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    Infosys to allow employees to take external gigs

    Synopsis

    Any employee, who wishes to take up gig work,may do so, with prior consent of their manager and BP-HR for establishments that do not compete with Infosys or Infosys' clients, an internal mail sent said.

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    Infosys has allowed its employees to take up gig work outside the company but with prior approval of managers and human resource executives. This comes amid the growing trend of moonlighting among Indian techies.

    Any employee, who wishes to take up gig work, may do so with prior consent of their manager and BP-HR for establishments that do not compete with Infosys or Infosys' clients, an internal mail said. ET has reviewed the mail.

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    It is learnt that the mail has been sent addressed to managerial-level staff only. Infosys did not respond to ET's request for a comment.

    "However, care needs to be taken to ensure that these projects comply with the company's policy for gig work and do not breach client contracts or impact the employee's ability to be effective in their full time job with Infosys," the mail said. All these protocols need to be addressed with the managers by employees before taking up such tasks, it added.

    "As an organization, we value learnability--the ability to continuously learn new skills and gain experience. It is only natural that we are supportive of Infoscions taking up additional projects as appropriate in their personal time," the mail said.

    This comes as Infosys CEO Salil Parekh in a post-earnings conference said that the Bengaluru-based company has an internal platform called Accelerate where employees can opt for additional gigs in other projects within Infosys apart from their main projects. The platform receives 4,000 applications every quarter and around 600 get approved.

    "To be clear, we do not support dual employment. We have found in the past 12 months of the employees who are doing blatant work in two different companies where and there's confidentiality issues, we have let go of them,” added Salil Parekh in the earnings briefing.

    On the other hand, Tata Consultancy Services is planning a platform for internal “gigs” for its over 600,000 employees. The platform, in the initial stages right now, could be expanded to the external workforce as well later. But the company called external gigs or dual employment as unethical.

    The $227-billion IT industry is grappling with the issue of moonlighting, or the taking up additional assignments by employees usually during non-work hours.
    The Economic Times

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