Work-Life Balance
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Harnessing women’s full potential in workforce
“Women are the cornerstone of happy families and the essence of a successful nation. Steps will be taken to increase the participation of women at all levels in both public and private sectors, including entrepreneurial ventures. Existing laws and related regulations will be reviewed to create a more conducive environment that encourages greater female participation in the workforce…“
Prime Minister, 10th Malaysia Plan
The expression of work-life balance was first used in the late 1970s to describe the balance between an individual’s work and personal life. This subject has been acknowledged and the policy related to it has been regulated in most developed countries especially in Europe. The implementation of work-life balance in Norway for example, make it to hsve the highest female participation in labour workforce in the world at about 70% compared to 30 years ago where only half of their women were employed.
In Malaysia, women participation in labour workforce comprised only 46.4% in 2009 and it is considerably lower compared to the neighbouring countries like Thailand for instance stand at almost 70% while Singapore at 60.2% and Indonesia at 51.8%.
The important role of women have been long acknowledged by the government and it envisaged under the 10th Malaysia Plan and New Economic Model where women participation in workforce has been recognised as a way to further enhance our economic growth. It is in tandem with the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) estimates that Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product has the potential grow by 2% - 4% annually if women labour participation increase to 70%.
Therefore, the issue of work-life balance is given due emphasis by the government in harnessing the full potential of women and retaining more women in a workforce. Towards this, the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (KPWKM) as the implementer, has outlined five objectives namely increasing women participation in a labour workforce; increasing the number of women in key-position-making positions; improving provision of support for women in challenging circumstances such as widows, single mothers and those with lower income; eliminating all forms of discrimination against women; and improving work-life balance provision to encourage great woman participation in workforce particularly from the low-income households.
In this regards, NAM Institute for the Empowerment of Women (NIEW), an agency under KPWKM on July 2010 had organised the inaugural corporate and public sector collaboration on Work Life Balance Conference in Malaysia.
The event was co-organised by two non-profit organisations that are eHomemakers and Gorgeous Geeks, aimed to gain full insight into how to formulate Malaysian own work-life balance strategy for both public and private sectors by using the best practices, implementations, tips and technologies application through presentations and forums by esteem speakers that had been invited from international and regional corporations such as Cisco System Inc., Oracle Corporation (ASEAN), UNDP, IBM, Ericsson and Microsoft Malaysia to name a few.
To show the significance of technologies' application in interaction, a few live web- conference had been conducted for presentations and forum interactions with panellist from the United State, The Netherlands, Switzerland and also New Zealand.
Most of the points that had been highlighted relate work-life balance to a major paradigm shift where organisation needs to switch their business conduct to manage by objectives instead of by activities and also to optimise the utilisation of ICT’s.
Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak in his keynote address at the Women’s Day 2010 celebration on August 25th suggested to private and public organisations to offer work-from-home scheme and adopting flexi-hours in their organisations as it will allow women to work according to their time ability. He added further that the government-pioneered work-from-home project by the Department of Works which mostly involved women had proven to be lucrative as the productivity is doubled and also able to reduce the travelling cost.
Malaysia Focus 1/2011 (Publish by Department of Information Malaysia)
Harnessing women’s full potential in workforce
“Women are the cornerstone of happy families and the essence of a successful nation. Steps will be taken to increase the participation of women at all levels in both public and private sectors, including entrepreneurial ventures. Existing laws and related regulations will be reviewed to create a more conducive environment that encourages greater female participation in the workforce…“
Prime Minister, 10th Malaysia Plan
The expression of work-life balance was first used in the late 1970s to describe the balance between an individual’s work and personal life. This subject has been acknowledged and the policy related to it has been regulated in most developed countries especially in Europe. The implementation of work-life balance in Norway for example, make it to hsve the highest female participation in labour workforce in the world at about 70% compared to 30 years ago where only half of their women were employed.
In Malaysia, women participation in labour workforce comprised only 46.4% in 2009 and it is considerably lower compared to the neighbouring countries like Thailand for instance stand at almost 70% while Singapore at 60.2% and Indonesia at 51.8%.
The important role of women have been long acknowledged by the government and it envisaged under the 10th Malaysia Plan and New Economic Model where women participation in workforce has been recognised as a way to further enhance our economic growth. It is in tandem with the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) estimates that Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product has the potential grow by 2% - 4% annually if women labour participation increase to 70%.
Therefore, the issue of work-life balance is given due emphasis by the government in harnessing the full potential of women and retaining more women in a workforce. Towards this, the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (KPWKM) as the implementer, has outlined five objectives namely increasing women participation in a labour workforce; increasing the number of women in key-position-making positions; improving provision of support for women in challenging circumstances such as widows, single mothers and those with lower income; eliminating all forms of discrimination against women; and improving work-life balance provision to encourage great woman participation in workforce particularly from the low-income households.
In this regards, NAM Institute for the Empowerment of Women (NIEW), an agency under KPWKM on July 2010 had organised the inaugural corporate and public sector collaboration on Work Life Balance Conference in Malaysia.
The event was co-organised by two non-profit organisations that are eHomemakers and Gorgeous Geeks, aimed to gain full insight into how to formulate Malaysian own work-life balance strategy for both public and private sectors by using the best practices, implementations, tips and technologies application through presentations and forums by esteem speakers that had been invited from international and regional corporations such as Cisco System Inc., Oracle Corporation (ASEAN), UNDP, IBM, Ericsson and Microsoft Malaysia to name a few.
To show the significance of technologies' application in interaction, a few live web- conference had been conducted for presentations and forum interactions with panellist from the United State, The Netherlands, Switzerland and also New Zealand.
Most of the points that had been highlighted relate work-life balance to a major paradigm shift where organisation needs to switch their business conduct to manage by objectives instead of by activities and also to optimise the utilisation of ICT’s.
Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak in his keynote address at the Women’s Day 2010 celebration on August 25th suggested to private and public organisations to offer work-from-home scheme and adopting flexi-hours in their organisations as it will allow women to work according to their time ability. He added further that the government-pioneered work-from-home project by the Department of Works which mostly involved women had proven to be lucrative as the productivity is doubled and also able to reduce the travelling cost.
Malaysia Focus 1/2011 (Publish by Department of Information Malaysia)
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