Work from office, fewer IT jobs kill moonlighting spirit

The change also marks a reversal of fortunes in the tech sector, where it had become a serious concern during the peak of the pandemic-fuelled boom. IT firms fretted that the trend would affect productivity, create conflicts of interest and cause data breaches.

“There is a 70% drop in moonlighting instances. We cannot say it is completely absent, but asking employees to come at least three days a week to the office has reduced these cases,” said a top executive at one of India’s top five IT services companies, which had sacked employees found moonlighting.

The demand for digital skills soared following the pandemic outbreak, with employees working from home often picking up side projects. Moonlighters had joined mostly during a hiring frenzy without the usual induction processes. At the time, IBM had called out the “conflict of interest”, Wipro Ltd executive chairman Rishad Premji termed it “cheating”, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Ltd noted the “ethical issue” of staff taking assignments keeping employers in the dark. While Infosys Ltd had said it was ready to let staff work on external projects with its knowledge, it had refused to accept moonlighting.

“There is a 70-80% drop in moonlighting instances now than a year ago. The lack of projects that need software developers, website designers and UX skillsets have led to the drop in instances,” said Prasadh M.S., head of workforce research and analytics at staffing company Xpheno. Spokespeople for TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Tech Mahindra did not respond to Mint’s queries.

Sunil Chemmankotil, chief executive of staffing firm TeamLease Digital, said the fall in moonlighting underlines that it is “no longer a candidate’s market”. “There is a 90% drop in the moonlighting cases in the IT sector, and employees do not want to jeopardize their careers with no offers in hand,” the CEO added.

Some human-resource experts say moonlighting has given way to gig work, which is more organized. “While moonlighting with many companies is not very prevalent anymore, there is a rise in gig workforce wherein clients insist checks and balances, data confidentiality by asking the employee to come to the office for few hours a week,” said Vijay Sivaram, CEO, Quess IT Staffing. Sivaram added that while milestone-based payments are common in this form of work, typically, candidates between jobs are the first to take up these projects.

However, others believe that moonlighting has not declined; merely its reporting has gone down.

“There is increased transparency and acceptance in a company if the employee declares that one is pursuing another opportunity which is not in direct conflict with the job role. Firms have created more space now for such demands of employees,” said a tech executive who did not want to be named.

Updated: 22 Sep 2023, 12:19 AM IST