More companies should adopt flexible work arrangements, says TalentCorp

Mercy Malaysia chief operating officer Shareen Shariza Abdul Ghani at the Menara Star yesterday for the mock cheque presentation of The Star's South Asia Quake Fund to Mercy Malaysia to help the Pakistan quake victims.

KUALA LUMPUR: More Malaysian companies should look into implementing flexible work arrangements (FWA) as only 10% of them are practising it, Talent Corp Malaysia (TalentCorp) said. 

Chief operating officer Shareen Shariza Abdul Ghani (pic) said she considered the number of local companies practising FWA was rather small compared with that of developed countries and the agency would help raise awareness and educate them on ways to implement it. 

“The FWA is important because talent and human capital respond to different things. Flexibility helps employees achieve work-life balance whilst meeting the company’s business demands. 

“If we don't have FWA, people with great talent may not want to be part of an organisation because it doesn't respond to their ways of working,” she told Bernama on the sidelines of the Asian Institute of Finance (AIF) International Symposium 2016 in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.

The one-day symposium entitled Talent, Technology and Tomorrows Workplace features speakers, comprising business leaders and human resource experts, who examine the factors and trends driving future changes in the workplace and what it means in managing talent and human resource more effectively. 

“It is different now. It’s not about the people adapting to the company, but how an organisation needs to adapt to different types of talents and different kinds of ways talents work. 

“The argument here is that when you have FWA, your productivity is low and profit suffers. There must be a way to deal with it. 

“In developed countries, the percentage is halfway mark or even more. Some Scandinavian countries offer nearly 100% of FWA and they are still productive and still make profit,” Shareen said. 

In Malaysia, she said, the majority FWA adopters are multinational corporations (MNCs) like Digi and IBM which have good FWA practices, while local companies like Maybank and CIMB have started looking into it. 

“So there are good local companies doing it but that is not enough. There is only 10% out of the 100 companies that we surveyed in Bursa Malaysia are thinking of FWA,” she said. 

Shareen, who helms TalentCorp since June, also said that the agency was currently working on how to translate the new economic model into reality. 

“When we look at high income, we also look for inclusivity and sustainability. The focus is how we look at talents in those areas and deliver the development status we aspire to achieve by 2020,” she said. 

The talent group in the agency is focusing on, among others, young talents, top middle management talents, women and seniors, she said, adding that the agency was also looking for retirees so that the total approach would be holistic. 

“At the moment we don’t have policies or programmes to help people who have retired,” she added. - Bernama