Can You Be Fired For Doing Freelancing On The Side While Doing A Full-time Job?

By Author: arun singh
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This is the foremost question that arises for someone who has been working in a field for a few years and has started thinking about freelancing. In any field, only the top 5% of the workers get the most amount of salary. The rest, 95% of the people, are not paid that substantially for their work.

For a business to be profitable, spending should be mostly on the core talents and needs of the business rather than extras. A full-time employee is entitled to certain things like minimum basic pay, PF fund, insurance, paid vacations and such.

This reduces the amount of money a company can spend on its core business. Hence to make up for this, companies keep the wages of full-time workers at low industry standards. Hence full-time workers are forced to find side gigs to make more money.

A majority of these full-time workers can’t take the risk of quitting their jobs and building a career in Freelancing. Hence they want to work on the side while having their full-time job. But a lot of these people fear the legalities of doing this. Is it legal to do Freelancing while working in a company full-time? The answer ...
... to this question is not a simple yes or no. There are some factors that need to be considered depending upon the situation while answering this question.

There are no laws in India that explicitly prevents one from doing a side gig while having a full-time job. But there are some ethical implications to this. If you are working full-time and want to do a side gig, you should go through the legal agreement you signed for your company.

If your agreement prevents you from taking up other jobs on the side, then it’s unethical to do it.
But most of the time, the companies won’t have any problem if you are doing a freelance side gig of other categories. For example, if you are working as a programmer and you decide to do freelance video editing on the side, your company might not have any problem with it.
However, if you want to do a freelance side gig of the same category, then you should consider a few things.

First, never sign any agreement that employs you as a freelancer in a competing company. For example, if you are working as a programmer in an IT company and you want to do freelance programming on the side, make sure you don’t get your gig from an equally sized competitor company. The same applies to all other categories as well. So first, you make sure you have gone through all the legal agreements you have signed and don’t go against them in any way.

Make sure your side gig does not affect the performance of your full-time job. If that’s happening, then there are more chances you will get fired from your full-time job. Also, you can try talking to your manager or superior authority about taking up a freelance side gig.

When everything goes perfectly fine, and you end up getting a freelance job, make sure you don’t compromise the security of your current company. You are not allowed to discuss anything about your company with your freelance client. Make sure you don’t use any of the company-provided resources for your freelance client, and also never compromise your work hours in the company to manage the side gig. Don’t use laptops or computers provided by your company to do your freelance work, and also don’t do your freelance work during the company’s work hours.

Keep all the client dealings and meetings outside of your company’s campus to maintain ethics. Also, make sure you do background verification of your client before you start freelancing for them. If your client is already a client of the company you are working for, then don’t take up the job because there might be legal complications that you might not be aware of.

Never breach the security or legal implications of your company for the sake of your freelance gig. Make sure your client’s background and history do not cause trouble for your full-time employer or company.

To summarise, there is no particular law in India that prevents you from doing freelance work on the side while working full-time for a company. The only thing that might prevent you from doing it is the legal agreement between you and your company. So if you make sure of all the legal implications, maintain professional work ethics and keep in mind the above-discussed factors, you can definitely pursue freelancing on the side while having a full-time job. You cannot be fired simply.