To side hustle or not to side hustle?

The first time I worked with a freelancer was back in 2016. There was a pending delivery for a copious number of banner adapts and my team was struggling to meet the timeline. I knew I was working with a freelancer but did I know that he was employed someplace else? The truth is I didn’t care.

In our everyday rigmarole of delivering the ask from the clients, we have always gone by the advice from Gita, “Look not at the path, but the destination”. In the same breath, would I, as a leader, encourage my employees to moonlight and take up gigs? Let’s take that up at a later date.

Let’s start by calling out the elephant in the room. We are in the business of creativity and we believe that we need to push the boundaries to ensure that we stay relevant -- an executive of an organisation taking up advisory roles or becoming an angel investor, an art director trying to become a UI expert or a creative director dabbling in Films.

It can also happen with a planner who wants to explore newer categories or consumer cohorts or for that matter, a techie who wants to learn newer technologies that the current company doesn’t have the capabilities in.

It can be seen across the length and breadth of the organisations. When one feels that the current role isn’t stimulating enough, the exploration starts. The extra cash only makes it easier to cross over. It’s only the suits in our industry who don’t have the skill set to try something new, as matter of fact. We have in many ways normalized this behaviour in our industry. 

What someone does in their free time should not be a concern for the top management. However, the real challenge in our industry is the definition of free time.

Before the onset of the pandemic, even though we were all working more than 9 hours every day, we tried to ensure that employees could do what they wanted on weekends. This was also an opportunity for the teams to explore newer things like music, art, theatres, etc., beyond the regular side hustle.

The fact that it was difficult to side hustle from the workplace also aided this attitude. However, in a post-pandemic world, where we have normalized work-from-home behaviour, it does become difficult to understand productivity and more importantly unclear when we are working and when we aren't. When the boundaries are blurred, the side hustle does tend to become the main hustle and that’s when I would draw the line.

As individuals, we are always looking for more income streams. That’s only a natural behaviour. As an industry, I don’t think we can ever reach a point where we pay everyone enough to not take up a side hustle.

The reality is that every company is under the pressure of profit margin. However, if I reflect on why I have never taken up a side hustle, other than not having any specific skillset, I would say that I have always been given the opportunity to punch above my weight.

A few things stimulated my right brain and a few things my left brain. I also look at my wife who has been with the same company for the last 17 years and I am sure she’s enjoyed every bit of that journey. In fact, she’s tried to upskill herself only to deliver the expectations of her company. However, I will still draw a line when we risk client confidentiality and data security agreement by blatantly working with third parties.

We need to accept the Pareto principle of 80:20 and more importantly communicate the vision constantly. Let’s start from the top, we need to accept that 80% of our work will be mundane.

Companies need to make those brochures, social media posts, leaflets, dealer panel ads, video edits, the always-on media plan, mailers, SMS’ and so on. This puts food on the table. It’s the 20% of the work where we can push the limit and innovate and get that fame.

As business leaders, we only have two responsibilities; communicate this to the team constantly and find the 20% innovation opportunity. We need to pick the battles to fight. If not, our teams will expend themselves too soon. If you ask me if I am implying whether WFH is the culprit behind moonlighting, I would say that it’s definitely part of the problem and not just the only culprit. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.