Digital Thoughts: Bridging the Gap, Part One
If you made it to the end of last week’s Digital Thoughts, you will have read that other companies are waiting to take your talent, and you’re the only one that can prevent that. Unlike the challenges of growth, during maturation, the challenges facing the business have as much to do with identifying and keeping the right talent as they do with any market or competitive force. During growth, the big wins and tough problems act as a glue that unites and keeps everyone focused. As those victories happen less often and the problems smaller but more frequent, especially during a hot job market, employees start to think more about themselves rather than the company. That’s when some will start to feel that they could make more money and/or receive more recognition from another company, all while doing the same amount of work. In this market, chances are they could. That feeling and the resulting tension we called “the gap.”
No doubt about it, the gap is a major issue. This week, we touch on an equally significant issue, one that relates to and often leads to the gap. Like the gap, it’s an issue that unsettles a company from within, and it is none other than employees making money outside the workplace. In a black and white world, no employee would be allowed to earn income outside of their full-time job. In our industry, there are two major types of outside income, employees being users of the company’s products, e.g. publishers, and employees doing freelance work. People working the line at a GM plant probably won’t have the same opportunities or temptations that those in our industry do. The truth of our space, especially the direct marketing and arbitrage ones, is that armed with a little bit of money and some time, almost anyone can play around. In other words, employees doing work on the side is inevitable.
Many employees do work outside of work. Much of that, from the personal blog to the home built model for coming in first at Fantasy Football, is healthy. It’s when that outside work becomes unhealthy that you have to worry. The reasons for doing so are as varied as the reasons why people leave. With respect to outside work, some employees need more money; some simply want more money; while, some join friends doing things on the side, just to name a few. As freelance work of some sort by employees in our industry is unavoidable, we focus our attention not on whether you can avoid it but who tends to do it the most and how likely that behavior is to negatively impact the company.
From my experience, three groups of people tend to engage in outside activity the most – programmers, graphic designers, and media buyers/business development employees. Others can often get involved but generally that usually happens at the behest of one of the three above. For example, a savvy biz dev person might persuade the in-house PPC arbitrage specialist to do some side business. The in-house PPC marketer has a greater chance of simply jumping ship because they feel as though they add a disproportionate amount to the bottom compared with what they earn as opposed to first engaging in outside activity. It’s those on the business side that tend to have more gap related issues as opposed to strictly freelance work opportunities.
Of the three groups – technology, graphic design, and business development, the first two tend to exhibit similar behavior and are the focus of Part One. This group tends to seek or at least accept freelance for two main reasons – extra money and what I call portfolio satisfaction. Those in the group can make good livings, but very few get paid extremely well; they tend to appear comfortable playing the supporting role they have been given. Additionally, they do not appear outwardly interested in climbing the ranks nor do they appear to have a great desire to become the founder of a startup. They treat their position like a job and will stay when needed but will not often volunteer to work late. As opposed to their counterparts that we look at in Part Two, what sets this group apart is that they leverage skills they have refined at work but do not need to use any of the specific knowledge gained by working at the company in order to earn some cash on the side.
What about the issue of portfolio enhancement? That is really a polite way to say that many find the work they do for the real job, mind numbingly boring. Take graphic designers for example. They work on an endless number of ads and landing pages, but if you cornered one of the better people at a bar with a few drinks in them, they would tell you that the work is draining and doesn’t relate to design at all. We tend to think they should have no problems making yet another version of the same landing page, but from a creative person’s point of view, the monotony of the pages test their sanity.
On whether technologists and graphic designers should freelance, the safest policy is one that explicitly prohibits, or at least strongly discourages it. They do it now and will do it later. What we try to bring up is that it can be done without damaging the work environment and to understand not just who might do it now, but why they might do it. Try to understand their motivation. If it is solely monetary, see what they could likely make and whether it might make sense to offer an increase in compensation (a year end bonus for example if they perform well). If the desire to work outside the company comes from personal satisfaction and skill growth, the question becomes, understanding the impact of such work on the work place. Specifically, will others find out? What will happen if they do? It will be up to you to set the context to them and those who might be aware of their situation that it is rare, not encouraged but tolerated. Instill in them a respect for your understanding of their needs and work to make sure that activity does not creep into the workplace consciousness. This is specifically what we address in Part Two as we look at people and cases where it challenges the health of the company.
