It might not be the most common practice in the working world, but one of the knock-on impacts of our post-pandemic ability to work from home en masse is the rise of ‘double-dipping’. No, it’s not to do with party food etiquette, it’s to do with working more than one full-time, salaried job on the sly.

It’s been widely reported that council staff working from home in places including Wakefield, Enfield and Kensington and Chelsea were caught working additional jobs in secret. These staff members are now being investigated by the government’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI) for ‘multiple contract working’.

While each council is responsible for setting its own working regulations, most of them require people to declare second jobs. And it could be argued that staff knowingly collecting two full-time salaries (even though they’re splitting their hours and working half the time for each job behind their employers’ backs) are committing ‘theft of time’ and could be accused of fraud.

Even with such scary legal ramifications at play if you’re caught, trying to squeeze two full-time jobs into one working week is also unlikely to be good for you. But some people might not feel like they have any other choice. 

David Rice is an HR expert at People Managing People. He says double-dipping is becoming more common as a result of “the economic reality that wages haven’t kept pace with inflation for decades.”

“It makes a great deal of sense for people to do it,” he adds, “but we can’t pretend it doesn’t have a cost on employee wellbeing, as burnout is already rampant among people working just one job.”

Andrew Fennell, a former recruiter and the Director at StandOut CV, tells us he sympathises with people who give double-dipping work a go for very similar reasons.

“As living costs continue to be a challenge for many,” he adds, “who wouldn’t want to earn more in the same working day? But that’s not strictly true – it’s not the ‘same’ working day because the employee is trying to cram double the headspace into the same amount of time.”

And that’s not the only reason he doesn’t recommend double-dipping.

“Most employees will have likely signed a contract with a clause that prevents them from doing exactly this, and a business is well within their rights to seek compensation,” he explains. “They could argue the employee has been providing a substandard service and not working the hours they’re paid for.

“Also, people should consider whether it is worth it to work a full week with the stress of someone finding out and them potentially losing their job looming over them. I’d advise people to consider how many times they’ve made a small error in an email at work. For the double-dippers, that small typo could be the one thing that causes a manager to investigate.”

So what can people do if they feel the need to supplement their income in these very trying times?

Rice suggests finding some way to earn more passive income that’s a bit less demanding on your headspace and your time, which has the added bonus of not pissing off your full-time employer.

Fennell recommends first checking the job market for your role to check whether you’re definitely being paid fairly.

“If you can see you’re below expectations it’s likely worth having a conversation with management about why you think you deserve higher pay,” he says. “Bring concrete evidence to this discussion. This ideally would be statistics of your results in the last 6-12 months that prove you are deserving of more money. If that doesn’t work, I’d look elsewhere. Clean up your LinkedIn profile, set up job alerts and start some conversations with recruiters to see what your next steps could be.”

And to anyone who might, by some miracle, already be making double-dipping work without driving themselves to distraction, Fennell says the freelancing life might suit them better than full-time salaried employment.

“They’re clearly managing multiple ‘clients’ already and are good enough at their job to get work done in an efficient manner,” he says. “Going freelance could net them more money than juggling these two jobs. They can then, legally, seek the double-dipping freedom without concern and work whatever hours they please.”

Images: Getty