Portfolio Working - Can it be Successful?
There are many different styles of working and not all of them are suitable for everyone. Some people prefer to work for one employer, some prefer to have a small number of employers who they split their time between, others fully embrace freelance working with different, ever-changing clients.
All of these are legitimate options for a successful career and none of them are inherently better than the others or more likely to bring success, however that is defined.
What is Portfolio Working?
Portfolio working refers to the practice of working for several different employers at the same time instead of working full-time for a single employer. It can also refer to working for one employer while having your own business as well.
Advantages of Portfolio Working
Work Life Balance
Working for different employers, in a way that suits you sounds like living the dream for many people. This flexibility to choose the hours that work for you and fill them with work for different bosses and companies can be an excellent way to maintain a good work and life balance.
Some people will choose to work more hours and therefore earn a lot more money whereas some will choose to work fewer hours but enjoy a lifestyle that contains much more free time. It is a trade off and only you can say which way suits you the best.
Diversification of Risk
Many people are keen on the idea of remote working and having several different employers can seem like an elegant way of ensuring that you are well insulated against any redundancies etc. If one of your jobs disappears overnight, the others should be able to tide you over until you can find something to replace the one you lost. This is one of the beauties about portfolio working. It is a way to ensure that you have a modicum of job security in what looks likely to be a difficult economic climate for some time to come.
Developing Different Skill Sets
Having a portfolio career tends to mean that you develop multiple different skill sets so that you are more versatile and can take on different job roles as needed. You may spend 15 hours a week teaching English as a Foreign Language teacher online and another 10 hours as a content writer for a well-known website. Being able to develop different skill sets gives you a versatility that will help you to weather financial storms.
Disadvantages of Portfolio Working
Missing Out on Career Advancement
When your career is built on portfolio working and it isn’t something that is common yet in your industry, it can be difficult to obtain the level of recognition that your skills and experience deserve and you may sometimes be passed over in favour of less qualified and experienced people when applying for a more senior role.
Balancing Can be Difficult
Finding the kind of work-life balance that you are looking for can be difficult to achieve and sometimes with a portfolio career, you will find yourself working more than you would like to be, but unable to move anything around for a while. In situations like that there is nothing else for it but to buckle up and power through. It can be hard and tiring but with portfolio working, at least there is nearly always an end in sight.
Not Enough Companies Embrace It
If you are being scrupulously honest with your employers and telling them about the other jobs that you are doing as well as theirs, it can be hard to find employers who will go for it and help you to protect your portfolio working career.
Many companies want to be your only employer so that they will “get the best out of you”, as they see it. Many workers look at the pay they receive and wonder why they aren’t paid for their best when they are always expected to provide it.
It can be hard to find companies who are a good fit with the other companies that you already work with, and where the hours gel well, with little overlap in terms of meetings and the like. It can be challenging to fit the pieces together but when you find what works for you, you will be happier.
Doing Your Taxes
Unlike people who are solely paid via PAYE in a single full-time job in the UK, people who are in multiple jobs may have to fill in their own tax return every year to ensure that they are paying the correct amount of tax. This can be a difficult process and some people will enlist the help of an accountant or financial adviser, which will be an additional financial outlay.
Extreme Portfolio Working
Some people can decide to take portfolio working to an extreme and try to hold down multiple full-time jobs for different employers, which they work on concurrently. The gamble they are taking is that none of the employers will find out what they are doing, and they can make three or four times their annual salary by working on all of these jobs.
Remote work has made it clear to many people that they waste a lot of time in an office-based job trying to look busy, and the people who are pursuing this extreme form of portfolio working are trying to fill every available minute of the working day with something productive for one of their employers. It definitely isn’t something that is taken on by anyone looking to shirk work, as the demands will most likely be very stressful, trying to keep on top of everything at once.
As a result of a growing awareness of this practice, some workplaces either have in place or are drawing up “no moonlighting during office hours” clauses, if they didn’t have them already so it is easier to fire someone who works for more than one company at once during the same space in the working day.
Can Portfolio Working be Successful?
Of course it can. Like any other form of work, it will become what you personally make of it. It can provide tremendous freedom and a way to offset the problems associated with losing a job and you can earn a lot of money through it. It is important to remember not to push yourself too hard and burn out, but yes there is no reason why portfolio working shouldn’t be a route to success.
Read some of our inspiring career stories?
