Ahmad Naim bin Zaid

Family-Job Conflict among Working Mothers in Malaysia: A Case for Flexibility in Work
Arrangements with the Focus on ‘Job Sharing’ and ‘Flexi-time’.
Introduction
With the involvement of women in the workforce continuously increasing, the attention of
human resource issues has taken a favorable turn towards them. One of the key groups among
women is working mothers. The escalating cost of living in Malaysia has prompted women to
take an initiative to complement the wages of the husbands. The single mothers even bear the
burden of earning for the family all by themselves. The ever demanding household tasks as a
mother often resulted in conflicts with work responsibilities and thus it calls for alternatives to
the rigid nine-to-five workweek applied in most organizations.
Job sharing and flexi-time are two relatively new concepts in Human Resource Management
(HRM) in Malaysia. In a country where workers are only used to permanent and part-time jobs,
these two concepts are hardly heard of due to the rarity of the implementation. As in many
developing countries, the workforce in Malaysia has little say on their convenience at work. The
trade unions are impotent in rising labor issues and firms hold the upper hand in job market due
to the labor surplus. Their domestic commitments outside work are of little significance in firms’
view. Women especially are the ones troubled by this attitude of employers. Despite being
known to be good at multi-tasking, career women are seriously in danger of being too committed
to work and neglecting their families. Firms must be sentient that domestic issues arising from
work overload can seriously damage working mothers’ morale and ultimately dent the
productivity and quality of service. Juggling between work and families is no easy task and
Human Resource Managers must acknowledge this fact. The proposal for job sharing and flexi-
time can be a very tentative and tempting one to address this issue. These two concepts can help
women strike a more productive balance between work and life. This paper attempts to discuss
the concerns among working mothers and how job sharing and flexi time can ease their family-
job conflict and at the same time benefit the organizations they serve.

Demographics of Working Mothers in Malaysia

In Malaysia, women’s participation in the workforce, though low, has increased 37% in 1970 to
43.5% in 1995 and 44.5% in 2000 (Eighth Malaysia Plan, 2001-2005) then 47.3 per cent in
2004. (UNICEF Malaysia, 2005) Initiatives by the Government and CSOs1 and improvement in
access to higher learning have helped empower a larger percentage of Malaysian women, and
more are seen moving into higher-paying occupations. According to statistics from the Mid-term
review of the 8th Malaysia Plan, the proportion of women who are legislators, senior officials
and managers has increased from 5 per cent in 2000 to 5.3 per cent in 2002. (UNICEF Malaysia,
2005) Efforts to quantify unpaid work had found that women carried out a larger portion of “care
work” (75 per cent of women compared to 24 per cent of men), amounting to nearly 76 billion

1
Civil Society Organizations
Malaysian ringgit, or 12 per cent of Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP). (UNDP, 2007)
Poverty among female-headed households had declined due to income generating programs for
poor and single mothers and the provision of basic and safe living quarters to targeted poor
groups. Increasing female labour force participation requires balancing their competing
responsibilities within the family and the workplaces. Flexible time arrangements at work, safe
and high quality childcare facilities as well as ‘teleworking’ will support increasing women’s
labour force participation. (UNICEF Malaysia, 2005)
About 85% of women workers are in the manufacturing and services sector, with the majority
located in urban areas. In manufacturing, they make up the bulk of production operators in the
electronics and textiles and garments industries – jobs that are generally labor-intensive and low
skilled. Indeed the so-called success of the Malaysian economy, where the electrical and
electronics industries have consistently been the major export earners, has been built on the back
of low-waged women labor (Cecilia Ng, 2004). Although more women are earning an income,
they are basically located in low-skilled jobs, in labor-intensive operations and in clerical and
secretarial positions, rather than in the ranks of chief executive officers, managers or supervisors.
For example in the manufacturing sector in 1993, only 15.8% of the managerial and professional
category comprised women, compared to 65.9% and 57.9% in the clerical and production
categories. (UNDP, 2007) Women also earn less than men for the same type of job in some
sectors in the private sector. (UNDP, 2007)

It is important to recognize that mothers in the Malaysian workforce are not a homogeneous
group of people; there is no typical working mother. Their attitudes toward their jobs and their
decisions about child care are shaped by a range of social and economic factors:

