Following the recent pandemic, in one way or another, it would be difficult to argue against the way
we live our lives, including the way we work, has changed forever. Has the new normal affected your
working environment and changed the balance of managing Employees?

Agile working, flexible working, remote working requires the implementation of technology outside of your company’s physical building which brings with it its own challenges of not only having to manage your staff remotely but adopting a new way of working. Trusting your Employees or Agents to be focused upon the role you are paying them to perform and to reach those KPI’s you have set is likely to be on the top of the list.

With inflation at a 30 year high, more families have the need to turn to food banks simply to survive,
even affecting those in fulltime positions, some Employees may be looking at alternative sources of
income or a side hustle to keep them afloat financially. As salaries stagnate and their monthly income
is unlikely to keep pace with current outgoings, can you blame them for looking for an easier
alternative to fill the finance gap?

We live in a culture of a ‘Gig Economy’ where more staff are working under flexible, temporary, or
freelance roles and may not be bound by employment contracts, but what about those Employers of
permanent staff with a contracted obligation? What do you do if you find staff ‘moonlighting’ or you
have been alerted to the possibility?

The term ‘moonlighting’ is sometimes used to describe extra work, a second job or a secret job, taken
on by an Employee in addition to their primary source of employment. This is another source of
income they haven’t disclosed to their current Employer because they may not want them to know
about it as it requires the employee to undertake micro tasks during the same working hours.
Other questions come into play:

Whose job is it to monitor moonlighting – CEO, Managers, HR?

What are the implications to your business and the rest of the staff for whom you have both legal and
moral responsibilities?
Technically, it is not against the law to have a second income. It is the responsibility of the Employer
to have the morally acceptable Employment contracts in place for their business and their staff. It is
however, the responsibility of the individual Employee to advise HMRC of any secondary income they
may receive.

What if that second income was achieved electronically by multi-tasking? Are moonlighting and social
media connected? Micro tasks are on the rise, the GIG economy also gives rise to ease and
accessibility of multitasking. The Facebook marketplace (now meta) is an all under one roof, chat,
update profiles, Amazon Turk, E-Bay, are all micro task sites, some of which may involve ‘selling’ or
something as minute as creating a graphic for a blog post.

Now is the perfect time to examine if you have updated policies in place, including working from
home, to ensure the bottom line and your business is not affected by moonlighting.
If you suspect one of your Employees, consider the option of a no obligation, initial consultation with
Fox Robinson Investigations to discuss how Open Source Intelligence Techniques (OSINT) can help
you.

You can reach us by submitting a request on the contract form on our website or for those urgent
matters you can call us directly.