Evan Solomon's high-profile dismissal from the CBC earlier this month has once again drummed up questions regarding workplace ethics: When is your side job crossing the line at your day job?
According to Statistics Canada, the number of multiple job holders, or those "moonlighting," has been steadily increasing in the country. There were roughly 946,000 multiple job holders in May, up from almost 908,000 a decade ago.
Of that total, just over one-third indicated they held a main job where they worked 40 hours or more a week.
"It's becoming relatively common, especially in contracting," says Travis O'Rourke, regional director for staffing firm Hays Canada in Toronto.
The attraction of taking a side job has increased in an age where contract employment has become more common, especially in fields such as IT and marketing, says Mr. O'Rourke.
"If you're already in a contract with somebody, the attraction of taking another freelance opportunity seems relatively easy because you're not necessarily bound by the same rules as a full-timer," he says.
He adds that while an employee may be tempted not to disclose an extra job because the field of work has nothing to do with a primary job, a worker should consider whether their productivity is being affected through fatigue and scheduling. Other cases may also see an employee use skills learned at one job to work on completely different projects at another, creating potential conflict over intellectual property.
The safest thing to do, he says, is to outright disclose the information to an employer or the manager who signed your employment contract.
"You want to make sure that your employer knows that you're giving 100 per cent to your full-time job, not 50 per cent to either side," he says.
Gerlinde Herrmann, president of Toronto-based human resources company the Herrmann Group, says one way to make the task easier is to remind the employer about the instability of contract work.
"It's an easy one to segue your way into and say, 'Look, you're only guaranteeing me a year,' or six months, or whatever it is. 'And I have to keep these other things going so that when you no longer keep me, I'm not going to be out of an income.' That's a fair question to ask," she says.
Mostly, she cautions that employees should consider that having two jobs may cross lines that an employee is only vaguely aware of. Even if the work of a second job has little in common with the first, as in the case with Mr. Solomon's art commissions and his journalistic work at the CBC, there may still be a conflict in company values or client relationships.
"If there's a grey zone, go see HR and have it clarified," she says. "It's always good to look at what you've signed as an employment agreement. It should never be in such legalese that the employee doesn't know what they signed on for."
However, a full-time employee may not have the same justification, which means the primary employment needs to come first in those situations, says Natalie MacDonald, an employment lawyer and partner at Toronto's Rudner MacDonald Lawyers.
Violating an employment contract, even unintentionally, can still be grounds for dismissal, and the only safe way to make sure that a side job isn't crossing lines is to ask for permission in a straight discussion, she says.
"It can be a grey area because of electronic communication," Ms. MacDonald says. "I think there are employees out there who are doing one job for the company but are using electronic communication to do another. And that obviously takes away from productivity."
Staff can ease the way for permission by making sure all other work related to a second job – including e-mail and phone calls – is limited to lunch hours or after the end of the work day.
For contract employees, she adds that simply touting the distinction of being impermanent may not be enough to justify having a second job to an employer, especially if workers consistently sign on for short-term contracts over a period of years. Instead, a contract worker may be considered a common-law employee, which in some cases can give an employer the right to dismiss them immediately, even if a clause in the employment contract sets a certain period of time as notice.
That's why, Ms. MacDonald says, employees should make the effort to get permission in writing, if possible.
"There is absolutely no argument for an employer to make if the employer has knowledge of what the employee is doing," she says.