• Marital status and family structure: Statistics indicate that working mothers who are
married to the fathers of their children have more stable families. Working mothers who
are single or in nontraditional relationships have a more difficult time maintaining family
stability even apart from the demands of their jobs.
• Type of work: Working mothers in business or the professions usually earn more than
women with less education and often find their work psychologically satisfying. They are
also often on call outside the office and may find it difficult to leave the demands of their
work behind when they go home.
• Income level: Working mothers with well-paying jobs have more choices about housing,
transportation, and child care arrangements than those with limited incomes.
• Number, ages, and special needs of children: All other factors being equal, women with
fewer, widely spaced, and healthy children find it easier to juggle the demands of a job
with those of child care than women with several children born close together or women
whose children suffer from chronic illnesses or developmental difficulties.
• Age: Working mothers over 40 are more likely to develop job-related health problems
than younger women. In addition, women in this age group are often coping with the care
of aging parents as well as their own offspring.

Psychological and Physical Strains of Working Mothers

A research by James Donald Martin2 in 1988 indicated that there a number of factors relating to
stress among working mothers. Among them are:
1. Number of children at home: Women with more children under their care report more hassles
and stress with those with older children report less stress.
2. Occupational stress and daily stress: The daily demands at work and balancing it with the
responsibility to care for the family can result in physical and psychological burnout.
3. Income level: Low income levels may not be sufficient to provide for the family.
4. Hours of work: long hours at work and less for family and leisure coupled with inappropriate
workload result in stress.
Out of the four factors listed above, occupational stress and long working hours are the most
significant. Stress can be a destructive force for the psychology of women. It distracts both their
work and the family errands. A study by the National Population and Family Development
Board in 2004 showed that more than half of the women who quit their jobs cited childcare as
the reason. (NST, 2009) For most women, their family care responsibility outweighs their jobs.
Many employers failed to recognize this fact and consequently could not hold on to their best
women employees. For the women, their failure in care for their families reduces the urge to
work and hinder performance. In Malaysia, the norm is still that women work only to
complement their husbands’ paycheck. Thus, work is not their primary concern. When economic
necessity is not the motivating factor in women’s employment, other important motivators may
be operating such as the desire to be outside of the house, to maintain a degree of power in
family and to keep professional skill up to date. (Pepper J., 1999) A study by Betty Ann Biernat
in 1997 indicated that many women would prefer reduced job hours in return for a reduced salary
if career advancement, job security and benefits are assured. Shorter workweeks are preferred to
long time off. Reduced and/or flexible job hours are seen as helpful in reducing job-family
conflict.

Empowerment of Women and the Importance of Family: The Pressing Need for Flexible
Work Arrangements in Malaysia
With growing numbers of women confronting the competing pressures of work and home life,
observers predicted that these women's needs would be accommodated by significant changes in
how things were managed on both fronts: a domestic revolution in sex roles at home and a major
shift toward enlightened attitudes and policies toward women in the workplace. Although there
have been some changes, they have not been substantial enough to prevent many working
mothers from feeling that the price for "having it all" is too high. There has to be alternatives to
help them create a better balance between work and family.

2
In his theses dissertation fulfilling doctorate requirement for Educational Psychology in
Birmingham Young University (see reference)
Under the 9th Malaysia plan, the private sector, the largest employer are encouraged to facilitate
women to enter the workforce through provisions of more conducive working arrangements such
as job sharing and flexi-time. (Aminah Ahmad, 1998) The 6MP states, “The government
recognizes that specific strategies must necessarily be formulated to effectively incorporate
women in the process of development. Towards this end, concerted efforts will be made to
progressively reduce existing constraints and facilitate the assimilation of women into the
mainstream of social and economic activities.”

For the employers, there is a need for the awareness of the importance of policies that recognize
and accommodate the balance between work and family responsibilities. Such practices include
flexible hours, child care and job sharing. Women with major child rearing find it difficult to
engage in after-hour activities, therefore missing out on the opportunity to interact with decision
makers. Ability to work from home, housing assistance and on-site day care centre relate to
women’s needs for job flexibility. Women suffers from inflexibility in working hours and lack of
access to child care. (Martin J. D., 1998) They felt that the job is too demanding causing them to
suffer from stress. Work-family policies such as child care and flexi-time are the most consistent
benefits that will enhance retention of employees. These flexibilities can have a hugely positive
impact of work-family initiatives on recruitment, productivity and employees attitudes. Greater
time flexibility is the family-friendly policy most desired by women employees.

