The glare on moonlighting: It needs creative solutions

Moonlighting has come into the public glare over the past two months, suggesting that IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) companies urgently need to address the issue head-on and realistically. First, delivery start-up Swiggy made headlines in August by announcing a formal “moonlighting policy” for its employees. Then late last month, Wipro sacked 300 employees for allegedly working secretly for competitors. Wipro’s Rishad Premji, who has been criticised by a section of IT sector employees for his actions, stoutly described the practice as “cheating”. This week, Tata Consultancy Services, the country’s largest IT services company described moonlighting as an “ethical issue” that went against the company’s core values. This flurry of news over a practice that comes with distinct negative connotations suggests that moonlighting is widespread and probably became endemic during the mass work-from-home routine imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The debate, with unequivocal comments on both sides, suggests that moonlighting is an issue of serious concern for the IT industry. More so because gig contracts are increasingly becoming the norm in this cost-conscious business. All of this calls for HR departments to rethink their policies and rework contracts to address the problem creatively.

There can be no two views that working for competitors is simply unethical and can be unambiguously described as a sackable offence. But as the protests from employees suggest, the fluid nature of the IT business demands that companies specify who their competitors are in the contracts. Second, it would be unrealistic of management to bar employees from taking up other paying jobs, provided they do not impinge on productivity or amount to conflict of interest. There should be little problem, for instance, for an IT professional to be earning income as a math tutor in her own time. Or a call centre professional working as a shop assistant in her free time. 

Over the past decade, most Silicon Valley majors have accepted the inevitable and moved to put in place fairly standard policies to tackle it. For one, instead of referring to the practice as “moonlighting,” which suggests illegality, US corporations refer to them more diplomatically as “side projects”. Most ask their employees to declare the side projects they are working on in their own time. The company then decides whether the employee can continue with the project or not. This is the policy that Swiggy has opted to follow in the interests of transparency. But terms such as “cheating” and “unethical” employed by senior executives in large IT companies suggest that most of them have decided on a no-toleration policy for the practice.   

Most, in fact, are hoping to stem the practice by compelling their employees to return to full-time office routines, by cutting the pay of those who continue to work from home, a move that may, paradoxically, exacerbate the moonlighting trend. A better solution may be to incentivise them to return to work. Google has done so by underwriting the purchase of a scooter as a transportation option for Bay area employees to get to work. That may be an expensive option but the underlying principle of using carrot rather than sticks may work better in tackling a problem that the IT biggies cannot wish away.