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Employees who engage in concurrent employment: Implications for employers concerning psychological workers' compensation claims

anna1k
Jan 116 min read


Dr Anna Kiaos is the Director of Mind Culture Life Australia and a researcher at the University of New South Wales within the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health.


Australia’s cost-of-living crisis has promulgated a need for a proportion of employees to engage in generating multiple sources of income, typically by holding concurrent employment[1]. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), in September 2024 there were 986,400 multiple job-holders (6.6% of employed people). Interestingly, the number of individuals who engage in concurrent employment appears to have steadily increased since September 2017. This figure has risen since June 2021(see Figure 1).


Figure 1


According to Dicky and Watson et. al., (2015)[2], individuals who hold multiple positions across various employers are typically responding to financial constraints. Moreover, many individuals attracted to secondary sources of employment also do so in an effort to develop new skills, which they may later use to redirect their career. Employees also engage in concurrent employment in an effort to enhance their future income potential. This practice is commonly recognised as ‘moonlighting’ in which employees occupy secondary employment or may commence a side business whilst retaining their primary full-time position with an employer. This additional work output is typically conducted after hours or on weekends.

 

Similarly, in a recent Systematic Literature Review (SLR)[3], moonlighting was claimed to be driven by three factors. Notably, financial concerns, employment related anxieties and seeking new income generating opportunities. Moreover, these factors appeared to be intertwined with the emergence of new competitive and global workforce dynamics[4], such as an increasing competitive global workforce landscape. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when employees were forced to work strictly from home, moonlighting practices gained ascendancy due to increases in availability of potential working time, whilst taking advantage of opportunities to increase monetary gains[5].

 

Interestingly, research has found that the level of an employee’s earnings determines their propensity to moonlight. Specifically, moonlighting declines as the level of earnings rise. Taken from this perspective, moonlighting serves primarily to improve living standards. A recent study by Gaur and Thakkar (2022)[6] concurred by arguing that low salaries and wages, which reflect one primary reason for job dissatisfaction, led to moonlighting. Importantly, job satisfaction depends not only on economic factors but also social and psychological factors[7]. Taken from this viewpoint, moonlighting may cause employers serious concerns pertaining to increased workers’ compensation claims for psychological injuries.  


Employers at greater risk for psychological workers’ compensation claims

 

Individuals who engage in moonlighting may cause various implications for their employers, not limited to breaches in code of conduct and employment contracts more broadly. Moreover, employers are increasingly vulnerable to psychological workers’ compensation injuries due to potential conflicts of interest, lost productivity, confidentiality issues and resource misappropriation. Arguably, when employees engage in moonlighting, higher risks associated with symptoms of burnout or burnout syndrome, absenteeism, behavioural changes, combined with the likelihood of further decreased employee engagement and commitment prevail. In this vein, concurrent employment may generate blurred boundaries between the various work employees perform for their primary and secondary employers, which can lead to poor psychological and sociological outcomes whilst they perform work for their primary employer. Arguably, for this reason, already dissatisfied employees who engage in moonlighting reflect an increased risk to their primary employer pertaining to psychological workers’ compensation claims.

 

Interestingly, once an employee has lodged a workers’ compensation claim, they are in a position to take advantage of several benefits, not limited to receiving workers’ compensation whilst concurrently participating in secondary employment, thereby producing additional income whilst receiving benefits from their primary employer. Should an insurer accept a claim of this sort, this scenario will prevail until the injured worker is medically cleared to return to work, with loosely bounded and applied time limits. The conscious and meticulous alleged psychologically injured employee can structure this scenario to their advantage for a prolonged period.


Protecting employers from increased psychological workers’ compensation claims


Employers must be rooted in the reality of economic forces that catalyse a need for employees to increase their incomes by whatever means that are available to them, including engaging in concurrent employment. As mentioned, Australia’s current cost-of-living crisis and recent COVID-19 pandemic are legitimate reasons for employees to seek additional income streams as a way to protect their financial security in turbulent economic environments. However, these economic protective activities from an employee’s perspective exposes employers to increased vulnerability, particularly pertaining to psychological workers’ compensation claims. For this reason, employers must do what is necessary to protect their organisations from psychological workers’ compensation claims as a result of increased employee moonlighting. However, in doing so, employers should avoid eroding trust between themselves and their employees, remembering that when employees increase their incomes, the likelihood of moonlighting decreases[8].


To foster trust, employers may engage in direct conversations with their employees, generating dialogue by asking questions pertaining to income satisfaction, engagement concerning work related activities, work-life balance, reward and recognition, and more directly about engaging in work outside of the employer. In this vein, employers may discuss reasons pertaining to why secondary employment has been sought and what it would take for their employees to refrain from concurrent employment in the future. In short, employers may ask questions directly to those observed as representing high risk, in order for employees to freely discuss the matter openly.


To push this point further, employers must first look at their own failures. Employers should critically evaluate why their employees are engaging in concurrent employment, transcend any ignorance pertaining to it, develop and deepen their sensibility toward their employees and then do what they can to ensure employees are working in optimal conditions. This information generating exercise from the employer’s perspective must ensure that employees are treated respectfully. In other words, no consequences should prevail for those employees who offer intel for the employer’s benefit pertaining to reasons for concurrent employment. Therefore, it is advisable for employers to adopt a broader mindset, that is, by taking view of perspectives that sit directly outside of their own interests.


Thereafter, secondary interests must take priority, by directly reducing employer vulnerability pertaining to psychological workers’ compensation claims. In this regard, employers can implement several means to mitigate psychological workers’ compensation claim risks. Most obviously, employers may develop and deploy policies requiring the disclosure of secondary employment. At this juncture, employees should be made aware of such policies, their boundaries and how employers may enforce these policies by way of written examples. Managers should also discuss said policies and associated examples by way of dialogue with their staff as well as the reasons which underpin them, particularly pertaining to why the employer is going to such lengths.


Employers may also introduce a non-competing agreement with employees or specific cohorts within an organisation who are perceived and interpreted as reflecting high risk for psychological workers’ compensation claim injuries due to concurrently held employment. This type of agreement serves to prevent employees from engaging in projects outside of the primary employer. If employees are found to be working on two projects concurrently with two or more employers, decisive action can be directed toward the employee of interest, not limited to action concerning the inappropriate disclosure of confidential organisational data. If employers perceive great risk, they can then engage in litigation by utilising the agreement against high-risk employees.


Further, employers may also deploy employee engagement software. Some software has the capability to examine an employee’s performance, productivity, and engagement levels. At the broadest level, employee engagement software can assist managers to track superfluous work activity, identifying signs of moonlighting. The other benefit of this type of software is that employers may garner information on whether an employee is sharing sensitive information outside of working hours to another employer. However, pertaining to employee engagement software, metrics of this nature require much interpretative thought before taking conclusive action towards employees.


In conclusion, moonlighting is here to stay. Australia’s cost-of-living crisis, increasing income dissatisfaction, general financial concerns, employment dissatisfaction, employment related anxieties and the emergence of new competitive and global workforce dynamics reflect combined factors that appears to be propelling concurrent employment. Arguably, concurrent employment may lead to a higher risk of burnout syndrome, absenteeism, observable workplace behavioural changes, combined with an even greater likelihood of decreased employee engagement and commitment. Together, these factors suggest that individuals who engage in concurrent employment are more likely to lodge a workers’ compensation claim for psychological injury, exposing employers to increased psychological workers’ compensation vulnerability.



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