The provision of extended leaves, part-time work, flexibility and family supports (parental leave
for men, flexible benefits, support during relocation, and child care) would enable companies to
retain talented women who- without such mechanisms for achieving the balance they desire –
might otherwise leave. Corporate work-family initiatives designed to acknowledge and support
those juggling the multiple demands of work and family life, should be particularly beneficial to
women’s career progression. Systematic change must be undertaken, if employers’ efforts to
address work-family issues are to be effective in supporting both career development and family
life for women. (Zubaidah Zainal Abidin,2008)

Women clearly have the right to work and employers have to admit that they are not of the same
nature like men who can work without too many familial roles. Working mothers have to endure
much more tenuous daily lives with childcare and other roles as a mother and a wife (which is
the norm in Malaysia). With the continuously increasing cost of living, women these days have
to play their part in earning a living for their family to complement the fathers’ role as the bread
maker. In some cases the wife is the chief earner and as for single mothers, they are the sole
provider for their families. It is no easy task and they are entitled for some flexibility in work
arrangements to suit their daily roles and this can actually enhance their performance at work. It
is a common knowledge among managers that a happy worker is a productive worker. Fittingly,
a flexible work arrangement like job sharing and flexi-time can be beneficial to both the women
employees and the employers.
Job Sharing and Flexi-Time: An Attractive Proposition for Working Mothers
Being relatively alien concepts, a brief insight into job sharing and flexi-time is necessary. Job
sharing, as the name implies refers to a way of working where two people share one full-time
job, dividing the work, responsibilities, pay, holidays and other benefits between them
proportionate to the hours each works. Meanwhile, flexi-time refers to the arrangement where
workers are given the liberty to choose the spread of hours within a day or week but has to
achieve certain hours of work within a specified period.
The concept of job sharing and its boons and banes

The term "job sharing" was first coined in the 1960s to denote one full-time job shared by two
people. It is used when a position requires a full-time commitment or cannot easily be divided
into two part-time jobs. (BNET Editorial, 2010) Job sharing should not be confused with
flextime or telecommuting, though these might be incorporated into a job-share agreement. It
should not be confused with work sharing either. Work sharing occurs when an employer
reduces the workweek of all. Table 1 enlists the advantages and the drawbacks of job sharing
arrangement.

Table 1: Advantages and drawbacks of a job sharing arrangement

Advantages Drawbacks
Reduced absences: Workers in two-income More up-front planning and administrative
families increasingly take time off for personal work: Shared positions involve variables,
matters ranging from medical appointments to ranging from individual hours and duties to pay
childcare and benefits, and require more time to set up
than a standard arrangement. Plus, you'll need
to keep records for two employees instead of
one.
Improved business continuity: If a job requires Increased communications challenges: Since
more than a 40-hour week and a necessary each job sharer needs to cover for the other,
presence every day, two employees wishing to effective communication between them is
reduce their hours slightly can join forces to critical.
fill it. Job sharing also reduces bottlenecks
caused by vacations and other absences, since
the sharers usually cover for each other.
Retention of valued employees: Job sharing Necessary compromises between job sharers:
keeps workers seeking reduced hours, such as On personal preferences ranging from record-
working parents, from being forced to quit keeping methods to the items kept in the desk.
your company to get time off. It can greatly
reduce expensive employee turnover, which is
especially important in key positions.
Increased productivity: Since job sharers have Potential performance inequities: If one job
more time for personal matters, they tend to be sharer is more skilled or industrious than the
more focused at work. Also, a shared job can other, he or she may begrudge that disparity —
provide workers an opportunity to divide tasks especially if the income of both parties is the
according to their individual skills or interests, same. It also may be harder for the boss to sort
leveraging their strengths while avoiding their out the individual employee's problem behavior
weaknesses. in a joint arrangement.
Smoother long-term operation: Pairing job- Possible resentment among other employees:
sharing workers in specific combinations can Regular employees — with or without
ease the impact of new training by having one justification — sometimes accuse job sharers
experienced person in a position at all times, or of working less hard because they put in fewer
cross-training employees in different functions. hours.
Likewise, you can soften the blow of an
experienced person's retirement by reducing
hours while a job-sharing partner gets up to
speed.
Recruiting enticements: Offering job-sharing
options gives you an edge over competitors in
attracting loyal, quality workers seeking
reduced schedules. Even candidates not
interested in job sharing perceive companies
with job-sharing programs as good places to
work.

