KUCHING: Most employers, especially those in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are reluctant and not ready to cut down on present five-day work week to four days.
X-FAB Sarawak director of Human Resources Maureen Labarge noted that the work-from-home (WFH) concept was not feasible for certain job tasks.
Recalling the WFH concept at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Maureen said her organisation faced difficulties in determining who could and should work from home and who shouldn’t.
“If you’re an operator, technician or equipment engineer, we need these people to be in the production line. Their tasks simply cannot be done from home.”
Maureen, who was a member of a panel discussion entitled “Reset: Balancing Three Symbolic Elements – Work, Workers and Workplace” held at a hotel here yesterday (July 5) in conjunction with Human Resource Development Corporation Open Day, was responding to a question about whether it would realistic in the Malaysian context for organisations to fully adopt the WFH concept.
She was also asked for her opinion on recent calls by certain quarters to reduce the number of working days.
Sarawak Skills executive director Hallman Sabri and Sarawak Media Group CEO Suhaimi Sulaiman were also among the panellists during the panel discussion.
Elaborating further on SMEs’ reluctant to embrace of the four-day work week, she said they feared that a reduced work week would be exploited by employees, thus affecting productivity.
“It takes both parties for this to work. We, as the employee, need to take responsibility and be mature enough not to misuse the four-day week.
“As for employers, perhaps they can begin to relax a bit, and give it a chance to see how it works,” she said.
Maureen recalled her own experience of having to convince the management to introduce flexible working hours.
“It tool many months to convince them, but we sent a very clear signal to everyone to not misuse the flexible working hours because it (the concept) could be taken back. It worked both ways.”
