'An ethical issue': TCS says moonlighting is against company values, employment contract

TCS, India’s largest IT services company, took a dig on moonlighting on Monday and clarified that the practice of taking up multiple employments while working full-time with a company is against the core values of the IT giant.

Milind Lakkad, Chief Human Resources Officer of TCS, while speaking at the quarterly results press conference said, “Moonlighting we believe is an ethical issue and it is against our core values and culture.”

Similar views were expressed by TCS Chief Operating Officer N Ganapathy Subramaniam at the Business Today India@100 conference. He said, “Moonlighting is an ethical issue, we need to inculcate the ethics and the idea of being right and if we make something like this for short-term gains, in the long-term we will lose out.”

During the same event, Rajesh Gopinathan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of TCS said that employees are barred from working for any other organisation as part of the service contract.

Gopinathan said, “It is codified in our employment contract that they (employees) are not allowed to work for any other organisation.”

Business Today reviewed the employment contract and found the same.

The TCS employment contract reads, “Either during the period of your traineeship or during the period of your employment as a confirmed employee of TCSL, you are not permitted to undertake any other employment, business, assume any public or private office, honorary or remunerative, without the prior written permission of TCSL.”

Despite their negative stance on moonlighting, TCS CHRO noted that the company has not taken any action against employees who partake in this practice. He said, “No action has been taken against employees so far.”

It is worth noting that one of TCS’s competitors, IT services company Wipro, sacked 300 people over moonlighting recently. Rishad Premji, executive director of the company has time and again clarified his stance on moonlighting. In a tweet posted in August, Premji stressed, “moonlighting is cheating- plain and simple.”

Lakkad concluded by saying that the company will take into account all relevant dimensions before taking a final stance on the issue.

TCS employs over 6.16 lakh people and is one of the largest recruiters in the IT sector.

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