and including firing you for cause (meaning that you are being terminated for doing something wrong, as contrasted with being caught up in some overall layoff or workforce reduction that has nothing to do with your actions or job performance).
• Your company could force you to hand over to them some or even all of your income from your side hustle because you made money while using their resources, in violation of a company policy that you signed. Sending you a nasty "hand over the money!" letter or even suing you in court is usually on the outer extremes of penalties a company might try to impose for unauthorized usage of their computers. But why take the chance?

Just buy your own computer! We're in the 2020s now, and even high-powered desktop and laptop computers that you might need to do high-quality video recording, editing, and storage are well within the budget of most people. Even if you don't have all of the cash you need, then take out a small business loan or find some other way to get the dough to buy your own computer and stay out of trouble with your employer. (Business loans and other financial aspects of side hustles are covered in Chapter 8.)

Maybe this whole separate-computer stuff seems like a no-brainer. I can tell you from personal experience that I've offered side hustle advice to almost a dozen people who already had some sort of outside activity underway separate from their full-time jobs, but who weren't using separate computers. My advice: pull the plug immediately before your employer stakes a claim to your side hustle intellectual property and even your income.

Company Wi-Fi networks

You're so clever! You think that you found a loophole in the whole "don't use your company's computer" restriction for your side hustle.

Your mobile phone might as well be a personal computer. You have your own computer at home that you use for your side hustle work, and you are smart enough not to bring that computer with you to your full-time job. So if you need to spend a minute or two during your workday doing some small task for your side hustle, even while you're at the office or some other location for your full-time job, just do it on your phone!

Wait - what's that? You configured your phone to automatically connect to your office Wi-Fi? And you just received and then answered a text from a client or supplier or business partner? Too bad. You might as well have done so from your work computer, because you just made unauthorized usage of your employer's resources - in this case, their Wi-Fi network.

Come on! Would a company really be so petty to cause you grief because you answered a text over their network? Maybe not. Many companies are pretty lax about non-work Wi-Fi usage while at work. Want to check Facebook for a minute or two during a break? No problem. Want to see if you have any new responses to the Evite you posted for your spouse's surprise birthday party? That's cool!

So what about answering a side hustle-related text, or spending 5 minutes to fix a client's Shopify cart or WordPress site, or anything else along those lines?

The response you probably don't want to hear is "it all depends" but that's the best answer for this question. If your employer doesn't have any issues with you and your co-workers doing your own side hustles - as long as you fully meet your job tasks - then chances are, those occasional communications blips over their Wi-Fi network will mean nothing.

If, however, your employer is less accommodating to outside work, or if they decide to "go after you" for any reason, then they will do a hard target search for anything they can use against you - including sending or receiving a little bit of your side hustle communications traffic onto their network.

Get in the habit of turning off your phone's Wi-Fi when you get to work. Or don't ever connect in the first place. Or set your phone to forget that network and never reconnect once you start a side hustle. Even if you are aware enough to stridently avoid sending messages or checking client websites or anything else related to your side hustle, you have no control over someone texting or messaging you. You might be ignoring these incoming communiqués, if your phone is connected to your company's Wi-Fi the messages are still traveling to your phone via your employer's network. If you're on a cellular connection, though, those messages aren't hitting your company's Wi-Fi, and you go a long way toward protecting yourself - and your side hustle business.

To be continued...