I'm a salaried in house photo-video guy for a marketing agency. I recently asked about the idea of selling landscape prints at art markets or just selling photo / video services that are outside the scope of business marketing. Like senior portraits, weddings, landscape prints etc. Services the company doesn't even offer. Just some light weekend work for a little extra income. Something fun to do, to keep learning and being creative on my own terms and time.
When I asked about it to avoid any conflict of interest the answer to it was met with "if you use company equipment we'd ask for a percentage of your sales." "okayyy, I sort of get that, well if i just update my camera and use my own equipment then? No company resources at all. Cool?" "How can you prove you didn't use our stuff? We'll have to talk about this more." There was more and the gist of that was basically "we pay you a salary so you don't have to do that stuff."
Personally I feel like building a following and an audience would only be beneficial to the company but I feel more like secret property now after that conversion and it's making me a little frustrated. Anyone else who is salaried with a company able to do side work, market themselves, sell prints, have a website etc? How should that work?
They have to prove that you did use their stuff, not the other way around.
But a lot of contracts (not just photography ones) will have a clause about not working second jobs without permission.
My gut feeling here is that artistic photography - landscapes etc would be fine but more mundane stuff like portrait photography and certainly anything that overlaps with what you do at work would be questionable.
But obviously look at your contract.