5 Foolproof Ways to Run Your Side Hustle Without Violating Your Terms of Employment

January 10, 2024January 17, 2024 Eddu Oz

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5 Foolproof Ways to Run Your Side Hustle Without Violating Your Terms of Employment

You may have a big idea for a side hustle and are excited to get into it while keeping your daily job. It is necessary to know some things you need to know so you don’t have problems building your side hustle.

How many employees lose their jobs every year due to violations of the terms of employment? According to The American Civil Liberties Union, about two million employees get fired every year. Some of the employees got fired due to a breach of contract.

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There are better ways to go about running your side hustle without crossing the lines. You can still be a top performer and have your side gig run efficiently on the side if you prioritize and balance your schedule properly.

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key Highlights

🎯 Make sure you read thoroughly the policies and agreements provided by your employer before starting a side hustle.

🎯 One thing you should never do is steal your employer’s intellectual property when starting your side hustle.

🎯 They have been legal battles on poaching.

🎯 Never use company tools to work on your side hustle.

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1. Understand Your Companies Policy and Agreement

Companies provide policies and agreements they expect their employees to abide by as long as they work for them. Inside this agreement, companies provide terms about employees operating side businesses.

If you don’t know about these policies, ask your employers about starting your side hustle. Running a side gig may have been mentioned passively or not all during your orientation. If you didn’t get notified, read your terms of engagement over again.

If you still don’t understand, try asking any of your co-workers who has a side hustle. Most companies don’t have strict policies about side hustles, as long as they are your main priority.

They are many agreements you will sign once you get employed in a company, and some of them are,

Employment contract.
Non-Compete Clause
Non-Disclosure Agreement.

Make sure you examine each of them again carefully. If you find anything you don’t understand or want more clarifications, give it to a lawyer to go over it. With little investment, a lawyer can go over your contracts in under 30 minutes to see if you should know.

2. Avoid Using Your Companies Resources and Proprietary Information

Proprietary information means information created, developed, or discovered by a company. This information has value to and has commercial value in their business.

One thing you should never do is steal when starting your side hustle. You can’t share, use, or steal any information gotten from your employer’s intellectual property.

Do your research, and you will see many cases about employers suing their former employees for propriety information theft. Because of this kind of problem, you must be sure you are not using your employer’s propriety information.

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Another thing you should not use is your companies resources, even if it is transportation, computers or money. Avoid using these resources because it is unethical and could get you fired or sued.

The best option is to purchase, rent or borrow everything you will need outside your job and make sure you document everything.

3. Poaching Will get You Fired or Sued

You might think it is ok to carry your colleagues over to work for you, and it is tempting to do so. You spend many hours with them and have built strong relationships, and it feels natural to work with him on a side hustle.

Situations like this can be tricky. In some cases, working with your friend may be considered poaching, and in other cases, seen as nothing. The main idea is to avoid poaching or inviting employees or colleagues into your side hustle.

If you must use them, make sure no agreement with you, your colleagues, and your employer doesn’t get broken.

They have been legal battles on poaching. Companies take offense to this, especially the one that has spent money and time training their employee. Check the startup world, and you see many of these kinds of scenarios playing over again.

A small startup with no funding gets a large amount of money the next day.
They now decide to poach employees from startups without funding.

4. Keep Company’s Time Sacred

You might feel you don’t have enough time outside of your job to work on your side hustle, and my advice to you is to manage that time. A simple thing as using company time to work o your side hustle can open room for queries, lawsuits, or you getting fired.

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Not using company time seem like a simple enough rule to follow, but it is one of the most violated rules among employees.

One of the main factors causing employees to use company time is that they don’t manage their own time. When you feel you have not done enough work on your side hustle for the day, you might get tempted to use part of company time, which will open you to violations.

Exercising dome discipline is necessary for situations like this. When you start cutting corners to work on your side hustle on company time, your performs will begin dropping, and your employers will notice. Your employers will see this as a breach of your agreement.

5. Avoid Using Company Tools

Most companies buy a lot of online and offline tools to make your job easier. They purchase these tools so the work process can be easy and stress-free as possible. Because these tools bought by your employer are available to you does not mean you get to use them however you like, especially not on your side hustle.

Final Thoughts

The best thing to do when you plan on starting your side business is to talk to your employers. Their job is to investigate to make sure you and your side hustle are not violating any agreement. Make sure all discussion gets documented.