Hire Professional Forensics Investigators To Identify Moonlighting Employees
Overview: In light of the recent event, the aim of the blog is to make readers aware of moonlighting and its consequences. Most importantly, it will cover how to identify moonlighting employees so that organizations can take appropriate action.
The term ‘moonlighting’ caught the business world’s attention when Wipro sacked 300 employees working for its competitors and this term is roaming the news since then. To quote Wipro’s executive chairman, “moonlighting is a complete violation of integrity in its deepest forms”.
Not just Wipro, according to media reports, many IT firms stood against the concept of moonlighting. For instance, TCS termed moonlighting as unethical while IBM warned its employees about this latest trend a few days ago.
As a matter of course, organizations are increasingly hiring forensics firms to identify moonlighting employees and review their compliance.
Given the aftereffects of moonlighting, here we’ve covered the terminology ‘moonlighting’ and its consequences for employers and how digital forensics investigators play a crucial role in nobbing the moonlighters.
What Does Employee Moonlighting At Work Mean?
To put it in simple words, moonlighting is taking up a second job or multiple assignments apart from having a full-time job. Employees usually do it secretly with the sole motive to earn extra money by working for different companies outside of business hours.
Moonlighting has affected nearly all industries, however, IT firms and consultancy services are the worst impacted among all. Some companies have strict guidelines against this while some don’t consider it illegal.
Though there are diverse opinions regarding moonlighting, it’s certainly a serious matter that managers should be aware of. And, should seek professional help to identify moonlighting employees.
When Was The Concept Of Moonlighting Emerge?
The unfortunate event of the Covid-19 outbreak led many employees to look for multiple jobs to meet their financial deadlines or liabilities. However, recent research shows that even after things get normal, taking the advantage of work from home scenario, some employees continued to moonlight without the employer’s knowledge, creating real chaos at the company level.
Moonlighting- A Serious Threat For Employers
For the last couple of years, we’ve all seen an increase in the number of job portals and the availability of multiple options to earn more money. Having various options by their side, employees started moonlighting at work. Further, they have become less committed to their current employer.
Moonlighting creates primary concerns such as confidentiality breaches, leak of sensitive data, loss of productivity, etc for companies that would influence revenue generation. So, it becomes essential to identify moonlighting employees at work.
As a matter of fact, moonlighting puts a burden on employers’ shoulders. For instance:
- When employees work for other companies, they use resources from primary companies such as laptops and other accessories for their secondary jobs.
- Working multiple jobs at a time could drain more energy and make employees lethargic. As a result, they end up applying too many leave applications.
- When employees moonlight, there are too many things going on in their minds and it directly impacts work performance. Undoubtedly, a significant performance depletion is being noticed.
It doesn’t end here. The urge to work as a freelancer or in some cases, for competitors, has pushed up the attrition rates in the industry. According to the top four major IT companies TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL, their attrition rate was recorded at over 20% in their third-quarter financial results.
No wonder various IT firms are against moonlighting employees and want to perform a proper investigation to find out about them.
But, how to identify moonlighting employees? Well, the answer is in the upcoming section.
Role Of Professional Digital Forensics Investigator In Finding Out Moonlighters
Since moonlighting directly impacts the return on investment of companies, they are turning to the forensics investigation firms for help. As a matter of fact, digital forensics investigation practitioners are getting inquiries from concerned clients, and mandates range from pre-screening to investigations, a report stated in ET.
Top-tier IT industries are joining hands with forensics investigators to review internal matters of compliance, policy, controls, and frameworks to weed out employees moonlighting at work.
Because with the help of forensics experts;
- They can easily track moonlighters using software that sources data from public-source databases and social media analytics.
- Secondly, they use UAN numbers to identify if an employee is drawing money from other sources.
- Last but not least, through voice samples they can easily filter out the employees that are using the Zoom platform for interviews with other companies.
Summing Up
Moonlighting is significantly increasing after the global pandemic hit. Consequently, it has encouraged business firms to opt for Digital Forensics Services to review their policies and control this outrage with the help of their latest software and gadgets. Cause, in the end, only trained & skilled professionals like SysTools’ Digital Forensics Investigators can identify moonlighting employees and can help create a controlled working environment. Furthermore, apply course corrections as per the industry’s needs.
Also, read Guidelines for Law Enforcement to Request TikTok Data.