Moonlighting Vs Gig Economy

There are various debates going on the increasing Moonlighting Vs Gig Economy. It is a fact that more than one in four employees has a side job. Whether they like it or not, company leaders need to recognize that their full-time employees might want side hustles or moonlight gigs.

Moonlighting is the concept of having a second job that you work outside your full-time job, typically at night. It can be another full-time job or a supplementary part-time job. It is a job that is just a source of making money and as the dictum goes, the more the merrier. There are employees finding a variety of ploys not to return to physical work and how many of them have a genuine issue, is now open to question.

Moonlighting has led to an increase in the number of Start-ups across the globe. Technology and software companies in India are divided on whether to allow their employees to moonlight for other companies while still being on their payrolls or not.

The companies opposing the Moonlighting are growing threat and competition. Recently Wipro terminated the services of 300 staff members who it discovered were working for its competitors while still being on the company’s payroll. If we go by Wipro’s action and Infosys’s pronouncements, they mean business. It has to start with a full on office presence as in pre-Covid-19 days.

The movement of the employees should be completely controlled by the employer. An undertaking of single employment and well thought out Code of Conduct has to be put into operation. The protocols of separation if caught moonlighting should be legally thought out and executed in that fashion.

Infosys had sent a strong and firm message to its employees recently. Dual employment is not permitted by any company rule and can lead only to termination. Employees have thrown the code of conduct to the winds.

But now the question arises - are work, workplace and rules of work being de-facto transformed? Is this the future of work? No one knows which way the tide will turn, for sure it started with lust for money and lack of integrity, credibility and loyalty. Does business ethic not apply to the employees?

An all-comprehensive anti-moonlighting software might be an answer. It would become as effective as we make it. Do the IT business enterprises have the will to stall moonlighting? Or will it become the future of work? Depending on which way you look at it!

S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA