Amid ongoing debate around moonlighting, Walmart-owned Flipkart has launched a part work part pay policy that gives employees the flexibility to pursue non-professional interests, attend to their medical/emergency needs, and focus on the health and well-being of themselves or their dependents.
Speaking to businessline, Krishna Raghavan, chief people officer of Flipkart said, “The part work part pay option was introduced as a pilot about a year back but came into full effect from October 2022. We are seeing an increasing trend of adoption of this policy among employees. Some of the use cases of this policy seen at Flipkart include employees pursuing education on the side, someone taking care of the elderly at home, or women coming back from maternity leave who want to work for two days a week or so.”
Moonlighting is when employees take up second or more jobs in addition to their one full-time employment. Earlier this year, moonlighting led hundreds of Wipro employees to lose their full-time jobs. Other IT companies like Infosys and Mindtree have also warned employees against moonlighting and taken action.
About the policy
Flipkart’s part work part pay policy is applicable for existing employees who wish to move to a reduced work schedule (less than 100 per cent of full time) for a defined period, as well as for new joiners who wish to join directly with this reduced format, thus enabling them to attend to their personal commitments and responsibilities.
Further, the company has adopted a hybrid work model from March 2022. In this current model, a combination of employees work remotely and from the office on different days of the week, allowing teams to decide the days that work best for them. Flipkart is also offering employees the flexibility to work out of satellite offices (in Whitefield and Koramangla) within Bangalore.
Company expenses
Flipkart’s FY22 financials noted that almost one-fourth of the company expenses (₹3,735 crores) went toward employee benefits costs. In comparison, Flipkart’s employee benefit costs in FY21 were ₹3,163 crores. To this, Raghavan said, ”Talent has always been our strength. Different technology waves have come and gone, but our people centricity is what enables us to innovate constantly in the marketplace and be in the position that we are today.”
Beyond investing in employee compensation, a great part of Flipkart’s investment goes into talent development. This includes aspects like upskilling talent at various levels in their career. The third area where the company spends is on employee benefits. For instance, Flipkart launched unlimited health insurance for its employees during Covid and continues to keep that as a policy as it moves along into the future.
Raghavan noted that Flipkart’s Employee Value Proposition is based on the theme “Together, We Dare to Maximize.” It signifies coming together as a company to solve big audacious challenges. The company aims to create a culture where employees have the license to experiment. It even has an internal award called Chandrayaan II to assert this belief.
“A lot goes into creating an entrepreneurial mindset. Our cultural aspects like a license to experiment & fail, chasing big audacious goals, and bias for action along with Flipkart’s overall integrity and inclusion is something I believe has led a lot of Flipsters to become intra-preneurs and also led ex-employees to become entrepreneurs and start unicorn companies,” Raghavan added.
Former Flipkart employees like Mukesh Bansal, Sujeet Kumar, and Sameer Nigam among others (also referred to as the Flipkart Mafia) have gone on to build unicorn companies such as Curefit, Udaan and PhonePe.