Moonlighting: After Wipro, Infosys too opposes moonlighting!

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Moonlighting: After Wipro, Infosys too opposes moonlighting!
Moonlighting करने पर Job से भी निकाला जा सकता है

Moonlighting refers to pursuing more than one job at a time outside normal business hours of the primary job, under certain conditions.

The moonlighting policy gained popularity amid remote work culture during the two years of the pandemic as it allowed many employees to pursue other side projects easily

A survey by Kotak Institutional Equities of 400 IT/ITeS employees in July revealed that 65 percent of respondents either were engaged in part-time opportunities during work-from-home (WFH) or knew a colleague who was.

The practice of moonlighting has been a cause for concern for IT companies, as they continue to struggle with increased attrition and face a tough business environment.

Infosys warned employees moonlighting could lead to termination in an email sent on September 12

"Remember - NO TWO-TIMING - NO MOONLIGHTING (sic)," the email sent by HR reads.

The email states it “strictly discourages dual employment”, and defines moonlighting as a practice of working on a second job during or outside of regular business hours.

The company said dual employment is not permitted by its employee handbook and code of conduct.

The offer letter, too, it said, states that the employee cannot take full-time or part-time employment in any business activity without the consent of Infosys.

Infosys said any violation of clauses could even lead to the termination of employment.

It added that the shift to remote work has seen an uptick in moonlighting. The email said it has become easier, especially for IT employees, to hold a second job without their primary employer knowing. “This can pose serious challenges to our business such as impact on productivity, job performance, risk of data and confidential information leakage, etc," it read.

Employees in managerial and senior consultant levels, however, did not receive the mail

Company is encouraging employees to do internal gigs, if they have the time and interest to do so, beyond their regular work. “We created a platform called Accelerate”

When it was initially envisaged a few years back, it was to keep the bench people occupied. But now, Accelerate is used for our internal gigs and during the last two years we are rewarding people doing internal gigs,” he said.

For instance, Blackstone Group-controlled tech firm Mphasis, which employs more than 36,000 people, said it was keeping a hawk-eye on employees to deter offenders

Last month, Wipro’s executive chairman, Rishad Premji, labelled moonlighting as “cheating", sparking a debate and bringing the long-festering issue into the limelight

At an industry event N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, chief operating officer of Tata Consultancy Services, said employees need to be on the ethical side and moonlighting will not work out in the long run

The IT services companies’ response to moonlighting is in contrast to how some new age Indian companies treat moonlighting. Swiggy recently announced that its employees could take up other gigs as long as it does not affect their productivity at the food delivery venture, and was done outside office hours.

Former Infosys director and Aarin Capital co-founder TV Mohandas Pai had earlier told Moneycontrol that employees are bound by an employment agreement and its terms, but apart from that, are free to do what they want as long as they are not using company’s IP, its assets or anything else.

Citing clauses of contract will not help Infosys in the court of law as the clauses are included arbitrarily," said Harpreet Singh Saluja, President, Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES)

He added that IT companies have developed monitoring systems to measure employee’s productivity. "Employees have contract to work with Infosys for 9 hours only. What the employees do outside working hours is their prerogative," said Saluja.