Impact of ‘Moonlighting’ on Employee Retention and Talent Acquisition practices in HR
Authors: - Ritika Surin , - Seema Ghanghas 
Published: June 2023

There has recently been a surge on the debate of the concept of Moonlighting being ethical or unethical or whether the constitution deems it illegal or not. Moonlighting simply emphasizes upon the fact where individuals may work on multiply jobs to enhance their sources of income.

With the term ‘Moonlighting’ has becoming popular nowadays and catching eyes - companies are framing strict policies around moonlighting, and many top company owners have given out strong opinions and perspectives on moonlighting by their employees. It has become a critical topic of discussion for companies and employees and their managers alike.

On August 20, Wipro’s executive chairman Rishad Premji kicked off the ongoing controversy over moonlighting stating that taking up more than one job at a time – will be termed as “cheating, plain and simple”. He told the Economic Times newspaper that the company has since sacked 300 employees who were found to be working for its competitors on the side.

Netizens took up this event to be that of a drastic measure, with some demanding clear explanations for the same.

In contrast to this, other prominent organization leads had a completely different thought on the same agenda with CP Gurnani, CEO of Tech Mahindra responding with straightforward support of moonlighting if it benefits his employees in the long run. He also emphasized on the need for changing and adopting with the recent trends.

This has further led us to ask the primary question of whether Moonlighting should be a ‘fireable’ offence and how the Talent Acquisition and HR management team can deal with this in lieu of Employee Retention and maintaining Talent within their organization. Talent management and employee retention are prone to getting negatively impacted in case of sudden layoffs like these recent ones. Thus, the research conducted below aims to find out if and how the HR industry has been dealing with such a challenge which may pose for a serious threat to the organizations employee resources as well as other operational functionalities.

While the employees find nothing wrong with keeping a secondary job if they are managing and coping with it well. The employers are not so keen on supporting this view. Thus, with this study we will understand the different ways in which Moonlighting has affected HR practices and strategies as well as how employers and their managers can deal with this. We will also look at what the employees and new generation freshers think about this and thus deliver results which help HR managers and employers to understand the perspectives and needs of current job trends among employees and freshers.

To address some of the observations that I found out there has been a surge in the cases of moonlighting in the IT sectors of India, right after COVID, where the news headlines are highlighting the top companies, employees caught moonlighting and their mass firings. It has also been seen that India needs to accept this trend and learn to work alongside the same.

It was also viewed that HR managers and recruiters are finding ways to actively challenge moonlighting in Human Resources to benefit their organization by enhancing Employee retention practices and Talent Acquisition, followed by how Moonlighting impacts Employee Retention and Talent Acquisition in Human Resources.

To understand this study better we will also be circulating surveys in the form of questionnaires to two different groups of participants - Employees from various organizations and industries and secondly the managers of a few top organizations which are managing the talent acquisition departments in their respective companies.
The sample size is respondents - between the age groups of 18 to 25 and above, divided into further categories of ‘Student’, ‘Fresher’, ‘Employed’ and lastly the ‘Managers’.

This division of the sample of respondents is based on the idea that I would also like to understand the various reasons of why employees choose to moonlight in the first place. The study will also highlight individual mapped data on the challenges that TA team faces while assessing candidates during job interviews - with candidates having very conscious attitude towards job security following the abrupt layoffs within top companies in the IT infrastructure. We also address the ideas of whether the trend has been seen in only the IT sector or is equally impacting other industries as well, along with determining solutions for dealing with the challenge of moonlighting to make things easier and less stressful for both parties that is - the managers and the employees as well as the organization overall.

This study is aimed at understanding -

● Human resources
● Talent Acquisition and Employee Retention
● Moonlighting
● Difference between ‘Moonlighting’ and ‘Freelancing’
● Candidate expectations from jobs
● Organizational demands and expectations from job applicants
● Challenges faced by both parties: Talent Acquisition team and Job aspirants.
● Perspectives of Talent Acquisition team and Job aspirants
● Key takeaways and observations within the field - IT/Consulting/Software