Bibeskæftigelse: Can an Employee Become an Influencer Alongside Their Day Job in Denmark?

The short answer

Yes — since 1 July 2023, Danish employees have had a general, statutory right to take on secondary employment (bibeskæftigelse) alongside their main job, and that generally covers an influencer side project too: sponsored posts, affiliate links, or your own small webshop on the side. The right isn't unconditional. Your employer can still say no if the work is genuinely incompatible with your job (Lov om ansættelsesbeviser og visse arbejdsvilkår § 7(2)), and your ordinary duty of loyalty applies unchanged alongside the new right — direct competition with your employer remains an absolute limit, no matter what the new law says about secondary employment in general.

Two separate questions that are easy to blend together

Most of the Academy's business-structure articles assume you're already independent — see employee or self-employed for that classification question itself. This article covers something different: you already have a full-time job somewhere, and the question is whether you're allowed to build an influencer side project alongside it. That's actually two separate legal questions that are easy to conflate:

• Do you have a right to take on secondary employment at all? — a question about § 7 of the Danish Employment Certificates Act, new since 2023.
• Is the specific secondary employment disloyal toward your employer? — a question about the ordinary, unwritten duty of loyalty, which existed long before the law and applies completely independently of it.

You can have the right under § 7 and still act disloyally — the law doesn't give you a free pass to compete with your employer. And, in the other direction, you can be fully, lawfully occupied with something that was never a problem, either before or after 2023. The two questions are answered separately below.

§ 7: the statutory right to secondary employment since 1 July 2023

Lov om ansættelsesbeviser og visse arbejdsvilkår (Law no. 501 of 16 May 2023), which took effect 1 July 2023 as Denmark's transposition of the EU's Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/1152, Article 9), gave Danish employees a general, statutory right to secondary employment for the first time. Before the law, many employment contracts could simply ban secondary employment outright — regardless of whether the specific activity was actually a problem for the employer. A contract can no longer lawfully do that.

The law is built in two parts:

Secondary employment isn't limited to “another job.” Case law (see below) shows it also covers an employee's own self-employed side business — exactly the structure most influencer side projects actually have, whether the income comes as B-indkomst (personal honorarium income) or through a registered sole proprietorship. See hobbyvirksomhed or enkeltmandsvirksomhed for the registration question itself, which is separate from this one.

The duty of loyalty is unchanged — competition is still an absolute limit

§ 7 changes nothing about the ordinary, unwritten duty of loyalty that follows from any employment relationship. As a starting point, you control your own free time, and having secondary employment alongside your job isn't disloyal in itself — but any form of competition with your employer is a disloyal act if it's capable of harming your employer's interests. The two sets of rules apply simultaneously and independently of each other: one gives you the right to start something, the other sets a limit on what it can be.

The concrete point for an influencer: the question isn't whether you're allowed to post sponsored content alongside your job at all — as a starting point, you are, per § 7. The question is whether that content actually competes with your employer's own business, or draws on confidential knowledge from it.

Case law: where does the line actually fall?

Two rulings illustrate the two extremes clearly. Neither is specifically about an influencer, but both turn on exactly the assessment an employed influencer faces: is the side activity compatible with the job, or not?

Notice what the two cases actually show: it isn't having a self-employed side business itself that decides the outcome — both cases involved one. What decides it is whether the side business actually competes with the employer's business and genuinely harms its interests. Per Poul Schmith's own analysis, two years after the law took effect, no case has yet been decided directly under § 7 itself — both cases above were decided under the ordinary duty of loyalty, which existed before the law and is still the rule actually deciding cases like these.

Decision framework: is your influencer work compatible with your job?

IF your employer operates in a completely different industry from your content niche (e.g. you work in construction and create beauty content) → typically unproblematic, as long as it doesn't affect your attendance — compare the yarn-webshop case above.

IF your employer sells products or services you also review or promote as an influencer — or you work with your employer's direct competitors → high risk of a conflict of interest under § 7(2), and of a breach of loyalty — compare the security-company case above.

IF your content, directly or indirectly, draws on confidential knowledge from your job (client lists, unreleased products, internal figures) → incompatible under § 7(2), regardless of whether the industry otherwise matches.

IF you're a public-sector employee and your content could cast doubt on your impartiality in the role (e.g. as a teacher, nurse or caseworker) → § 7(2) explicitly names “the integrity of public administration” as its own, lawful ground for restriction.

