The Moonlighting Survival During Economic Instability: Post Pandemic Experience

Abstract

Due to economic instability, high inflation, sudden financial needs or non-material motivations, the employee may need to have more than one job at the same time, which is called Moonlighting to survive. Since the Moonlighting term becomes much more familiar in labor market, it is noteworthy. This study aims to examine the influence of income level on employee’s moonlighting intentions. Our data is obtained through electronic surveys from random workers from several areas of the service sector in Turkey. Out of 171 valid questionnaire results were examined and the results showed that there is a significance and negative relation between income satisfaction and moonlighting inclinations. That means the employees with income level that does not meet their financial goals, seek for secondary jobs. Our data also shows that workers over the age of 50 show so little intentions to moonlight whereas the age group of 18 to 25 have comparatively high moonlighting survival intentions.

Keywords: Dual Job Holding, Employee Motivation, Income Level, Moonlighting

Introduction

Nowadays, employees may seek additional jobs for such reasons as -at least- security for financial struggles, new experiences to support their future career plans, networking, coping with future uncertainty and economic shocks for example buying a house, getting married, etc.

Especially in less developed economies, people with limited income may head for a second job for extra money, along with primary employment. Though this isn’t a new concept, now that there are variety of opportunities and reasons, it is a growing phenomenon. Especially after Covid-19 pandemic terms like telecommuting, home office, teleworking has become familiar in today’s business world. Such flexible arrangements make dual job holding possible for an individual. Based on employee’s working schedule, capabilities and financial needs, moonlighting provides beneficial opportunities (Samaraweera, 2023). So, the aim of this study is to investigate mainly the relations between moonlighting intentions and financial satisfaction. Gender and age variables were also examined. We acknowledge that openly admitting to work at a secondary job without consent or knowledge of the employer may not be easy. For this reason, obtaining data through anonymous questionnaires is preferred. We tried to reach workers in the service sector and sent them the survey. 171 workers participated the research voluntarily. The results showed that there is a significant and negative relationship between employee’s income level satisfaction and moonlighting intensions. As mentioned thoroughly in this research, such time and energy consuming behavior as Moonlighting turns out to be quite useful and important activity.

What is Moonlighting?

Moonlighting refers to working in an additional job for various reasons and motivations while working at a primary job. This secondary job could be done in the hours of primary job or at the remaining free time (Seema et al., 2021). Betss identifies moonlighting as an outdoor work that includes two or more part time jobs (Jahangir & Tahsin, 2023). Another explanation for it is taking a second job without telling your primary employer (Misganu et al., 2022). According to Kumar (2020) moonlighting is a practice of working on a second job outside of working hours. As for the time that is spent, there are four types of moonlighting: Blue moonlighting, Quarter moonlighting, Half Moonlighting and Full moonlighting (Bhatt, 2020). In the concept of Blue Moonlighting, the employee works with full capacity and aims to success and get rewards but not confined/contended, so he/she tends to look for additional jobs. The aim here is to get extra money or the sense of satisfaction. In the Partial or Quarter Moonlighting, the reason or motivation for an employee to look for another job is the same as Blue Moonlighting. The employee spends a quarter of time of the principal job for the secondary job. In this type of Moonlighting behavior, the employee could earn the target amount of money from both jobs. In the Half Moonlighting, the employee works half the time he/she spends in the principal job. For example, an employee who works for 8 hours at the principal job, will work for extra 4 hours at he secondary job. Again, in this type of Moonlighting behavior the employee will earn a satisfying amount of money. In the Full Moonlighting, it is possible to mention two full-time employments where the employee must divide his/her working time to both jobs equally. In comparison, in this type of moonlighting the additional income is the highest of all.

In another classification for Moonlighting is based on organization: internal and exterior. External Moonlighting is about taking secondary jobs, gigs, freelance works in addition to the main job. Where internal takes place in the same organization that employee is already working for. Employees keep on working after regular hours. This is the type of Moonlighting that usually seen in medical services (Kumar, 2020).

Motivations After Moonlighting Behaviour

The motivation behind showing tendency to such behavior is basically financial reasons but surely, there might be other reasons that could be non-financial. In twenty-first century, an employee’s motivations can vary from monetary reasons to exploring new carrier paths or just to follow personal interests (Kumar, 2020). Economic recessions, low job satisfaction, low organizational commitment, the increase in the number of software companies, remote work that has become permanent practice especially after the pandemic, desire for new skills or experiences make moonlighting an important labor market phenomenon (Asravor, 2021). Some cases that require major financial resource such as marriage, buying a new house, relocating can make an employee with limited income search for additional jobs (Saxon, 2015).

