Infosys has fired staff for moonlighting, but is open to gig work

India’s second largest IT services company Infosys has made it clear it does not support moonlighting, and has fired employees who were into dual employment over the past 12 months.

The company, however, did not divulge the exact number of people who were “let go” on account of moonlighting.

Last month, Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji revealed that some 300 employees were fired as the IT services company had no place for any employee who chose to work directly with rivals while being on Wipro payrolls.

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Put simply, moonlighting refers to employees taking up side gigs to work on more than one job at a time.

No room for moonlighting

On Thursday, during the Q2 earnings’ briefing, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said the company does not support dual employment.

“We do not support dual employment…if we found…in the past, employees doing blatant work in two specific companies where there is a confidentiality issue, we have let go of them in the last 12 months,” said Parekh.

Infosys falls amongst the companies that have taken a strong stance on moonlighting. It recently shot off a missive to its employees asserting that moonlighting is not permitted and warned that any violation of contract clauses will trigger disciplinary action “which could even lead to termination of employment”.

“No two timing, no moonlighting!” the company had said.

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The issue of moonlighting emerged as a big talking point after Rishad Premji flagged the issue. Premji had taken to Twitter to highlight the issue saying: “There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry. This is cheating, plain and simple.”

HCL Technologies too has weighed into the issue of moonlighting and has said that it does not approve of dual employment, although it hastened to add that the issue is not a major one within the company.

Gig projects allowed 

Parekh, nevertheless, made it clear that where gig opportunities in the external environment are concerned, Infosys supports the  aspirations of employees to learn beyond their work but only after obtaining the manager’s approval.

“We will support them to work on certain gig projects after the manager’s prior approval. We are also developing more comprehensive policies for that, while ensuring contractual and confidentiality commitments are fully respected. However, to be clear, we do not support dual employment,” he said.

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Infosys has set up a platform called Accelerate through which employees can take up other gigs apart from their main line of work. On average, Parekh said that about 4,000 people apply each quarter and about 600 are selected.