What your employer can — and can't — do

• Can't: keep a blanket clause in your contract banning all secondary employment outright — that kind of clause is no longer valid under § 7(1) unless it's concretely justified by one of the exceptions in subsection 2.
• Can't: treat you worse — for example in promotions or task allocation — purely because you have secondary employment that's otherwise compatible with the job.
• Can: ask that a specific instance of secondary employment be assessed against subsection 2's four grounds, if there's a genuine, objective concern — not just general unease about you being visible online.
• Can: act if the specific activity genuinely harms the business — that's where the ordinary duty of loyalty comes in, entirely independent of § 7.

What about during your notice period?

The duty of loyalty applies in full for as long as your notice period runs — even if you've been placed on garden leave. Purely preparatory steps toward your own business or a new job are generally allowed, even during the notice period — for example, signing a lease for premises or buying equipment. What you can't do is actually operate the competing business while still employed, or actively try to poach your employer's clients or colleagues. If your secondary employment is already running and doesn't compete with your employer, a notice of termination doesn't itself change anything — it's only once you actively start something new and competing during the period that the duty of loyalty tightens noticeably.

Worked example (hypothetical)

The figures below are a made-up example to illustrate the assessment itself — not a real Make Influence customer case.

An employee works 37 hours a week at a retail chain and posts sponsored interior-design content in their free time — typically 6-8 hours a week, evenings and weekends, with no overlap with working hours. The side project generates roughly DKK 4,500 a month from affiliate links and the occasional paid collaboration. The employer doesn't sell interior products and isn't in conflict with the content. Under the decision framework above: no industry overlap, no attendance problem, no confidential knowledge involved — this sits close to the yarn-webshop case's profile, not the security-company case's. Had the same employee instead worked at a home-decor retailer and promoted a competing interior brand in the same content, the assessment would shift markedly toward the security-company end of the scale — even with identical hours and income.

Common mistakes

• Assuming an old contract clause banning all secondary employment still applies. It's invalid under § 7(1) unless it's concretely justified by one of the four exceptions.
• Conflating § 7's right to secondary employment with the duty of loyalty and assuming the law itself protects you from dismissal if the content actually competes with your employer.
• Assuming any side business is automatically disloyal — case law shows the opposite: the assessment is concrete, and a non-competing side business with no proven harm is typically protected.
• Not reading § 7(2)'s four exceptions if you're a public-sector employee or work in the same industry as your content niche — that's where the risk of a valid restriction is highest.

Make Influence's perspective

This is Make Influence's own operational experience, not a legal conclusion: most of the cases we hear about, where an employed influencer runs into trouble with their employer, aren't actually about having secondary employment at all — that's rarely what triggers a conflict. It's when the content directly overlaps with the employer's own business, or when the employer only discovers the side project because it's already become a problem, instead of it having been clarified early. Our recommendation for an employee with a growing side project: run the decision framework above yourself, before anyone asks you to — and if your side project grows to look like a real business, see also hobbyvirksomhed or enkeltmandsvirksomhed for when it needs to be registered.

FAQ

Does the right to secondary employment also apply if I'm a freelancer, not an employee?

No. § 7 of the Employment Certificates Act applies specifically to employees in an employment relationship. If you're an independent influencer with no full-time job on the side, this entire question is irrelevant to you — see instead employee or self-employed for your own classification.

Do I have to tell my employer about my influencer side project?

The law itself doesn't impose a duty to proactively disclose secondary employment. Many employment contracts still ask new hires to declare any side activities so the employer can assess compatibility early — that's a contractual practice, not a separate statutory requirement.

Does affiliate income and sponsored posts count as "secondary employment" the same way a second job would?

Yes. Case law (see the yarn-webshop case above) shows that secondary employment covers an employee's own self-employed side business — not only a formal second employment relationship.

What if my employer is a public authority?

§ 7(2) explicitly names "the integrity of public administration" as its own lawful ground for restricting a public-sector employee's secondary employment — relevant if your content could cast doubt on your impartiality in the role. No specific case law on this was found in this research.

Does my employer have to prove the side project actually harmed the business before acting?

Per the yarn-webshop case: yes, the assessment is concrete, and an alleged, hypothetical risk isn't enough — a genuine conflict of interest or demonstrable harm is required, unless one of § 7(2)'s four specific grounds is met.

What happens if my side project grows large enough to need a registered business?

That's a separate question from the right to have the secondary employment at all — see hobbyvirksomhed or enkeltmandsvirksomhed for when and how.

Is this the same question as a non-compete clause that applies after I leave the job?

No — this article covers while you're still employed. What a former employer can require after the employment ends is a separate question — see non-compete clauses after an influencer contract ends.

Should I always have a written agreement with my employer about my side project?

Not a legal requirement, but practically wise if there's any risk of overlap — see the general principles in what to put in an influencer contract for what a written agreement should generally clarify.