Hi All - can a social media Manager of Company promote other brands for money on their personal social handles? Is it treated as moonlight?

Though the concept is controversial and stirring debate among employers and workers, there's no defined law against moonlighting in the Indian constitutional framework.

Being a company you don't have a right to instruct your employee on their personal social media account usage. But you can introduce some Non-compete policies/Moonlighting policies. This might help you to restrict your employees to work with your competitors under moonlighting.

The problem is that there is a very thin line dividing moonlighting and reviewing. For example, if I work for Zomato's social media team but I end up ordering something from Swiggy and write a genuinely honest good/bad review on my own FB/Insta, is it a conflict? I DON'T KNOW. If Swiggy pays me to write a nice thing about them, should I do it? I probably shouldn't, because it's a clear case of conflict. But if the brand is unrelated, say Bose asks me to write something nice about them and pays, is it still a conflict? I DON'T KNOW. There are no right or wrong answers, and ideally, I'd recommend disclosing this income stream to one's manager and HR team to avoid challenges later on.

Thanks Harender & Sumit. Actually we have someone who is designated as Social Media Manager but on his personal account, he is posting paid promotions of shady companies. So we are little concern that such personal posts should not be conflicting with the image of the Company.

I don't think it will impact the brand image. But you can always work on a Non-compete policy.