INTERNATIONAL-SURVEYING-RESEARCH-JOURNAL-ISrj-ISrJ-Vol-11-Year-2022

management have to come out with a new working system, schedule, policies, rule and regulations etc. which
is time consuming as well as triple up their current responsibilities.
According to researcher’s observation, there is a difference of opinion between researcher’s findings with
previous studies. Michielsens et al (2014), indicated that the top challenge for employer to implement flexitime
in an organization is the business working culture while all researcher’s respondents agreed that top
management’s burden in implementing flexitime is the most challenging. This difference is due to a previous
study by Michielsens et al (2014) were focusing on four multinational service companies in London, United
Kingdom consisting of Telco and financial services and such where the availability of employees are very
crucial. Thus, it is challenging for the management to implement the suitable flexible working arrangement for
their employees due to their job scope.
While researcher is focusing on the challenges of implementing flexitime in Malaysian construction
industry where availability of employees is also important however top management’s burden in implementing
flexitime is the most challenging. This is because construction industry is a team member dependent therefore
it is a big challenge for employers to come out with new policies and working schedules, rules and regulations
and such to gather employees with different skills such as the QS, architect, client, contractor and engineer to
find a suitable working time solution.
CONCLUSION
To conclude this chapter, referring to Table 4 above, all interviewed firms’ applying standard working hours
according to the Malaysian employment act and only one company practice Flexitime that is R5. After
analysing all the interviews, researcher found that the four challenges identified are mostly agreed by majority
of the respondents and only fifty per cent (50%) of the respondents found it suitable to implement Flexitime for
their company as what have been explained in the analysis. Overall, although there are challenges that
employers may face in implementing flexitime in their firm, researcher believe flexitime still possible to be
carried by firms in construction industry. The first issue that needs to be addressed by employers is that
employers should put a trust towards their employees that their employees can produce a high-quality work
just like working according to standard working hours. Employers also need to have some empathy and
consideration towards their female employees especially if they request for flexitime. With that, employers and
employees can create a more robust productive work culture even if employees work with flexitime. Malaysia
have highly educated women, however if the trend of women quitting their job due to inflexible working hours
or lack of work-life balance continues, it will be a great loss to the industry and country.
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