Freelancing!! In India, I have seen nowadays that every guy is involved in freelancing in the any sector after working hours. Due to this, many startups, companies, and agencies have made their policy that none of their employees, human resources, or team members will be doing freelancing.
While HR in many companies used to ask employees in the induction process, as below:
Are you doing freelancing? If the answer is yes then they will be like We don’t allow employees to do freelancing after job hours. If yes then kindly let us know.
I mean seriously guys! (HR and companies) are you crazy for asking this? Don’t you know the answer? What will they answer after listening to the above questions? Do we all know the answer to it as humans? It will be No.
Mostly one does freelancing due to extra income after job hours on the price of quality time without spending it with their family. But whatever the reason behind doing the freelancing would be one should always prioritise this over all others for freelancing, as you always get new opportunities of work to come close with which you are not getting in your office timing from morning 9 to evening 6.
The opportunities could be like:
- Direct client communication
- Project handling abilities
- New work challenges
- Communications skills
- How to deal with critical situations with clients
This can be a way to be different from the crowd in today’s world; you will always be quickly praised, have self-satisfaction, and have an inner proud feeling toward yourself; this is how you can prove yourself a true asset to the company for whom you are working. After all, your full-time job will always be your main source of income.
We are all in a rat race and everybody wants to go ahead. However, there is still a mentality among Indians that we, as a company, never allow our employees to freely speak or share freely about their freelancing experience with us.
We never allow teammates or employees to mention in their LinkedIn BIO to mention with whom they are working as a freelancer or what so position. Well, this is allowed in offshore countries.
Oh, I forgot it is allowed among us as well, but only for CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, and all other higher level positions where people could be handling multiple positions or playing multiple roles, but employees could not. After all, we should never forget one day; we all have started as an employee like others do.
This is the time to take a minute to think about it; if we allow this culture, then we can know that we are around great talents. We can quickly know a person’s extra level of skills, experience, qualities, etc. from their LinkedIn. Today we all will have such persons in our office who would be freelancing but will never share their new experiences or would rather ignore talking about that with others in office time freely. The only reason could be losing their job or what the company would think of them.Rather than informing employees indirectly to hide it, we should encourage them to share and use their skills / talent and should appreciate them.
Among all of this, an essential part is also the main concern: that a person should never cross moral values, personal and corporate, and always work according to principles while working as a freelancer after work hours. One should work in such a way that their company and clients are not harmed.
It totally depends on your personality and what you want from your professional life. There is nothing like one path is better than another. But in my opinion, I would prefer to do my office work to become an important asset to the company instead of freelancing in my spare time. It will also benefit the employee, as they can fully concentrate on their office project.
This was a thought from my end to share with you all whatever I was thinking and what was going on at the time. No companies or HR’s are targeted just from my point of view.
P.S: There was no intention to violate any of the company’s rules or regulations.
