How to Detect and Manage Employee Moonlighting at Your Workplace?
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As the trend of working from home increases, employers have to struggle with moonlighting employees who work for more than one employer at the same time. Over the past year, the U.S. workforce has experienced an increase of nearly 10% in the number of people looking for multiple employment opportunities. This has been largely driven by inflation. There are employees who engage in moonlighting in order to earn additional income, to supplement their skill set or simply broaden their contacts.
However, employers need to think a few times over before allowing professionals to moonlight since it relates to low productivity, conflict of interest, and security shortcomings. Moonlighting has its pros, but there are warnings that both workers and managers must consider.
In this article, we will define moonlighting, its common types, how companies spot it, and how organizational tools like ProHance will effectively manage it.
What is Moonlighting?
Moonlighting is associated with an employee working in two different organizations simultaneously or taking up freelance work on the side while primarily being in a steady employment role. Although moonlighting isn’t new and has existed for ages, its prominence has grown in recent times because of an increase in remote work.
In the United States, 4.5% of the workforce held a 2nd job in 2020; this figure increased to about 4.8% in 2022. Workers in America report different reasons concerning their motivation to take up second jobs. A large section of Americans who are employed full-time feel that a second job allows them to make ends meet, while some others look at second employment from an educational perspective – learning new trade skills.
As per a survey conducted by Cutshort, 83% of employees endorse the reasons for moonlighting as learning new relevant skills and applying them, while 52% of the employees within the same survey stated moonlighting as networking opportunities. There are potential advantages of moonlighting for employees, such as opportunities for extra earnings and building capabilities; on the other hand, this trend poses problems for employers.
A staggering 40% of staff think moonlighting may cause employees to disengage from making effective contributions in their primary workplace, otherwise known as “quiet quitting.” 52% of the recruiters also have similar concerns that it may aggravate the situation and affect the business in the long run.
Types of Moonlighting
Moonlighting can occur in different styles; each style has its advantages and disadvantages to the employee as well as the employer; here is a look at the major features and the classification of moonlighting.
Blue Moonlighting
This is quite common and implies how some workers, although in a primary role, undertake further jobs from time to time, like doing a handful of hours every now and then on certain projects, like freelance work for some hours on specific projects.
Quarter Moonlighting
In this instance, employed individuals always have another service somewhere else but spend not more than 10 hours in that additional job. This type is the most popular in America. It was observed in a survey conducted by Built that 75% of the moonlighters spent less than 10 hours in their side pursuits, while 31% did not engage in them for more than four hours during the entire week.
Half Moonlighting
This form of moonlighting is when part-time workers spend a lot of hours doing a secondary job. Too much of such work could mean having a lot of clashes with their first jobs. Employers have to deal with this form as every other type because people can lose concentration as well as productivity.
Full Moonlighting
When an individual attends to a secondary job that involves working hours equivalent to his first job, that circumstance is referred to as full moonlighting. Even though this is rare, it does raise a serious concern to the primary employers regarding the workers, time management within the workplace, and the overall performance of the key job assigned to them.
How to Detect Employee Moonlighting?
Employees moonlighting is not a good thing for companies because it is very important to the employers that the employees remain primarily dedicated to their organizations. Many of the moonlighting detection techniques include.
Monitoring Productivity and Output
It’s possible that an employee’s decreased output is indicative of them being preoccupied with work other than their primary occupation. As in most cases, evidence is provided from computer-based systems monitoring software, which records work and detects variations in work performance.
Monitoring Working Hours
Should an employee log more work into the system than what is regarded as the standard or the average, a company may suspect that the employee is working elsewhere and perhaps check for regular work or a pattern of odd hours for a primary job. Consistently early or late-hour entries might suggest moonlighting.
Monitoring Recurring Break Requests
Continuous requests could expose other underlying issues, one being moonlighting without permission. Employees may explain their absence from primary jobs by saying that they need to focus on their family and require some personal time as an excuse.
Monitoring Work Devices
Various organizations monitor the engagement of their employees with work-related devices through some applications in order to prevent moonlighting. Aggressive use of non-work related applications or software by an employee may indicate engagement in moonlighting.
Conducting Surveys and Interactions
Anonymous surveys and periodic updates where employees are encouraged to express their opinions when seeking employment elsewhere may also answer whether a full-time job is enough of a breadwinner. Sometimes, the feedback enables employers to understand behaviors that would lead to moonlighting.
Role of ProHance in Detecting and Preventing Employee Moonlighting
A very interesting and dynamic workforce tool, ProHance, has the ability to not only trace moonlighting but also to deal with it. The Work Time Module within ProHance monitors work performance and helps in detecting trends with regard to performance, which consolidates the likelihood of having a secondary job.
Here is how ProHance can assist in the identification of moonlighting activities:
Monitoring of Work Output
ProHance’s Work Output Module is capable of evaluating productivity output and identifying declines over periods of time. If an employee is frequently underperforming or has a productivity dip at certain hours, it may be as a result of engagement in a secondary job.
Time Management Resources and Irregularity Tracking
ProHance observes the period of work and notices irregularities, for instance, logging in at odd times or logging in and out at random times. Such traits are often associated with a greater level of flexibility, which is more common with moonlighters.
Work Behavior Evaluation
ProHance may also monitor working behavior, such as productivity tendency changes and productivity level changes, which may be a result of engaging in other jobs.
Work Patterns Analysis
ProHance can also evaluate work patterns, revealing trends and shifts in productivity that suggest potential involvement in other jobs.
Wrapping Up
Moonlighting offers employees some form of perks like additional income and professional growth opportunities, with greater work flexibility. While the employers are concerned about efficiency, confidentiality, and commitment to the principal position.
Employer monitoring systems such as ProHance enable employers to identify and respond to moonlighting practices through an analysis of work time, productivity, and work time patterns. Where a company encourages two-way communication and has clear guidelines in place, the risks associated with moonlighting can be minimized while encouraging employee development.
In the current fast-changing work environment, there is no doubt that dealing with moonlighting should be part and parcel of promoting equilibrium in the workplace in order to maximize productivity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What are the benefits of moonlighting, according to employees?
From the employee’s vantage point, moonlighting comes with several benefits:
- Skill Enhancement
- Building social connections
- Income Security
Q2. How can you find out if an employee is moonlighting using the ProHance Work Output Module?
The ProHance Work Output Module is one of the relevant tools in the work reporting module that helps managers understand the trend of moonlighting by tracking the performance and the amount of time devoted to work.
