Some Fact about Flexible Working Arrangement in Malaysia


Flexible Working Arrangement is unfavorable work practice in Malaysia. Less than 30% companies in Malaysia offer  Flexible Working Arrangement practice at a workplace in Malaysia and most of the companies that practicing Flexible Working Arrangement are multinational companies that have rooted the practices from their home country (This percentage was from a study by PriceWaterhouse Coopers).

There is no provision for Flexible Working Arrangement in Malaysia's Employment Act, while some countries have enacted or statutes the provision of Flexible Working Arrangement.  In a study, from 20 high-income countries,17 has laws to help parents adjust working hour, 6 help with family caregiving responsibilities for adults, 12 allow change in hour facilitate lifelong learning,  11 support gradual retirement, and 5 countries have  statutory arrangements open to all employees, irrespective of the reason seeking different work arrangement (Gornick, 2008).
However, there is incentive introduced by the government of Malaysia to encourage employers to offer Flexible Working Arrangement in Malaysia such as flexi-time arrangement and child care facilities to government agencies. Hence, it is not a policy or provision in Malaysia labor Act like other developed countries has to practice. The inexistence of the provision for providing Flexible Working Arrangement at work has encouraged the employers in Malaysia not to provide the Flexible Working Arrangement at a workplace. I did not use the word discourage because of the provision in a policy is a form of enforcement that the employer has no choice but to offer. Yet the inexistence of the policy may have a point to push (encourage) an employer to do an action that is not provided in the provision of the policy or law.

There are studies by Malaysian researchers, however, the literature on Flexible Working Arrangement is still scarce. I will discuss some of the studies by Malaysians such as A. Geetha, Jasmine Lee Mee Choo, Nasina Mat Desa & Muhammad Hasmi Abu Hassan Asaari, and Salmi Mohd Isa in the nest posting.
In conclusion, I think we should have a provision or statues policy in our Labour Law Act for employers to provide Flexible Working Arrangement facilities at the workplace.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Flexible Working Arrangement Practices Around the World

Many countries in the world have enacted the provision to provide the Flexible Working Arrangement at a workplace in their National policy. For example, in Austria, parents may extend two-year job-protected parental leave until the child's fourth birthday, by returning part-time. In Denmark, parents may take 32 weeks of parental leave, with an allowance, in one block, or instead of work part-time for 64 weeks with pro-rata allowance for the hours they do not work (Hegewisch & Gornick, 2008) .  In some countries, the statutory clearly include the family caregiving responsibilities for spouse and adult relative. For example, in the United Kingdom, statues were amended in 2007 to provide an adult caregiver with the same right as parents  (Berg, 2015) . In New Zealand, anyone providing caregiving for someone else irrespective familial relationship can make a statutory request to alternative work arrangement (Hegewisch & Gornick, 2008) . This can be done by offerin...
Read more

Women and Work Commitment

Working women has an obligation to fulfill task given at work place . Hence, how committed they are at work will depends on the objective of their commitment, whether they work because they like it, or whether they scared of losing their job. John Meyer and Natalie Allen developed Three Component Model of Commitment (1991) which explained that commitment to an organization is a psychological state, and that it has three distinct components that affect how employees feel about the organization that they work for. The three components are affective commitment (affection for self-job), continuance commitment (fear of loss) and normative commitment (sense of obligation). Working women with continuance and normative commitment may feel stress, bored and unmotivated. Consequently, it will give negative implication to their behavioral action and decision such as low job satisfaction, exiting from work force and discouraging them to continue remain in a work force. The statistic fr...
Read more