Construction workers in all trades commonly perform side work to make extra money. When you are the owner or manager of a construction company, how do you make sure employee side work doesn’t impact your business in a negative way? How do you prevent your employees from competing with your business or from it becoming a real problem?
In this blog, we discuss side work and how it can be managed with clear expectations and open communication to create a win-win for the company and the employees.
What is “Side Work” & Why Does it Matter?
According to Wikipedia “A side job, also informally called a side hustle or side work, is an additional job that a person takes in addition to their primary job in order to supplement their income.” It is also referred to as moonlighting when performed outside of normal work hours.
“Side jobs may be done out of necessity, when one’s income from their main job is insufficient to support them, or simply out of a desire to earn more income. Nearly half of all Americans report having a side job, including 43% of full-time workers.”
As the manager of a construction company myself, I can confirm that most if not all of our workers use side work to boost their income. It has not become an issue for our company because we have outlined clear expectations and rules around it to make a win-win situation.
Here is how we do it:
How to Manage Side Work
You may be asking yourself “can I just not allow side work by my employees”? The reality is when employees are off work, they are not controlled by their employer and with few exceptions, they can typically do what they wish. It’s going to happen if you like it or not…..so it’s best to simply accept it and manage it the best way you can.
Set clear expectations
The number one most important thing with side work is to clearly define your policy and position on it. This is typically done inside the employee handbook and is signed by all employees when they are hired. It can also be a supplemental policy that is added along the way.
If you don’t allow your employees to use company equipment or tools or vehicles for side work, this is the place to add that information. In our case, we allow side work but we mostly are concerned with who the work is with. For our business, we want to know if an employee is doing side work for a customer or a competitor.
Many years ago, we had a PM and a superintendent work for a client that had once come to us for the same work. It was clear that these employees were stealing the client from the company as a side hustle. They never asked if it was ok to do this work. As you would expect, this was not tolerated and both employees were let go once the facts came to light.
Here is the wording from our employee handbook:
Outside Employment/Side Work
“XYZ Construction makes every effort to keep its employees as fully employed as possible and at a good rate of pay. When an employee is on the job, this means that 100% of his/her effort is required. If an employee chooses to work outside of his/her job and the outside employment interferes with what is expected of him/her as an employee of XYZ Construction, opportunities for promotion and advancement within the company may be limited by his/her decision.
If management feels that outside employment prevents an employee from fulfilling his/her obligations to the company the employee will be asked to resign or to leave his/her outside employment.
All management and supervisory personnel are expected to enforce this policy and, by example, refrain from conflicting outside employment. Any side work that has any relation to XYZ Construction (ie side work for a subcontractor or client) must get pre-approval by management. XYZ Construction’s name is tied to side work in these cases and it’s important for both the employee and XYZ Construction to carefully decide if this is a good idea on a case by case basis. Outside employment with a competitor of XYZ Construction is not permitted. Likewise, performing work on the side that would directly compete with XYZ Construction is not permitted and is subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination. “
Use of company tools, vehicles or materials
Do you care if workers use company equipment, vehicles and or materials? This needs to be clearly defined in your policy. I have seen first hand workers who do side jobs who use materials out of the truck and I’ve asked myself “I wonder if the owner knows they are doing that” To me, materials that are company owned should not be used since it’s a direct expense to the company. This can open the door to additional abuse of company materials if workers start to take materials from job sites to perform their side work. This is essentially stealing at that point.
I do not recommend that the company help or assist the workers in getting materials….this needs to be their problem since they are the ones getting paid to do it.
Keeping Open Communication
Now that you have a clear policy in place, it’s important to keep a pulse on who is doing side work and make sure there is open dialog about it. You want to know if any of your policies are getting pushed aside. You want to know if your crew is considering doing side work for a customer. In our case, we do commercial construction so there are times when our clients ask our employees to work on their homes. We want to know about that because they still represent our company so we ask that they discuss this with us before agreeing to do the work.
Taking time off to do side work
Workers that start doing a lot of side work may ask to take days off work in order to perform side work. This can have a negative impact on the company’s ability to perform their own work. You may want to add a note about this in your policy if it becomes a problem. I know one person who has arranged to get every Friday off from his work to do his side jobs. It works for him and his employer.
Summary
Side work is common in the construction industry as a way for workers to make some extra money. Most trade contractors are going to have to manage this to ensure that it doesn’t become a problem for the company. If you set clear expectations and keep open communication then it can be managed in a way where the company isn’t impacted and the workers are able to make more. That’s a win-win situation.
Be sure to download our free employee handbook template.
Resources
- Check out our free Employee Handbook Template made specifically for the construction industry.
- Start the Free Trial of BuildCenter to better manage your workforce.
- Review the A4 Timesheet Framework: A Free Guide. Click here to get the free guide