Designing a Workable Job Sharing Arrangement

To work most effectively, job sharing requires the right match of job, job partners and manager.
Although it can work for positions from administrative assistant to executive vice president, it
works better with jobs that have specific duties and regular hours than with those involving less
clearly defined tasks or substantial travel.

The best candidates for job sharing are employees who are solid, committed performers and
excellent communicators. And it helps if they are highly organized and willing to share successes
and failures alike with their job-share partners. In short, the partners must be compatible.

There are ways to make job-sharing serve the business interests. Below are the suggestions by
Lowe E. (2000):

o Identify the jobs easiest to share. Functions most conducive to job sharing usually involve
nonsupervisory skill positions such as administrative assistants, accountants or factory
line workers. Management positions are often more difficult because subordinates may
develop a preference for one of the "two bosses."
o Have the candidates draft their own job-sharing proposal. This not only creates an
arrangement they "own," but it saves managers the time of doing it themselves.
o Consider benefit reduction as part of the package. Most people seeking reduced hours
have a full-time earner in the household who receives employee benefits.
o Develop a highly detailed work plan for the shared job, including not only individual job
hours and functions, but provisions to handle situations involving each person's work
when they are off.
o Create a handoff plan for a smooth transition between job sharers, including not only
notes on what was done and what needs to be done, but also some overlap time between
the partners to discuss these matters. Ask that the two job sharers each spend a few
minutes of unpaid time with each other before each transition, in return for your
flexibility in permitting job sharing.
 o Implement a regular reporting plan to management, such as weekly or monthly reports.
o Evaluate job-sharing partners individually. If one is more experienced than the other,
manager should consider giving the senior staffer oversight responsibility and pay the
junior employee less. Be sure to review their work individually as well as together, just
like other employees. It's important to reward job sharers for personal performance, both
for their own sake and to defuse accusations of unfairness by other employees.
o Establish a trial period for each new job-sharing pair. Set a timeline after which the
arrangement will be reviewed and continued only if it meets the approval of both partners
and their manager.

Flexi-time: Liberty and productivity

Implementing time flexibility in the workplace in most other cases means a variation from the
traditional 9-5. Beyond that, there is a wide variety of practices, offering different amounts of
structure, regularity and flexibility. Many of the working arrangements generally classified as
"flexible" are flexible only in the sense that there may be a degree of choice about finding a
suitable working option. Some options, however, may see greater or smaller degrees of daily
variation in the number of hours worked.

A flexible hours scheme, or flexi-time, usually involve working a set of "core hours" - perhaps
10 until 3 or 4, with the ability to vary the hours either side of this. Sometimes this is
accompanied by the use of punch-cards and time-clocks, introducing an element of factory-like
discipline into offices that may have previously relied on the vigilant eye of a supervisor or
office manager to see that everyone was doing their hours. These days it is more likely that time-
management software will be used to register and track employee hours. Alternatively, there may
be a choice of temporal patterns that can be chosen (usually a selection of 7.5 or 8 hour spells
between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.). A supervisor can see that there is sufficient office cover at all times,
or teams can be entrusted to work it out between themselves on an equitable basis.

Flexi-time enables staff to bank extra days off but gives the employer the flexibility to extend
working hours to meet vital deadlines. Employers offering flexi-time often find that it introduces
a greater level of cooperation and support between employer and employee. Employees will be
more able to arrange appointments during time off which helps reduce absenteeism. Flexi-time
can also be used to reduce the need for overtime payments. An extension to the flexi-time
concept, Annualized Hours3 enables an employer and employee to balance the times worked and
times off, across a complete year. This works particularly well when customer demand is
seasonal as staff can cover more work hours during the busy months and have more time off

3
An arrangement of work which an annual total of hours is agreed, and these are worked in
variable quantities over the year by agreement with the employer.
when demand is low. Another extension to flexi-time is the ‘time accounts’ 4 scheme or time
credit scheme.

