Moonlighting: Second job can be a choice if no conflict of interest is involved

The term moonlighting has been in the news lately with some large tech firms leading the way in terms of terminating the employment of hundreds of such ‘moonlighters’ and a host of other IT companies following suit. Moonlighting or a ‘side hustle’ as the millennials call it is to “have a second job, typically secretly and at night, in addition to one’s regular employment.” This is the pre-COVID definition where working from home was the exception and not the norm. The advent of COVID and the entire work from home culture has changed the way we work. Using software like Zoom has become second nature to us. Gone are the days of communicating with US clients using Skype or some virtual calling system which required you to be in office at odd hours. Technology has made the work from home or Work From Home (WFH) revolution a reality. Every good story has a Vikram and a Vedha – positive and negative,  and working from home is no exception. In today’s day and age when it takes 1 to 3 hours to reach work (and the same time if not more back – just ask the average resident of Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru etc.) working from home is a boon that employees welcomed initially. Who wouldn’t want to spend more time with family rather than navigating potholes and traffic snarls? Productivity went up as people could spend 2-6 hours depending on travel time more efficiently. However one cannot replace the effectiveness of a face-to-face meeting with a Zoom call for all meetings. The seriousness levels are different when it comes to working from home versus from the office. Employee engagement cannot happen virtually at the same level no matter how developed the software. We are social animals and need the sound, the coffee machine conversations to keep us going – none of which is possible from WFH. From an employer’s perspective monitoring the work done and measuring employee productivity became a nightmare. Given the free time that employees have and the fact that monitoring them was not possible - led them to do a little jugaad at the side – taking up another job opportunity to earn that much extra. Moonlighting – right or wrong? The question of Moonlighting – ethics aside – is an interesting one hence it is the source of some intense debate. There are many who believe that ‘as long as the work is getting done on time and of the required standard, then whether the employee spends time on Netflix or working another project doesn’t matter’. Whereas there are those that believe that people working on sensitive data should be just that - sensitive to the fact that the data is the new oil, whoever has more data on consumers is the king today and since the employer has no control on what the employee does at home, it becomes very difficult to prevent the leakage of this data. Scenario in India: A person with a similar set of jobs could give rise to concerns about a violation of confidentiality and security because many employers include such restrictions in their employment agreements in addition to prohibitions against holding down multiple jobs. Moonlighting could be considered unethical if an employee’s contract calls for non-compete and single employment, which is the situation with a majority of conventional employment contracts. However, if the employment contracts do not have such a clause or provide relaxations then it is within the ambit of the employee agreement. Also, Employers may discourage their employees from moonlighting out of concerns on conflicts of interest, impact on primary job performance, misuse of company resources, absenteeism, poor attentiveness, or fatigue etc. Having a second job should be a choice. If there is no conflict of interest with the current employment and if working for a completely unrelated industry, then it may help provide someone with much needed additional income, unless it affects the efficiency and integrity of employees’ primary work duty. It is crucial for employees to carefully check their employment contract with their principal job to ensure compliance with any policies that specifically prevent them from moonlighting and take consensus from the company to do so. The author is the COO Epsilon Money Mart.  Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.