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) developments and increase in the use of Artificial Intelligence and automation, the dependence on labor is reduced (Aroles et al., 2019). In the concept of distributed work or remote work where there is no need for all the workers to be in the same place, there are new opportunities and advantages for both employees and employers (Lamovšek & Černe, 2023). For example, it provides low cost of work and flexibility for both sides. Such an environment is extremely available for Moonlighting practices.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, the employees mostly participate Moonlighting activities for the financial reasons. Reduced working hours brought the low income from the current job. Also, a lot of companies started to adapt the shift system. Thus, employees were able to work almost half of the weekdays at home (Peng et al., 2021). Therefore, having a second job has become something considerable for many employees. On account of the moonlighting, people having a backup plan if the environment is not able to provide job security. Also, as a result of the blurring organizational boundaries due to globalization, employees have begun to have unlimited career plans and organizational careers as we know them have become less purposeful. They want to have different experiences in different organizations and in different roles beyond traditional ways (Peng et al., 2021). Being active on two different fields would provide an opportunity to explore new skills of interests.

How Moonlighting Effects Organizational Commitment and Motivation?

The change of the organizational environment and innovative technologies alters the traditional relationship between the organization and the employee, even further makes it unstable. This also enhances the employee’s tendency of having boundary less career (Parry & Battista, 2019). Many organizations have sanctions and complex regulations today that aim to prevent their employees from moonlighting and as a result, limiting their creativity. Where certain companies permit their employees to take part-time jobs, some companies do not. The concern of secrecy of the operations (government office, for example) or the fear of less productivity if the employee takes up another job prevents the company from supportive behaviors (Bhatt, 2020).

Undoubtedly it causes employee to have negative attitude towards the organization and also increases the perceived role conflicts (Cybal-Michalska, 2015). This situation may cause an opposite effect and eventually encourage the employee to moonlight. In order to create or secure the bond between the organization and employees, managers must refrain harsh administrative behaviors. In case the employee perceives tolerance and flexibility from the organizational environment, he/she would feel more comfortable sharing the moonlighting experiences and the employee engagement would be strengthened (Peng et al., 2021).

Moonlighting is a major challenge for human resource management. For it carries out many activities in order to make the employee feel supported by the organization and to ensure maintaining the efficient work (Seema et al., 2021). HR policies such as performance appraisals, awards, job rotations, incentives provide a lot of benefits to the employees’ performance and job satisfaction. Sense of recognition and approval along with higher income might prevent the employee moving from Blue moonlighting to Full Moonlighting, or prevent it completely. (https://www.projectguru.in/moonlighting-avoid/) It requires to find successful ways to manage moonlighters. Having a clear moonlighting policy and taking it into account while drawing up employment contract might be the key. For example, employers and employee may have an agreement that moonlighting by working with competing organizations is forbidden (Jahangir & Tahsin, 2023). Another practical tool is the organizational culture, which is based on trust, justice, transparency so that the employees would be glad and satisfied to work for such organization (George & George, 2022). If an organization supports the moonlighting this must be clarified and let the employee have a sensation that their well-being is concerned, and a mutual trust is aimed. (https://engagedly.com/moonlighting-and-how-to-deal-with-moonlighting-employees/)

Exhausting moonlighting practices might be excessively energy consuming. In order to have higher income, simultaneously focusing on two jobs and spending longer hours than usual might be grueling, damaging work-life balance and causing stress (Aroles et al., 2019). Always having anxiety about getting caught, sanctioned, even fired is overwhelming for any individual. In such situations productivity may decrease, mistakes with dear costs may occur, Work attitude and behaviors might change in negative way (bin Md Sabron & binti Ahmad, 2017). So organizations should let the employees understand their limitations out of the office and what sort of sanctions they might face.

Seema and Sachdeva (2019) have done a study on IT professionals in order to investigate the impact of two non-pecuniary motives such as organizational commitment and entrepreneurial motivation on Moonlighting activities and found negative and significant relation.

Asravor (2021), conducted research on urban populace on Ghana during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to find the moonlighting differences between both genders and found that the men Moonlights more than women. But also found that there is not a serious difference between since the pandemic make both sexes face financial struggle.

Effects of Income Level on Moonlighting Behavior

Economic crises, inflation, bills, rents, clothing, educational expenses, savings for future and many more pecuniary factors along with nonpecuniary reasons makes working inevitable for an individual to survive. Hence, the level of income must meet employee’s basic needs and expectations from the organization. This particular subject matters so much that most of the time the salary is the reason why an employee prefers one organization to another or decide whether to leave or stay (Hung et al., 2018).

In an environment where quitting job means great risk and considered as unsafe option, or in such cases that employee cannot get the monthly payment regularly moonlighting can be practical solution. Though moonlighting practices may occur out of pursuing dreams, aiming for more experience, or targeting new fields, yet financial motivations will be the most important reason to it.

Akinde et al. (2020), points at two types of economic reasons for moonlighting behavior. One is the suffering limited earning capacity from the main job, and the second, the earned income is not being sufficiently reflected in the benefits and the cost of work. If the employee has the opportunity, he/she prefers to leave the job with an easy decision and move to another (Hung et al., 2018). And in the absence of such advantageous situation as mentioned the employee feels the need to take up another job and starts to moonlight. So, it is possible to state that moonlighting behavior reduces the personnel turnover rate.

