Yesterday, India’s largest IT services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has announced its second-quarter results ending on September 30, 2022.
The company added 9,840 employees in the September quarter and the total headcount stood at 6,16,171. TCS hired 20,000 freshers in Q2, an increase of 33% over the previous quarter.
However, freshers hiring have slowed down. TCS hired 35,000 freshers in Q1FY23 which is down from 43,000 in Q1FY22.
The company has reported an Attrition of 21.5% for the second quarter ending on September 30, 2022, which is higher than the previous quarter of 19.7%
Commenting on Moonlighting, Milind Lakkad, Global Head HR, TCS said, “Moonlighting is an ethical issue and it’s against the company’s core values as well as culture.”
“Moonlighting we believe is an ethical issue and it’s against our TCS core values and culture in general. I’m not talking about the IT industry as a whole, I’m talking about TCS perspective. We have been communicating this to employees,” Lakkad added.
Lakkad further said, “TCS’s position on moonlighting was communicated to employees. No action has been taken so far against someone.”
Chief Executive Officer Rajesh Gopinathan also stated on moonlighting and said, “It was codified in the company’s employment contract that employees weren’t allowed to work for any other organization.”
Earlier, N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of Tata Consultancy Services said, “Moonlighting is an ethical issue, we need to inculcate the ethics and (idea of) being right and if we make something like this for short-term gains, in the long-term we will lose out.”
“If you look at it as a war, it is a war. Business is all about operating within constraints. The talent war happened because of two important reasons from my perspective during the pandemic 90 percent of the enterprises did not hire. Few organizations like TCS, we went and honoured everything, we kept hiring.” he added.
On the same concern India’s IT services provider company, Wipro has laid off 300 employees who were found working with its competitor companies at the same time employed with Wipro.
Earlier, Wipro chairman Rishad Premji also described moonlighting as “cheating plain and simple.” Other India’s Top IT giants including Infosys have criticized the moonlighting practices and have termed it as ‘unethical’ and ‘cheating’.
However, there have been a few companies such as Swiggy and Tech Mahindra that have come out in the favour of moonlighting.
What is Moonlighting?
Moonlighting means working for one organisation while taking extra jobs, usually without the employer’s knowledge. Moonlighting is side employment taken up at night or on the weekends.
Moonlighting became a concern during the pandemic when employees started working from home. There was suspicion that employees were using the privacy afforded by remote work to simultaneously do projects for others.
In India, as per the Labour Law, if you are fully employed, you cannot have your own business or even work elsewhere. Most private organizations also have policies that prohibit moonlighting and take strict action against employees who are taking up outside second jobs.
