Wipro CEO & MD Thierry Delaporte on Wednesday clarified that the company is perfectly fine with employees having a side job here and there, but the IT major cannot accept employees holding jobs in an obvious conflict of interest, clarifying its stance on the raging moonlighting debate kickstarted by the company Chairman Rishad Premji in a tweet about two months ago.
“There are contracts which have to be respected. In particular, when people are going for another job that has conflict of interest with Wipro, how can we accept that? So, yes we don’t accept that,” said Delaporte in a press briefing after the Q2 results announcement.
He elaborated further that Wipro employment contracts not only expect employees to dedicate time to the company, but also to themselves and their families. “We are perfectly fine with someone having a side job here and there. It’s different. If you’re working for a company in our environment for example, it’s not a question of legality, it’s a question of ethics. We don’t believe it’s right having two jobs with a conflict of interest.”
He also emphasised that the company is not doing anything new or different, but merely standing by clauses in its employment contract. “We are not doing anything new or different. It’s clear to our people when joining Wipro. I’m not talking about side jobs. I’m really talking about being in an obvious situation of conflict of interest. Our employees understand that,” he added.
Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji’s tweet on August 20 about moonlighting being “cheating – plain and simple” snowballed into a fierce debate in India’s $150-plus-billion software exports industry. Should it allow its 4.5-million-strong white-collar workforce to take up income-generating side gigs or not?
Top industry voices have mostly been critical of it. Premji has since said that Wipro fired 300 employees found moonlighting for competitors. Wading into the debate, Tata Consultancy Services’ COO N. Ganapathy Subramaniam had said that the company sees a long-term loss to the industry, and IBM India Managing Director Sandip Patel finds dual employment “not ethically right”. Infosys has warned that employees caught moonlighting will be terminated as it is unethical to take up a second job ‘during or after work hours’, while RPG Enterprises Chairman Harsh Goenka had backed Wipro in a tweet: “If the customer finds even a remote chance of data compromise, it will not be tolerated.”
But moonlighting has also found a few proponents. Tech Mahindra MD & CEO C.P. Gurnani is supportive of the idea and has even said he would introduce policies to enable employees to be more open about it. Former Infosys director Mohandas Pai has said it doesn’t amount to cheating. And Union Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics & Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said “efforts of companies to pin their employees down are doomed to fail”.
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