Moonlighting - The new normal !

There is enough been spoken about Moonlighting. With some questioning organizations and how they (poorly) engage their employees. To others who are speaking about the ethical stand on this topic by the employee. Well, the debate appears to be heading in one direction - No firm wants 'such' resources to be associated with their organization.

To be fair, this is an area which needs more exploration. It is still early days and humans are known to be weary of change. From the beginning of time, our usual stand to change is to protect ourselves from the unknown - that's why we didn't go extinct as a race. And what has kept us alive in the modern day world - make the chain (Organization) stronger by removing the weak links (poor performing employees), protect our identity to ensure we don't stain them with fallacy, and most importantly, don't try new things till you have fully understood them - Just like moonlighting.

For organizations to stand out in this debate and take a side, they need to be braver in their outlook. Firms must no longer say what is right and what is not, instead they should define boundaries and the resources/employees chose how they want to associate themselves around these boundaries.

Take for example, health benefits. We have seen a lot of employees who look for such benefits in their offer to protect their personal interests (nothing wrong in it if you have weak government aid). If the same resource were to engage in another paying job in his 'free time', who should be protecting his/her health - the primary employer or the other paying job? What if firms take a rather brave stand on this - they could define a boundary to say that your health benefit is applicable only for the hours you support with us. Your well being outside of these work hours (your 'free time'), is no longer our concern since you made the choice to "Moonlight". What needs to be tested is that if the perceived safety net is taken away, does the behavior of the individual also evolve to a more binary decision.

As an organization, how do you think the workforce would now perceive you as an employer? This may have an impact in how the industry perceives an organization who would take this stance, but the idea is to be braver with your ability as a firm to draw more definitive lines of employment.

As an employee, would you be more prudent in your decision making about employment - choose one firm and give it your all OR perhaps be open to contract based opportunities that allows you to have more sources of incomes at the same time (without the other benefits an organization shells out).

Only time can answer the above, but there are strong indicators that the industry is poised to make a headway into contract staffing. With more GCC's coming to India, and the start-up ecosystem continuing to see strong tailwinds, India is surely poised for good times while other countries are grappling with a slowdown. With such good times ahead, a clear thought process by an employee and a stronger stance by employers is required to have a combined effort in building a global success story for the country - which will eventually benefit organizations and the workforce alike.

At Meraki, we are working on supporting the start-up ecosystem and GCC's alike, to help them build strong HR processes and employee value chain. By hiring a workforce with a clear mindset, and co-creating a strong employee value proposition, we believe in building something special. Follow us to know more about market insights, recruitment trends and job opportunities across our clientele.