Allow?? What makes you think you have any say in the matter?<p>As far as I'm concerned, my employer doesn't own my brain 24x7x365, and they damn sure aren't paying me to be "on the clock" 24x7x365. So long as I'm not using their time, equipment, trade secrets, etc., I will work on side projects.
ProTip™, when you join a company and are required to declare previous IP/inventions, list a bunch of made up side projects with vague/semi-scoped descriptions.<p>Then when you complete a side project you just pick a name from your prior inventions.<p>Worked for me, I launched 3 businesses while fully employed and have zero risk of having them taken from me.
I hope you mean during work hours - that is debatable and depends on how much you trust them to make useful things.<p>Outside of work, you do not own them, they are people not property. Making ANY claims on their time, energy or IP produced outside of work is despicable if you ask me. An employer who did that would be signaling that they view employees as property, would likely treat them poorly or like children, and I would never work for them.
Yes, not just "allow", I would actually <i>encourage</i> them. I don't manage people, but have been in tech lead roles. I encouraged co-workers and reportees to experiment and learn things outside of what was required for employer's work.<p>IMO, side projects always help expand technical skills. They usually also drive people towards improving their social or communication skills. An employee whose feelings of freedom and autonomy have been encouraged by a company is usually a happier productive employee. It also brings second order benefits for the employer - such an employee is more likely to describe the employer as providing work satisfaction and recommending them in their social circles.<p>I have experienced both types of employers - the open-minded ones, as well as the paranoid/narcissistic/control freak types. I have good things to say only about the former.<p>Just adding a productivity/work satisfaction angle here, because most answers so far seemed to be from the perspective of legality.
All the comments so far are stating how obvious it is that they can't claim anything about what you do in your free time.<p>It is not so clear cut, at least in the US. See Joel Spolsky famous answer to "If I'm working at a company, do they have intellectual property rights to the stuff I do in my spare time?"<p><a href="http://www.brightjourney.com/q/working-company-intellectual-property-rights-stuff-spare-time" rel="nofollow">http://www.brightjourney.com/q/working-company-intellectual-...</a>
I'll assume the question regards employees working on side projects outside of the hours that they are doing paid work for their employer.<p>I think it is reasonable for employers to require:<p>- the employer owns any intellectual property generated by the employee during the course of the employee's duties (i.e. paid employment)<p>- that employees disclose any real or potential conflicts of interest with their employer's business<p>- (possibly, subject to negotiation) that the employee may be placed under non-compete restrictions during the time they work for and after they leave the company, provided the employee is appropriately compensated for the opportunity cost (e.g. a paid period of "gardening leave" if they are prevented from working in the industry for 12 months)<p>I don't think it is reasonable for an employer to own intellectual property generated by the employee outside the course of their duties, or have any say in what other business activities an employee may have, or whatever else an employee does in the rest of their life outside the $dayjob.<p>Personally, as I've gained experience working as a permanent employee and working as a contractor, I simply won't sign any employment agreement that constrains what I can do in my time outside of work. Sometimes prospective employers opportunistically sneak such clauses into employment contracts, but are then happy to strike out such clauses, if they are not, there's plenty of opportunities for well-paying contract work without such restrictions, so I'll look for something else.<p>That said, part of this is simply about relative power of the employer and employees. If employees don't have a range of alternative options for work, or are not unionised, and don't live in a polity where these aspects of employment contracts are regulated, then it is possible than employers may offer relatively unfair employment contracts, which some potential employees will still sign if they don't feel they have an alternative.<p>Thucydides -- "the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must."
Outside of work hours and following any non-compete clauses in the contract, I would say companies shouldn't own ideas generate/worked on outside your day job hours. I know this is not common with many companies in the North American workplace though.
I personally had a contract which had a total ownership clause offered to me. I got lucky when discussing the general idea of it with an ex-coworker, who got me a full-time contract at a second company with no such clause. I much preferred the second place anyways, as I had done some work with them through university.
We at <a href="http://draftss.com" rel="nofollow">http://draftss.com</a> strongly motivate our employees to indulge in side-projects. We have a strong team of expert graphic designers, developers, project managers, sales and marketing.<p>Right from the interviewing candidates, we prefer people who have come with a background of projects/startups created by candidates.<p>Based on past experiences, this has led the employees to come up with out of the box concepts that help in optimizing our existing services.
As long as the side projects are in no way considered a conflict of interest, I think it should be acceptable. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether or not something is a conflict of interest. The other thing to be careful of is making sure that the additional side project(s) are not burning out the employee, or occasionally eating into their actual time at work.
I pretty much never hire anyone who doesn't have a side project. I don't care if it is super shitty php code, as long as you are coding outside of work, I know you will be a good programmer.<p>And anytime I made exception to this rule, I always regretted it.
Alternate perspective - if I offer significant company shares to an engineer, I'd expect them to devote quite a lot of mental energy to the company<p>The reasoning is that a lot of the biggest breakthroughs happen with "ambient thought". It's the stuff you figure out while in the shower or while mowing the lawn.<p>If they're getting a 30% share or more, it's like a marriage. You can fantasize about side projects, but not devote significant effort chasing them. If you want to be doing side projects, you should be taking a lower cut and higher salary.<p>If it's around 10%-30%, you'd be expected to be at full energy overtime and put all side projects aside when needed. Side projects are okay as long as they don't get in the way.<p>At about 1%-10%, you could probably do one, but you'd be better off focusing on your job related project. It's probably a part of expectations too.
Yes and you should give them time inside the office hours to work on their side projects even it's totally unrelated to your activity. They'll feel better and will be more productive.
I don't believe you can legally prevent that. There may be some clause about total ownership of work, but I'm not sure that's been tried before.