Davos 2023: At HCL Tech, moonlighting is not an issue, says Roshni Nadar Malhotra

In a fast-changing and evolving corporate world, moonlighting is something that has become a reality in many areas. Moonlighting has been around for years in different sectors. But in recent times, moonlighting in the IT sector became a big issue, which was first highlighted by Rishad Premji, the executive chairman of Wipro. In an exclusive interaction with Business Today, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, chairperson of HCL Technologies, said that moonlighting is not a big issue in the company. 

“It is not a big issue in HCL Tech. We are looking hard enough, but it is not a big issue for us. Almost 70 per cent of our staff is working from home and from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. We have records of performance, we have records of productivity. So, it is not a big issue at HCL Tech,” said Nadar Malhotra during a conversation with Rahul Kanwal, Executive Director, Business Today; News Director, India Today & Aaj Tak, at World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. 

She added:  “We have adopted the virtual first model at work. We have asked our employees to come back to work only if they are in the geographies. We have around 1,000 employees working from 32-35 cities across India. We realised that when the employees were called back to work, they were hit by high cost-of-living expenses. Moving back to major cities is expensive. Employees nowadays have a lot of options. So, you have to work in a lot more collaborative manner than before.” 

Earlier while talking to Business Today, Rishad Premji had said the matter of moonlighting was blown out of proportion and that he is "very much in support" of the gig economy. He said people can have multiple jobs as long as there is transparency with the organisation they are contracted to.  

“It has been blown completely out of proportion. If you simply look at the term moonlighting, it means having a second job secretively. And the argument was that when you have a contract with an organisation and violating that contract by having a second job secretively is not right. It is as simple as that. You can be pursuing passions and hobbies that don’t compete with the organisation and that don’t violate the agreement both in spirit and in the letter with the organisation,” Premji said.  

Global recession  

Talking about the global recession and concerns about job loss, Nadar Malhotra said that the recession will be much more sectoral and might not affect all sectors alike.   

“I feel the mood was a little gloom and doom in December. But as you can see in our Q3 results, we have done pretty well. Globally, I see many companies committed to their digital transformation and cloud migration. From that point of view, I feel the recession is much more sectoral. The fear of recession is perhaps a lot more than how big recession will actually be,” she added. 

In another interaction with Business Today, International Monetary Fund’s First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath had said that though many geographies are facing recessionary fears, India is in a relatively bright spot and many countries are looking at India as a favourable investment destination. 

“We have a tough year ahead (in) 2023. But we certainly are seeing signs of resilience around the world. So, in terms of a global recession, I think we are still a fair bit away from it… there are individual countries that are closer to a recession than others are,” said Gopinath.  

“Compared to other countries, it's relatively a bright spot. So, I think it's in a good place. And importantly, many countries are looking at India (as an) investment destination at this point especially as they try to diversify out of other countries, including China,” she added. 

Also read: Davos 2023: Stars aligned in favour of India, says Tata Steel CEO T V Narendran

Also read: Davos 2023: Global recession most likely in 2023, say economists at World Economic Forum