India’s IT Major, Tech Mahindra has said that it is working on a policy that will allow moonlighting for its employees.
C P Gurnani, CEO and MD said that Tech Mahindra is a digital company and not a legacy firm. We are working on a policy that will allow our employees to take gig work with permission before taking a side job.
He further said, “Between legacy and digital, we are a digital company. But of course, our, intent is always with boundaries and that does not change,” said Gurnani in a select press briefing in Mumbai post Q2FY23 results.”
“We are working on a policy, but we operate in 90 countries and have to adhere to all the labour laws in these geographies. I am happy, if somebody is productive, is complying with all brand guidance, values, customer relationship guidance, and wants to do another job, we are fine. Just take permission and tell us what you are working on.” He added.
Tech Mahindra has added 5,877 new hires in Q2 FY23, down from 6,862 in Q1FY23 and 14,930 in Q2FY22. The total headcount stood at 163,912. The company’s Q1 total headcount stood at 158,035.
However, India’s second-largest IT service provider, Infosys fired a few employees in recent months earlier for moonlighting.
Recently while announcing Q2FY23 results CEO Salil Parekh said that Infosys is looking at developing comprehensive policies to support employees to take up external gig opportunities. “For gig opportunities in the external environment, we support the aspirations of our employees to learn beyond work.”
“We will support them to work on certain gig projects after the prior approval of the managers. We are also developing more comprehensive policies for that while also ensuring contractual and confidentiality commitments are fully respected. However, to be clear, we do not support dual employment.” He added.
Parikh further said,” Infosys’s internal platform called ‘Accelerate’ has anyway been enabling employees to take up internal projects and gig for several years now. “We’ve always encouraged our employees to have that mindset within the company,” he said, adding that about 4,000 employees apply for it in an average quarter, while 600 get selected.”
Earlier, Infosys said that moonlighting is not permitted according to the employees’ code of conduct of the company and described it with the taglines ‘No two-timing, no moonlighting’ and ‘No double lives.
In the month of September, Wipro laid off 300 employees who were found working with its competitor companies at the same time as employment with Wipro.
