🧐 Moonlighting: A Trillion Dollar Opportunity for India?
Much has been debated about moonlighting and work-life balance in the last few days. Here's our take on this topic and its economic benefits.
One of the biggest problems that the regular Indian working class is currently facing is: running out of salary.
80% of Indians exhaust their salaries before the month ends.
34% of them run out of money by the middle of the month itself.
Even 60% of people earning more than Rs. 1 lakh per month feel that their salaries are not enough to cover their expenses.
So, savings are essentially dead. Which poses serious questions about our generation's future.
What's the solution to this you ask?
Moonlighting or as the cool crowd likes to call it side hustles.
🌜 The Debate Over Moonlighting
Now, the idea of moonlighting or side hustle is not new at all.
Fun Fact: The word moonlighting is used to describe a second job because most people did these jobs during the night after their day job was over.
People have been freelancing, taking tuitions on the side or taking up other such gigs to supplement their income since forever.
But the current hardcore work culture has raised a lot of questions about this practice.
And the recent debate about moonlighting has stemmed from an announcement by Swiggy.
Swiggy has become one of the first Indian companies to officially allow their employees to take on a second job.
📜 How Swiggy's Policy Works
This industry-first move by Swiggy comes with some terms and conditions.
The company has divided the type of side hustles into two parts:
Jobs featured in List A require technical know-how.
Jobs featured in List B come under the category of hobbies.
So, if you are a techie at Swiggy that does photography part-time your side hustle would come under List B. But if you are helping another company develop their tech, your job would come under List A.
Employees will have to come clean about their side hustle if they come under List A and get approval from management.
Sounds good, right?
You no longer have to hide your side hustle from your company and worry about them accidentally finding out.
But not everybody is happy.
Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji called moonlighting “cheating”, while TCS COO called it an “ethical issue”.
So, is moonlighting wrong?
Legally, it is in a grey area. It isn’t against the law, but if your contract has specific clauses that prevent you from working elsewhere, moonlighting could get you in trouble.
So, why are employers so divided about this topic?
An employee’s free time is their free time. Shouldn’t they be free to do as they please during these hours?
Well, yes. But the current work culture demands more from their employees.
An ILO study has revealed that Indians are among the most overworked employees globally.
India has the fifth-longest work week in the world, extending to 48 hours (China’s workweek is 46 hours, while the US’ is 36 hours).
Salaried men work 53 hours per week on average, while women spend 39 hours.
That's because employers have super high expectations from employees.
So, many employers could be worried that if their employees take up another side hustle, they won’t put in as many hours for their day job.
A side hustle could also leave employees tired and unproductive.
Another concern, and a more valid one, could be that employees could leak valuable data about their job to other companies that they are working for.
Enough with the problems. Let’s see probable solutions.
💡 How A Moonlighting Policy Could Solve Things
Most employees are taking up side hustles because they desperately want more money. So, chances of them slacking on their day job are low, as they don't want to risk losing it.
Also, if employers are worried about employees not putting in extra effort, they could just introduce an overtime work policy, this would solve the moonlighting issue and the productivity problem in one go.
Expecting employees to put in 18 hours of work for 8 hours of pay isn't justified.
And studies have shown that employees with side gigs usually are more productive because they are in a better mood. So, that's another problem solved.
As for the confidentiality issue, embracing a moonlighting policy like Swiggy could easily solve that problem.
Employers could approve or disapprove of potential side gigs. This would also help build trust with employees.
Moreover, tracking employees' side hustles could also alert management about employees that are more ambitious and could give them additional projects (for extra pay, of course).
Because like it or not, moonlighting isn't going to stop.
You see, 62% of Gen Z workers in India and 51% of millennial workers in India are already working more than one job.
This is much higher than the global average of 43% Gen Z and 32% millennials.
So, wouldn’t it be better if employers just embrace moonlighting?
Especially because moonlighting can immensely help our economy as well.
💸 How Moonlighting Could Benefit the Economy
India is facing a shortage of skilled workers, particularly tech workers.
Moonlighting could help solve this deficit.
Also, moonlighting has helped the UK earn 346 billion pounds, and the US earn $1.4 trillion.
So, promoting side hustles could also boost our economic growth.
However, just introducing moonlighting policies and saying that side gigs are acceptable won't help.
Because employers could easily discriminate against employees who openly state that they have a second job.
We need to promote a work environment and a mindset where working second jobs in your free time is acceptable.
However, that is not possible till the time employers want to have exclusive rights on their employees and want them to dedicate all of their time to one company only.
That's our two cents on moonlighting, but we could be wrong. Let us know what you think about moonlighting. Is it ethical or not?
⚡ In a line: Whether employees should hold a second job or not has become a very hotly debated topics due to concerns about employee productivity and confidentiality, but allowing side hustles could have immense benefits for our economy and reduce skilled workers’ shortage.
💡 Quick question: Do you hold more than one job or have any other side hustles?
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