Despite all the advantages that remote work brings, it is undeniable that having employees who work exclusively from home poses certain management challenges.
For example, how do you ensure that an employee is doing what they are paid to do during the working hours they are hired for? If your employee accepted a new full-time job without telling you, how would you know that he was claiming two paychecks at the end of each month?
While the thought of working two full-time jobs is the idea from hell for many employees, the reality is that it’s been happening and seems to have become more prevalent – or at least, easier to live with – ever since remote work has become the norm for many.
As well: The WFH Dilemma: How to Manage Your Team Without Micromanaging
Software company Canopy, for example, revealed that it recently fired two newly hired engineers after discovering they were already employed full-time at another company.
Canopy CEO Davis Bell said the anonymous developers, who already held jobs at an undisclosed “big tech company”, were arrested after management reported issues with their performance.
Bell wrote on LinkedIn, “It’s not about hustles or moonlighting,” and said it’s about people working synchronous full-time jobs “trying to be in two meetings at the times, etc”.
Financial services firm Equifax also recently fired a number of employees for secretly juggling multiple full-time jobs.
As reported by Business Intern(via Ars-Technica), Equifax fired 24 staff members after using its own product, The Work Number, to find that some staff were in multiple roles (in some cases, up to three).
The trend of working secret second jobs – also known as “overemployment” – is gaining traction in some corners of the online world; indeed, there are Reddit forums and even entire websites dedicated to helping remote workers (mostly tech workers) find second jobs and hide them from their employers.
Employers aren’t happy: Bell described it as “a new form of theft and deception, not something an ethical and honest person would partake in.”
Responses to Bell’s message were mixed: while some agreed with the Canopy CEO’s assertions, others argued that workers should be free to take additional jobs provided they can provide consistent performance, while others have suggested that working multiple jobs might be necessary for some struggling workers. with high prices and low wages.
As well: More and more bosses are using software to monitor remote workers. Not everyone is happy
Bell was eventually forced to lock the comments section on his post after being abused.
He shared a number of potential “red flag” behaviors for employers to watch out for and noted that while none of them were “by themselves an indication of a problem…taken together they can indicate a bad actor.
These include:
- Make their LinkedIn private when accepting a job offer
- Not subscribing to benefits
- Having your screen turned off in a meeting
- Slow response times on Slack and email
- Often late or absent from meetings without explanation
- Experience working in very large companies, where it may be easier to mask activity/inactivity