Infosys may fire employees caught moonlighting, asks everyone to read employment contract
India Today
Amid the debate around moonlight or employees taking up a second job, one of the biggest IT companies in the country, Infosys, is warning its employees against the practice.
Many CEOs or top executives of Indian tech companies voiced their opinion against moonlighting, basically when an employee has financial earnings from a second job. Amid the debate around moonlight or employees taking up a second job, one of the biggest IT companies in the country, Infosys, is warning its employees against the practice.
In one of the recent emails sent by the HR department to employees, Infosys highlighted that all its employees must read their employment contract before taking up an alternative job. In fact, the company also warned employees of termination if they take up a second job during or post working hours. The email noted, "Remember - NO TWO-TIMING - NO MOONLIGHTING (sic).” The company highlighted that any violation of clauses could lead to the termination of employment.
The email clearly stated that the company “strictly discourages dual employment”. It mentioned that dual employment is not permitted by its employee handbook and code of conduct. The email also reminded employees that the offer letter/employment contract clearly mentions that the “employee cannot take full-time or part-time employment in any business activity without the consent of Infosys.”
The email further stated that the shift to remote work has increased cases of moonlighting. This, the company believes, impacts productivity. “This can pose serious challenges to our business such as impact on productivity, job performance, risk of data and confidential information leakage, etc," the email noted.
A lot has been said about moonlighting in the last several weeks. Previously, Wipro boss Rishad Premji called moonlighting cheating and said he is totally against the policy. A couple of weeks ago, he said that the concept of a second job in addition to the regular job is “plain and simple” cheating. "There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry. This is cheating - plain and simple,” Premji noted in one of his tweets. Additionally, TCS COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam recently said that he is against moonlighting, calls the practice “an ethical issue”.
During an interview with Business Today recently, Subramaniam said, “moonlighting is an ethical issue, we need to inculcate the ethics and (idea of) being right and if we make something like this for short-term gains, in the long-term we will lose out. If you look at it as a war, it is a war. Business is all about operating within constraints. The talent war happened because of two important reasons from my perspective because during the pandemic 90 per cent of the enterprises did not hire. Few organisations like TCS, we went and honoured everything, we kept hiring."
On the contrary, Tech Mahindra CEO supports moonlighting and says he sees no problem with employees taking up a second job. “If you go by my word if someone is meeting the efficiency and productivity norms, and he wants to make some extra money as long as he is not committing fraud, he is not doing something against the values and ethics of his company, I have no problem. I would like to make it a policy. So, if you want to do it, cheers to that, but be open about it,” he said in a recent interview.
