Moonlighting: Well, why not?

The writing is on the wall, but many businesses will take a while to recognise that the transition to working from home and gig-work is permanent

Wipro terminating 300 employees for moonlighting has sparked off a debate that’s likely to have legs. Last month, Swiggy took the diametrically opposite step when it formally allowed full-time employees to take up additional work.

Swiggy and Wipro are, of course, very different companies. It is relatively easy for Swiggy to define conflicts of interest (CoI) and productivity. Hence, Swiggy can adopt a pragmatic attitude and accept moonlighting so long as there’s no loss of productivity and no CoI.

Wipro would have thought through the contractual nitty-gritty, so let’s not get into that. This is more about industry (not just