Miscellaneous

There is ‘Working From Home’ and Working for More than One Boss.

Recently ‘moonlighting’ has become a hot topic in the IT industry. The IT giant, Wipro, recently fired 300 of its employees for moonlighting, while other big companies like IBM, TCS, Infosys, have raised concerns about their employees doing a side job after working hours. The debate over ‘moonlighting’ has raised divided opinions and lack of clarity, whether it is a moral, ethical or legal issue, or all of these; and, with inflation and problems with the economy, how workers are going to be able to keep up on just one salary. The core to the debate is whether your staff are simply helping another company – by designing a website or ensuring that the right software plug-ins are installed, etc, – or whether they are taking the proprietary information from their job and using that to assist their employer’s competitors. The debate has definitely triggered the need for robust due diligence mechanism, enforcement of a Business Code of Conduct, and internal investigations especially in the post-COVID times, when the corporates are facing challenges to monitor employee misconduct, the increasing risk of fraud, financial and reputational loss, and, of course, the legal implications of terminating employee contracts.