TCS Makes Major Statement On Moonlighting. What Employees Should Know

New Delhi: Amid the raging debate on moonlighting with Indian IT industry , Tata Consultancy Services Ltd made a strong statement against the practice and said it was against the company’s “core values and culture”. TCS’s statement comes weeks after Infosys sacked 300 employees working for rival firms while drawing full-time salaries at the software firm.Also Read – What is Productivity Paranoia — Coined by Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Amid Moonlighting Debate?

WHAT TCS SAID ON MOONLIGHTING

Milind Lakkad, Chief HR Office at TCS, said employees have been communicated about the company’s policy against moonlighting. “Moonlighting we believe is an ethical issue and it’s against our TCS core values and culture in general. I am not talking about IT industry as a whole, I am talking about TCS perspective. We have been communicating this to employees,” Lakkad said according to a report by Mint.

Chief Executive Rajesh Gopinathan said, “It is codified in our employment contract that you are not allowed to work for another employer.”

INDIAN IT INDUSTRY ON MOONLIGHTING

Amid the brouhaha over moonlighting in India, many IT companies including Infosys, cloud major IBM, Wipro made it clear that the practice is not ethical and they do not promote such behaviour at workplace.

Infosys: Infosys has warned employees against moonlighting, saying that involvement in such practice can result in “disciplinary action including termination of employment”. “No two-timing, no moonlighting”, the company said in an internal memo, adding that it “strictly discourages dual employment”.

Wipro: Wipro Chairman Azim Premji recently 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,” he emphasised.

IBM India: Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India, said that the company’s position is exactly that of the overall industry in the country. “All of our workers when they are employed, they sign an agreement which says that they are going to be working full-time for IBM. So moonlighting is not ethically right for them to get into,” Patel said.

Shrijay Sheth, Founder, Legalwiz.in, told IANS that the issue around moonlighting is beyond just having multiple jobs. “It is a larger issue that employers face around work ethics, integrity, and priorities. With work from home being mainstream now, moonlighting is a common secondary revenue stream. While many are ok with employees being involved in alternative activities in extended work hours, some moonlighters are actually double dipping,” Sheth elaborated.

There are data-sharing and intellectual property (IP) stealing fears too. Most of the new-age businesses are IP, know-how and data driven, and there is always a risk of data and knowledge drain, more specifically when the moonlighting is done for competing companies.

“Many businesses rightly expect their employees to be the advocates of their brand. Many even do not claim employment credentials on their public social profiles, simply because they run a competing ‘freelance’ business in the same domain. It is becoming highly common in ITES and other services industries,” Sheth said.