After software services company Wipro, its Bengaluru-based rival Infosys has also taken a stance on moonlighting. The company has warned its employees that dual employment is not permitted, and that any violation of the contract clauses will trigger disciplinary action “which could even lead to termination of employment”.
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“No two timing – no moonlighting!” India’s second largest IT services company said in a strong and firm message to employees on Monday. Moonlighting refers to full-time employees taking up side work or more than one job at a same time.
The debate on moonlighting came to the fore after food-tech company Swiggy allowed its employees to take up side gigs as long as they didn’t affect their full-time work at the company.
However, the IT and software services sector has taken a hard stance on moonlighting. Last month, Wipro chairman Rishad Premji flagged the issue, equating it to “cheating”. Premji tweeted: “There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry. This is cheating – plain and simple”.
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An e-mail query sent to Infosys by The Indian Express did not elicit a response.
“Moonlighting is a practice of working on a second job during the normal business hours/outside business hours. Infosys as a company strictly discourages dual employment,” according to the Infosys mailer. The company has also urged managers to sensitise their teams on dual employment and the “consequences” of moonlighting. “You are expected to immediately report any instances of moonlighting to your respective unit HR,” Infosys wrote in the e-mail communication, a copy of which has been reviewed by this newspaper.
A Pune-based union of IT sector employees has meanwhile condemned the “threatening email” sent by Infosys to its employees. The Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has argued that moonlighting “is not feasible” for a number of reasons. “IT employees are working more than nine hours a day without any overtime benefits. Would there be any energy or time left if an employee is working 10-12 hours a day,” NITES President Harpreet Singh Saluja said. Also, many IT companies have developed monitoring systems to measure employee’s productivity, he added.
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Terming such employee mailers on moonlighting as “illegal and unethical” and related contract clauses as arbitrary, Saluja said that “what the employees do outside working hours is their prerogative”.
