Family Friendly Policies in Malaysia: Where Are We?

Constituting nearly half of the labour force, Malaysian women sometimes face the issue of balancing work and life which is quick becoming a major concern among most dual career families. As a result of this phenomenon, family friendly policies at the work place is becoming a challenge for the employers to provide. Family friendly policies which commonly refers to policies that enable employees to balance the demands of paid work and personal life can be in the form of workplace flexibility or work time flexibility. Even though family friendly policies are not gender bias, generally female employees are more affected by it as they try to juggle work, home and the family. This study which is based on a primary survey, first tries to assess how family friendly are some of the work places in Malaysia. The more common modes of family friendly policies were identified based on focus group discussion. This study concentrates more on family friendly policies in terms of work time flexibility. It further sets out to investigate how interested are the employees with regards to some of the modes of family friendly policies offered by the employers. Finally, the paper concludes with discussions on the implications of family friendly policies on work life balance. The study shows that there are many work places in Malaysia which have implemented various family friendly policies but there still exists a gap between employee’s practical needs and the availability of family friendly policies.