BBC reports about a generation of "side hustlers", working on own projects alongside their fulltime job. Sometimes this leads to a new career, but what help does the governemts around the world offer for someone who wants to make a career of a "side-hustle"?

For the last two decades, full-time workers with permanent jobs in Sweden have had the right to take a six-month leave of absence to launch a company (or alternatively, to study or to look after a relative). Bosses can only say no if there are crucial operational reasons they can’t manage without a staff member, or if the new business is viewed as direct competition. Employees are expected to be able to return in the same position as previously. BBC reporter Maddy Savage asks whether this should also be tried in the UK.

“To my knowledge this is the only country that offers a legally-enshrined right to take a leave of absence for entrepreneurship,” explains Claire Ingram Bogusz, apost-doctoral researcher in entrepreneurship and information systems at House of Innovation, SSE.

“You meet a lot of people who’ve got permission from their employer to start up something in such a way that it doesn’t interfere with their employment, and once that business is up and running, then they take a leave of absence to see if they can actually make a go of it,” she says.

Photo by Lost Co on Unsplash

Max Friberg, SSE alumni, is also interviewed in the radio program. He chose to take a leave of absence from a global consulting firm rather than quit his job, even though he had been working on the project in his spare time for over a year and says he was confident his idea would take off. 

“I had this fantastic job. I had been working very hard throughout university to get it and while at the job to keep it and to advance,” he explains. “I was questioning myself: ‘am I doing something crazy?’ But feeling that I could go back took quite a bit out of that scariness.”

Max Friberg started his company at the SSE Business Lab, which is part of the SSE House of Innovation.  

To read the BBC article, click here, and to listen to the radio clip, click here.

For more information regarding House of Innovation, see www.hhs.se/houseofinnovation, or contact Jakob Rudberg