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UI study: Don’t let ‘side hustle’ turn you into a jerk at your full-time job
A University of Iowa study might prove to be a teaching moment for anyone who works what’s known as a “side hustle,” or a paid job outside of their full-time work.
Jennifer Nahrgang, a professor of management and entrepreneurship in the UI’s Tippie College of Business, says she and her team surveyed 200 side hustlers — along with their day job co-workers — to see what effect that second job has on a person’s attitude at their full-time job.
“What we found was that because they have that autonomy and they get to make decisions in their side hustles or they get to decide how they want to schedule their work,” Nahrgang says, “when they return to their full-time job, they really sense this restriction of that autonomy and of that freedom, and so they tend to be a little bit more irritable and hostile and then kind of lash out at co-workers.”
Autonomy is one of the strongest predictors of job satisfaction, and once you get a taste of it, you might miss it when you don’t have it, which she says could explain the prickly behavior.
“One of the things we found was that if people felt like they did have autonomy in their full-time job, they were less likely to lash out at their co-workers,” Nahrgang says. “I will also say, we found some positive things as well, and rather than lashing out, some people also just try to have more initiative at work to try to reestablish that freedom.”
The study also discovered the jerky behavior can often be squelched if managers provide more leeway to their side-hustling employees.
“Anytime organizations can give workers a sense of autonomy, a sense of freedom in scheduling their work, and how they go about their work, the processes that they use, the decisions that they can make within their own work,” she says, “then that usually results in positive things for employees and organizations.”
Nahrgang says more Americans are finding they need side hustles to stay afloat. “I think it represents most of the growth in the labor market over the last 10 years with just the prevalence of apps, being able to pick up and be an Uber driver, on the Internet, put something on Etsy,” Nahrgang says, “that’s really driven up the capabilities and opportunities that people have to have side hustles.”
Some studies, she says, show as many as one-in-five workers nationwide now have an extra job in what’s become a gig economy.
