The flexible schedules of different jobs help people moonlight for extra money. Sometimes, people with multiple skills moonlight to increase their skill levels in different areas. There are many reasons why people might take up moonlighting.
Reasons for Moonlighting from employees
By understanding the reasons for employees’ moonlighting, employers can address these issues and resolve moonlighting from its roots.
Extra income
The most common reason employees take up moonlighting is for extra income for their lifestyle and other needs. This might happen because their full-time job needs to pay them more. If the employee is financially ambitious, he might moonlight for extra income.
Proving their skills
Job satisfaction and self-fulfillment are also major aspects of employment for people. People who wish to exercise some freedom and do not want to keep themselves restricted to a single field take up different offers to test their skill level and act on an opportunity. People who are highly skilled and have interests in multiple areas might take up moonlighting to prove their capabilities in different areas.
Utilizing their spare time
If the employees think their skills could be utilized more and have more free time, they will want to utilize them in different areas. The spare time that people get can create space for moonlighting. In such cases, employers must listen to the employees, give them more responsibility, and increase their salaries.
What are the issues that employers face due to Moonlighting?
Moonlighting can be very negative for a company and its culture. The work productivity of an employee gets affected in the long run due to fatigue. This brings down the productivity of the company and ruins its culture. Moonlighting poses particular challenges for human resources because it underperforms the company’s human resources.
Human resource management is an essential aspect of a company’s work. In addition to employee engagement, moonlighting culture affects productivity. If moonlighting employees disengage, non-moonlighting employees might not be motivated. Disengagement of moonlighting employees may lead to underperformance.
How to tackle the challenge of Moonlighting?
In recent studies on Moonlighting, it has been found that Moonlighting is very common, and nearly 50 percent of the workforce have done it at one point in time. Moreover, this percentage is growing as we approach flexible work environments and terms. Now that the causes, effects, and trends of moonlighting are clear, let us explore how moonlighting can be dealt with.
Ask an open-ended question
When interrogating an employee about the possible cause and instance of moonlighting, keep the questions open-ended and casual. If HR creates a high-pressure environment, it can lead to a negative impact on the workforce. Try to know why the employee is moonlighting.
Community Manager.