Employee Moonlighting: How Does Stealth Mode Monitoring Software Prevent It?

Thursday, September 19, 2024 | best silent tracking software

Moonlighting is when an employee takes on an additional part-time or full-time job in addition to their regular job.

The practice of moonlighting has existed for decades but has recently become popular. This can be attributed to remote working arrangements being more common without proper policies or productivity monitoring systems.

So, is moonlighting bad for businesses? How can you prevent it using user activity monitoring software? Let's begin with the four kinds of moonlighting you can avoid using a silent tracker.

4 Key Types Of Employee Moonlighting

Here are four ways in which employees can moonlight:

Blue Moonlighting: Some employees may struggle to balance a second or full-time job with their regular job. When some employees try to combine their second job with their usual employment, they often fail at both assignments. Such dual employment failure is referred to as blue moonlighting.
Quarter Moonlighting: This is when an employee works a part-time job after regular work hours. Here, employees may work 2-4 hours after their primary job.
Half-moonlighting: A person spends almost fifty percent of their off-duty hours after their regular job in a part-time or second job to earn more income.
Full Moonlighting: In this stage, employees usually hold two jobs simultaneously. They often engage in side gigs while working full-time.

5 Common Reasons Why Employees Moonlight

Here are five reasons why employees may take up second jobs:

Earning Extra Income

Most employees moonlight when their employers fail to pay them enough to cover their daily expenses. Many financial advisors also suggest having multiple income sources for financial security. While they may not mean working two jobs, they may tempt employees to start side hustles, startups, or secondary jobs.

Fear of Losing a Job

In some instances, economic and job market instabilities may make employees afraid of permanent termination or loss of an opportunity. If they lose their primary job, they may take up outside employment. For example, massive layoffs and pay cuts in the tech industry have driven employees to take a secondary job to secure their income.

Paying Off Debts

The recent pandemic has increased the cost of living. When employees struggle to pay their EMIs or bear daily expenses, they rely on freelancing gigs or part-time jobs to cover the costs.

Planning A Career Change

Employees who plan to change careers may take on a second job to test it out. Some may also take up freelancing gigs to gain field experience if they lack the required expertise.

Following Their Passion

Employee moonlighting can also be about one's passion. Sometimes, it is not financially rewarding for someone to follow their love, so they do this as a second job. An example is an architect who, at night, doubles up as a disc jockey

Although moonlighting may benefit some employees, it could adversely impact their employer due to the lack of implementation of a silent activity tracking solution. Let's examine how moonlighting affects businesses.

Impact of Moonlighting without Real-time Tracking Software?

Moonlighting and overworking can occur together, as employees must handle multiple jobs and responsibilities. This could lead to chronic employee stress, poor work-life balance, and diseases, thus reducing the company’s general productivity and bottom line.

Here are some more drawbacks of employee moonlighting:

Productivity Decrease

Employers who don’t have software to monitor user activity are unable to control their resources. Overworking can cause physical and mental fatigue in staff members. The consequences include low concentration, forgetfulness, and disturbances in working places, which cannot be tracked and will eventually reduce productivity, work involvement, and performance.

Conflict Of Interest

Employees taking jobs at rival companies or competitors creates a conflict of interest. Similarly, when they help them create competitive products or services that would affect you financially. Companies without software to monitor user activity never know what projects their employees work on during work hours.

Undermining Confidentiality

When people do the same job at two companies without anyone knowing about it, there is a higher chance of product prototypes, trade secrets, and vital information being leaked since both businesses might be involved. Thus, the need for insider threat detection via stealth computer monitoring software to safeguard business data arises.

Misuse of Company Resources

Under this scenario, some may use company-provided software and laptops for their second jobs, while others still work during normal office hours. Therefore, it’s essential to incorporate the best user activity monitoring software to monitor employees' activities.

Get Started with Silent App for Optimal Results

Finally, if you're still concerned that some of your employees moonlight when you have explicitly prohibited it in your work policy, you can solve this problem by investing in powerful software to monitor user activity, like the Silent App.

Silent App is a user activity monitoring software preferred by companies of all sizes and industries. It's a user-friendly solution with incredible features like silent activity tracking and insider threat detection, making it the ultimate tool for protecting your business from moonlighting.

Try the Silent App demo to discover how it can help your business!

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