Moonlighting and implementing policies that prevent it

By Ritu Tiwari on June 6, 2014

Moonlighting is defined as an employee’s tendency to work with two different companies at the same time. To work in both the companies, they divide their work on the basis of day and night (Banerjee, 2012). In today’s fading economy most of the employees are looking for moonlighting for:

  1. More income,
  2. Test a job in different profile,
  3. Lack of motivation and recognition by the employer,
  4. Spare time for newly start-up business.

Types of moonlighting

First of all we need to discuss different types of moonlighting. Banerjee, 2012 discussed about Moonlighting, he said that moonlighting is divided into four different moons, which are known as:

  1. Blue moon,
  2. Quarter moon,
  3. Half-moon and
  4. Full moon.

Blue moonlighting

Most of the organizations have different performance appraisal procedures. They implemented them according to annually or half yearly. Some of the employees are satisfied with their increment and some of them are not. Employees who are not satisfied with their increment, start looking for additional jobs for increased pay but they hardly get any positive result out of their efforts. Such type of effort is called as blue moon (Banerjee, 2012).

Quarter moonlighting

When an employee is not satisfied with their current salary and they search a part time job in which they work after their regular job for an additional income. This is known as quarter moonlighting (Banerjee, 2012).

Half moonlighting

Many employees imagine a luxurious life where they tend to spend more than what they earn. They also tend to save a sufficient amount of money for future, or to start business. Such type of employee spends 50% of their time working in a part time job; their second job, rather than their regular job (Banerjee, 2012). This type of moonlighting is called half moonlighting.

Full moonlighting

Many people are also influenced by factors like family, friends, culture, and society. Such factors build mental pressure on individual’s mind about the difference in their earning capacity and they tend to look for alternate source of income. Such pressure forces them to earn extra pay from a different source by starting their own business or a full time secondary job. This is called full moonlighting (Banerjee, 2012).

Advantages and disadvantages of moonlighting

Employee moonlighting has many advantages and disadvantages for both the employee and the employer. Employers need to prevent employee moonlighting because it distresses the performance of their organization (PATRICIA LOTICH 2010). Due to moonlighting the number of employee sick leaves taken increases and also starts stealing confidential information (PATRICIA LOTICH 2010).

Banerjee, 2012, has discussed that moonlighting has positive and negative effects on employee as well as the employer. According to the author moonlighting improves the skills of employee who is working in two different companies at a time. Thus, moonlighting has a progressive aspect that the employer can utilize and such employees have increased percentage of retention. But it can be harmful as well because employee tends to exploit resources for their secondary jobs.

Moonlighting can be beneficial for employees as they earn increased income, motivation, status and their satisfaction with their current job increases.

Implementing policies to avoid moonlighting

We studied that moonlighting has advantages as well as disadvantages which can be seen as positive and negative aspect in different situations. Organizations should understand the reason behind moonlighting and what makes them satisfied with their present job so that they may avoid moonlight? (PATRICIA LOTICH 2010). Different HR policies like performance appraisal, awards, incentives etc. can help an organization to increase job satisfaction among employees. These techniques increase the motivation of employees towards their work and provide monetary benefits. Performance appraisal can avoid moonlighting by providing proper recognition to employees and also benefit them with monetary benefits. Award is another technique which can be used by employer to motivate employees to work hard. Higher pay and recognition can increase the employee’s status among friends and family which improves their job satisfaction. Job rotation is another policy which can used to improve skills of an employee. Job rotation can offer an opportunity to the employee to experience different job profiles within the same organization.

References

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