The positives and negatives of flexi-time is quite unclear with past researches indicated
inconsistent findings. Berman (1997) reported in his thesis that while employee attitude towards
flexitime tend to be positive, the effects on organizational performance such as productivity and
absenteeism have been rather inconsistent. He also argued that few studies have attempted to
investigate the effects of psychological processes linking to performance. The mechanisms that
explains how the flexi-time affects results are not explained. Meanwhile, Mohammed al-Bashi
(1996) in his study reported that flexi-time benefits both the organizational performance and the
employee welfare in a number of key areas. For employees, the study showed that flexi-time
increases work quantity, employee morale, employee loyalty, job satisfaction and the amount of
time spent with family, while it significantly reduces sick leave and tardiness. Flexi-time effects
for teamwork quantity and quality, use of equipment, building cost, leisure activity, education
and communication remains significantly constant or decreases. Its effect for annual leave,
overtime, fatigue, commuting and workload remains constant or even decreases. Flexi-time does
not significantly decrease casual leave, absenteeism or escapism.

In an insight, the advantages and downsides of flexi-time are as in Table 2 and Table 3.

Table 2: Advantages of flexi-time work arrangement for both employers and employees

4
Time accounts are a formalization of the age old process of taking time off to compensate
for extra time worked, and vice versa. One can build up time credits in one's account by
working one's socks off - it's in some ways a more flexible form of compressed working week
or even annualized hours, with the key ingredient that the employee achieves a greater
degree of "time sovereignty".
Advantages for employers Advantages for employees

Savings on overtime and of their premium or Greater control over their work schedules
short-time work payments. (“time sovereignty”).

Improved delivery time and responsiveness Additional days off for further training,
to customer demands children or holidays.

Better adaptability of the workforce to the A better balance between work, family and
workload. private life.

Increased worker motivation (but only if the The payment of a consistent wage despite
new systems are well implemented; otherwise variations in working hours.
there is a risk of a demotivating impact).

Table 3: Disadvantages of flexi-time work arrangement for both employers and employees

Disadvantages for employers Disadvantages for employees

Loss of direct supervision over working hours A danger of overloaded time accounts, such
that workers are unable to use much of their
accumulated time off. This is
counterproductive because workers are
overworked, leading to higher absenteeism,
increased illness and reduced motivation.

The increase in working hour flexibility might Limits on time sovereignty. Unforeseeable
be accompanied by a greater complexity in fluctuations in workload may not allow
scheduling work. workers to take accumulated time off as they
wish. This can generate frustration among the
workforce, who may then see time banking as a
form of hidden unpaid overtime.

Possible worker resistance during

implementation. Some workers may initially
resist such forms of working time flexibility.

Conclusions and Human Resource Management Implications

The last decade has recorded a significant increase in female graduates; an indicator that
women’s education level is improving in quantity and quality. These graduates may eventually
turn into mothers and shall face the challenge of juggling between family and work. It is crucial
that the public and private sector human resource management to consider the fact that women
are and will play a major role in economic activities. As their increase in numbers is at a rate
much higher than men, their issues must be given their due attention.
According to the Human Resources Ministry, Malaysia has an untapped latent workforce of 1.2
to 1.6 million in women. (NST, 2009) A common agreement among economists is that human
capital is worth two-thirds of the overall capital of an economic entity. Thus, for such large
quantity of idle human resource, much can still be achieved if more are induced to work. With
larger women workforce entering the fray, it is justifiable that there has to be policies that can
cater their needs. Flexible work arrangements like job sharing and flexi-time are two examples of
quite a number of concepts that can be deployed by employers to attract and retain high
performing women workforce which the ultimate aim of human resource management.
However, it also crucial to note that the level of flexibility and the type of arrangements depends
very much on the nature of the job and the business. Not all jobs can be shared nor be allowed
for flexible working times. It is up to human resource managers to identify the conditions that
allow for flexible working arrangements in specific work places. Changing from the traditional
nine-to-five workweek is a challenge for HR managers, but it is a challenge that they have to
face to attract female talents. Employers must accept that employees are not mere workers, they
are the biggest contributor to organizations and thus they must be considered as part of them.
Their welfare must be well taken care of. Women tend to take flexible work arrangement
positively and thus employers can expect a positive influence in organizational performance.
After all, a happy worker is a productive worker.

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