What is moonlighting?
Moonlighting is the ordinance of working at an extra job beyond ordinary working hours, usually without the awareness of the employer. Since the aspect of employment was primarily at night time or on weekends, it was related to moonlighting. The term increased popularity when employees in the US commenced pursuing a second job beyond their regular 9 to 5 work for extra revenue.
The corporations prefer law firms to rework job authorizations, find loopholes and execute regulations to deal with the matter of moonlighting.
Various law companies in India possess to recognize a strong bounce in firms reaching them to redraft employment approvals, find loopholes, and enforce restrictions to address the issue of moonlighting. Few companies are even inquiring about law firms to facilitate the procedure with reasonable statements and balances.
Moonlighting is the exercise of retaining a private job in improvement to one’s normal employment. India Inc. has been extremely allocated on the principle. Formerly, Wipro discharged 300 workers for having a second job.
“Several companies in the IT/ITeS sector have been promoting the provision to have their employment agreements and policies reconsidered, encompassing more transparency on their perspective against apparent moonlighting,” Anshul Prakash, partner, employment labor & privileges at Khaitan & Co.
The moot point, according to Prakash, was to determine that the intimacy responsibilities will extend beyond the work hours and to determine that exclusivity of the employment alliance and confidentiality obligations would not be restricted to work hours but for the whole service cycle. Any efforts that dispute such obligations would warrant correctional action against that employee.
In the prospective days, companies may begin drafting tighter approvals with obvious, defined limitations, another authority asserted. This comprises clarifying the work commitments and assuring that the integrity of work is not jeopardized.
Though, there are also litigations where employers prevail in reaching out to workers to understand the “gap” and address it.
Moonlighting has sparked off an active discussion in India Inc., with prime honchos appearing on multiple sides. Days after Wipro fired 300 workers for moonlighting, IT firms are now reaching out to valid authorities to help to re-evaluate and redraft containing employment contracts.
Even though the probable challenges around moonlighting will generate the necessity for companies to assure contracts are extra watertight and clear boundaries enacted.
IT companies are reaching out to legitimate experts to tackle the important headache aroused by the Covid-19 pandemic – moonlighting. The uproar around moonlighting is directly propelling companies, led by IT/ITeS and technology players, to pursue legal help to re-evaluate and redraft existing employment policies.
An assortment of law firms that we discussed, including Khaitan & Co, AZB & Partners, A&P Partners, and Sarvaank Associates, confessed that they have been discerning a sharp jump in companies reaching out to them pursuing help in redrafting employment agreements, figuring out loopholes, formulating contracts more vigorous, enforcing regulations, or even facilitating moonlighting with essential checks and balances.
The moonlighting will formulate the need for companies to ensure contracts are more watertight and clear boundaries laid down. “This is an elegant resistance as employee probabilities and technology move more rapidly than legislation,” he said.
Meanwhile, some companies are inquiring law firms to re-examine agreements in a manner that their interests are conserved while providing workers some flexibility as well.
Veena Gopalakrishnan, the partner, of employment law, at AZB & Partners, said the term ‘moonlighting’ inherently has a significance of clandestineness correlated with it and clients are looking to address that. The focus is, therefore, on assuring the regulations are spelled out and suitably required while permitting flexibility with the mandatory checks and balances.
Some companies are largely really noticing into their agreements and policies to verify if they can authorize workers to work extra jobs without actually negotiating the integrity of the job or company dividend of the organization.
“There is a people shift about taking up aspect gigs. Corporations are conscious that they can’t stop people beyond a point. Hence, they are trying to ring-fence their businesses by settling procedures in place,” said Priyanka Sinha, co-founder of law firm A&P Partners.
She has various multinationals reach out to understand what kind of policies can be formulated to confirm that employees treat their employment as an important job, summarize what amounts to the confrontation of income, and set out restrictive alliances from taking jobs with competitors during employment and ways to preserve themselves in terms of privacy.
“We have executed sessions for some prospects to analyze to their workers the flipside of extremely moonlighting,” said Singh. “In some possibilities, we have seen even HR teams performing outreach activities to understand gaps between company policies and people aspirations so that they can formulate win-win solutions.
