Indian information technology (IT) major Tata Consultancy Service has recently said that moonlighting is an ‘ethical issue’. Moonlighting, or the practice of secretly working a second job, has become an increasingly divisive topic in the Indian IT sector. With a huge manpower crunch in the industry, rising attrition rates, and the ability to work from home, the issue of moonlighting has been receiving increased attention.
While some companies have taken strict action against the practice, TCS Chief Human Resources Officer Milind Lakkad said that the company did not penalise its moonlighting employees but clarified that under its service contract, employees are barred from working in other organisations.
CP Gurnani, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tech Mahindra, said that moonlighting was alright as long as employees managed to keep up their efficiency and productivity. Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India, also expressed that hybrid work structures can be used to accommodate workers to manage moonlighting.
But companies like Wipro, Infosys, and IBM have spoken strongly against the practice. Wipro, in particular, recently laid off 300 employees for moonlighting. Infosys has warned its employees of termination in case they’re found moonlighting. IBM managing director for India and South Asia, Sandip Patel said that the practice was not ethically right.
Others like Zoho, however, are far more permissive. As long as an employee takes consent from seniors in order to avoid conflict of interest and complications, they can work outside of the company’s work hours. Even former Infosys director TV Mohandas Pai said that what an employee does outside of their work hours should not concern any employer.
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Others have also questioned the claims of IT companies of moonlighting is an ethical problem. “I understand that there may be a conflict of interest or data protection issues. However, it’s unclear if this causes inefficiency for the industry as a whole since the employee's output is showing up somewhere. Also, except for data/interest issue, how is it an ethical problem?” Indian economist and writer Sandeep Sanyal said.
The Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar also weighed in on the issue. Chandrasekhar said that captive work models do not work and companies should not try to chain employees down to one job. “So, the efforts of companies that want to pin their employees down and say that you should not work on your own start-up are doomed to fail,” he said at the annual Public Affairs Forum of India.
Many in the industry frown at the hypocrisy especially when some of India’s biggest tech companies came out of moonlighting.
“Going back to history, moonlighting is not a new thing. Infosys founder Narayan Murthy was working with Patni Computer Systems when he founded Infosys. At the same time, if you'll go with start-ups, Flipkart was founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal while they were working for Amazon. Freshdesk, which got listed on Nasdaq last year, was founded by Girish Mathrubootham while he was working for Zoho Corporation,” said Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) to Business Today.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
