Moonlighting is conflict of interest, says IBM

IBM informs its employees that they cannot engage in a second job or gig in any capacity as it is against the company contract.  

“A second job could be full time part time or contractual in nature but at its core is a failure to comply with employment obligations and a potential conflict of interest with IBM’s interest,” said a note from Sandip Patel, India and South Asia head of IBM to employees.  

IBM’s message to its workforce comes on the back of IT sector coming up with ways to check whether their manpower are working on the sly. 

So far, Infosys is the first among its peers to acknowledge the gig workforce and is ready to let them work for external jobs and projects. The company is setting up a human resources team, comprising delivery and legal experts who will chalk out policies to this new initiative a success. However, the company said it won’t accept moonlighting.  

Recently, Wipro’s executive chairman Rishad Premji labelled the moonlighting trend as “cheating”, sparking a debate and bringing the long-festering issue into the limelight. The company has fired 300 employees who were caught moonlighting for rivals. 

The tech firm’s views on moonlighting mirror that of TCS which called out the “ethical issue” of the practice. 

HCL echoed its rivals. “Dual Employment while working for HCLTech we don’t approve of that. Everybody who is signing up to work for HCLTech is signing up a contract which requires exclusivity, has requirements around confidentiality and non-solicitation, non-compete, those provisions which are there,” said Ramachandran Sundararajan, Chief People Officer of HCL Tech in the firm’s quarterly results.