According to Beach (Akinde et al., 2020) wages and salaries are the symbols of security for an employee. When these payments do not offer consistency and sufficiency to him/her, moonlighting might be the way to cope with this financial stress. Having multiple jobs at once can bring balance between income level and expenses (Jahangir & Tahsin, 2023).

Research Methodology

In this study quantitative method is used in order to investigate the relationships between moonlighting inclinations of employees. Following hypothesis have been set up:

H1: There is a significant relationship between genders of employees and their moonlighting tendencies.

H2: There is a significant relationship between age levels of employees and their moonlighting tendencies.

H3: There is a significant relationship between income levels of employees and their moonlighting tendencies.

H4: There is a significant relationship between satisfaction from wage levels and moonlighting tendencies.

Research Model

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Our research model is shown in Figure 1. For this study, a survey composed of 16 questions has been prepared and applied on randomly chosen individuals using LinkedIn. Between February 2023 and April 2023, 350 questionnaires have been sent and 171 usable responses have been obtained. Online surveys have been conducted on volunteers randomly selected among individuals working in service sector in Turkish corporations. Data of the research have been analyzed by using SPSS 25.00 for Windows.

According to descriptive statistics, %56 of our participants was female and %44 of them were male. %9 of the participants was between the ages of 18-25, %21 of them were between the ages of 25-30, %35 which the majority of them were between ages of 30-40 and finally % 27,5 of them were between the ages of 40-50. The rest of them were older than 50. On the one hand, half of the participants had an income level lower than 25000 tl and only %11 of participants have an income level above 35000 tl. %44 of our participants which means the majority has income between 15000-25000 tl.

According to Levene’s test, as seen in the Table 1, the variances are equally dispersed. According to t-test results, women and men are equally distributed. Hence, we can say that there is no statistically significant difference in moonlighting inclinations between men and women.

In order to test whether there is a difference between different income levels regarding moonlighting tendencies we conducted ANOVA test. Before conducting the ANOVA test we implied Levene statistics and come up with the information that homogeneity level of our groups are meeting expectations as in the table below. The results of Levene Statistics are presented in table 2.

However according to ANOVA test results, as seen in the Table 3, there is no difference between moonlighting inclinations of people coming from different income level groups. In other words, employee’s inclinations about moonlighting do not change according to their monthly income.

As seen in the Table 4, another Anova test has been conducted for investigating the relationship between age levels of participants and their moonlighting inclinations. Table 5 presents the Levene test results revealed that homogeneity of variances is quite satisfactory for carrying out ANOVA test as seen in the table below.

Results obtained from ANOVA test revealed that there are differences between moonlighting inclinations of employees resulting from their age levels. Results of multiple comparisons as seen it the Table 6, showed that people above the age of 40 tends to keep away from moonlighting (especially over the age of 50), whereas the participants between the ages of 18-25 have comparatively higher moonlighting tendency.

When the related analysis was conducted the KMO score was 0,883 and Barlett score is under 0,001 that were meaningful values for conducting factor analysis and total variance was % 62,1 after factor analysis. The details of the factor analysis can be seen in detail in the table above. As can be seen in the table 7, the survey items are divided into two main variables: moonlighting and income level.

According to correlation analysis factors as seen in the Table 8, are related to each other in 1/1000 significance level but in there is a inverse relationship. The correlation relationship in the relationship between moonlighting and income level is in acceptable limits (r=-0,435; p = 0,000 <0,001). For the details you can see the correlation matrix as shown at Table 8.

In our study, regression analysis has also been conducted in order to test the hypotheses and explain the direction of the relations. We wanted to see whether satisfaction from income level has a statistically significant effect on moonlighting inclinations. The conditions of Baron and Kenny (1986) have been applied accurately in this analysis.

As seen in the Table 9, results revealed that there is a significant relationship between satisfaction from income and moonlighting intentions. This relationship is negative in direction, that means as income level decreases the inclination to engage in moonlighting increases. The P value of the relationship is smaller than 0,001 thus hypothesis is accepted (R2 = 0,107, F=21,340). Hence, our hypothesis is accepted.

Conclusion

In this study that examines moonlighting inclinations, no significant difference is found in terms of gender groups. When age groups are examined, low tendency to moonlight is found among participants over the age of 50. Since working multiple jobs at once requires energy, this conclusion is quite reasonable. On the other hand, participants aged 18 to 25 show the highest tendency to moonlight. The results of ANOVA test showed that employees’ moonlighting inclinations do not change according to their monthly income. However, factor analysis showed us that satisfaction from income level has effect on moonlighting inclinations, in negative direction. This tells us when employee’s income level decreases the moonlighting intension gets higher.

Acknowledgment

The authors are grateful to the Accounting Research Institute, (ARI- HICoE), Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia, and the Ministry of Higher Education for providing research funding.

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