Moonlighting: Two sides of a coin

Moonlighting, which means holding multiple jobs in more than one organisation, is still a grey area legally. In my view, the employers can keep the practice in check by incorporating additional clauses in their respective employment contracts. This can prevent conflict of interest, performance slippage, employee fatigue, and stress resulting in decreased job engagement and quiet quitting.

This will also help organisations safeguard themselves against leakage of proprietary information, policies, and operating models, especially in cases of remote working.

On the other side, allowing employees to continue with a part-time job during their free time can benefit them. It can act as a retention tool if employees pursue side gigs that they find fulfilling on a personal level and acquire new skills that will meet the seasonal requirements of their existing company. Employees, however, should be prevented from misusing intellectual property, assets or resources of their primary employers for purposes other than their committed outcomes.

In the end, it will always boil down to the fundamentals of the organisation behaviour and human psychology ie, finding meaning and purpose at my job and for the company, I work for. Encourage your employees to have a shared vision and invest in developing a mindset of 'build' rather than 'transact'.

- Yeshasvini Ramaswamy is a CEO, Great Place to Work Institute India