Moonlighting - the new problem for employers

From the last 2 years, ever since the Covid19 pandemic gripped the entire world, most of the companies were forced to formulate Work from Home (WFH) model for their employees. This was initially assumed to be a short-term recourse. However, we aren’t yet fully back to office even after almost 2 years.

Information technology (IT) companies were among the first ones to experiment and allow their employees to work from home (considering the nature of technology at their hand and less interface with the team / clients required compared to other industries), the experiment has continued for quite long and been successful as well.

With the passage of such a considerably long time, certain companies are even contemplating work from home model permanent for at least some proportion of their workforce. This offers flexibility to employees and cost cutting and presumably more efficiency to the employer.

Every coin has two sides though.

This paradigm shift from work from office model to work from home has opened gateway for some professionals to take up side jobs / hustles – it may turn out to be a big headache for IT companies in form of loss of productivity and business. Many professionals have tasted blood during the last 2 years (with no physical monitoring / supervision over them under WFH model) and are very much inclined to work with other companies despite being a full employee of their current organizations. This is to make some extra money as well as getting more exposure with new business lines and prospective full time employers. This phenomenon is called 'Moonlighting'.

In one such incident, a professional was found working for seven companies in parallel – this multiplicity was detected upon verification of provident fund accounts of such professional. For freelancers, it is common to work with multiple clients or companies, but for full-time employees it is a rare case they are not permitted to work with multiple companies at a time.

Majority of IT professionals (who are full-time employees with any company) are taking up side hustles unofficially as such professionals will agree to commit their full time to work for their current organization only. Small time players are luring IT professionals with such extra workload without engaging them full time and mostly saving on welfare benefits applicable for full time engagements.

It may be a tough nut to crack and find out all the employees who are unofficially working for other companies due to the absence of a uniform and centralized database for employees in India. As of now, tax filings and provident fund accounts are primary sources to verify other sources of incomes of employees to figure out their unofficial work commitments.

To elude such kinds of practices, companies need to come up with and adopt flexible work models to accommodate employees to explore diversified opportunities and work with other companies or clients as well. The future workforce will be keen to work with companies that offer flexible work models as next-generation may not prefer to sit in offices for defined timings rather, they prefer to work as per their schedules and commitments.

Future may be fair to the companies that will adopt flexible and hybrid work models and only such companies will thrive in the business and in the retention of a talented workforce. At the same time, the professionals must also introspect and see such multiple engagements from health, ethics, confidentiality and other perspectives.

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Source : The Times of India