Tags: labour law, moonlighting, corruption, conflict of interest, discipline, dismissal, employee moonlighting, what to do if your employee is moonlighting

When you hire an employee, you (hopefully) make sure he doesn't have a second job that he hasn't told you about. Especially if that job competes with the one you're hiring him for! But what do you do if you discover that an employee is moonlighting? Can you discipline him?

We asked the team of labour law experts behind the Labour Law for Managers Loose Leaf for their advice in dealing with moonlighting.

Follow these four steps to tackle moonlighting in your business:
Step#1: Determine whether there's a potential conflict with the employee's duties at your business, i.e. is he moonlighting at one of your suppliers, clients or competitors? Did he use official working hours,stationary, equipment, etc. to comply with the externalduties?

Step#2: If there is no conflict, issue a written warning to theemployee for failing to follow company policy, in thatthe employee failed to declare the interest/involvementand/or doing same during working hours or withcompany equipment and get him to declare his interests.
If the external work is in conflict with the employee'sduties and/or company interests, you need to quantifyand calculate the losses to the company. After doing this,move on to step #3.

Step#3: Investigate the matter properly. There are many ways to do this, for example: Mirroring of computers (downloading or copying of a person's computer for forensic analysis), searching of offices, life style audits (checking assets and lifestyle information you can find on public databases and comparing that to known income to determine whether a person appears to be living beyond their means), etc.

Step#4: Take the following actions:
• Institute disciplinary action, which, depending on the severity of the conflict of interest, could lead to dismissal
• Bring a complaint under the Corruption Act. Only do this when you can prove some conflict of interest and financial gain on the part of your employee – this is, however, not required by the Act.
• Recover any losses by instituting civil action or request a compensation order under the Criminal Procedure Act.

Put this advice into action as soon as you discover your employee is moonlighting.

Author: FSP Business