Supervisor Support as a Moderator between Flexible Working Arrangement and Job Performance – Malaysia Evidence

Abstract

Over the past years, organizations are forced to redesign their workplace to fulfil global labour market needs and to remain competitive. Due to the ever-changing working environment and competitive markets, organizations opted to choose more flexible work options so they can respond to the volatile environment. This study explores the moderation effect of supervisor support (SS) between flexible working arrangements (FWAs) and employee performance (EP). The population for this study primarily focused on the organizations that adopt the flexible working arrangement such as flexible working time, working from home, and compressed work-week practices in Malaysia. The companies selected are based on the listing of global organizations practices FWAs mentioned in TalentCorp Malaysia Flexible Working Arrangement collaboration with Malaysian Federation Employer report, 2015. The questionnaires were distributed through the Human Resource Department of each organization. The result demonstrated that there is a relationship between FWAs and EP but there was no moderation effect of SS between FWAs and EP relationship. This study supports the idea that the employees seem to benefit from the adoption of FWAs at the workplace.  It allows both gender and single or married employees to manage their time better particularly allowing the employees to attend to personal needs. Since FWAs itself is the support given by employers to employees, therefore, the employees were unable to associate supervisor support role as a contributor to help them manage their work and home responsibilities. This study showed that employee motivation to perform are affected by the policies adopted by organizations. Adopting efficient work practices such as FWAs could stimulate employee engagement to improve their work performance. Therefore, organizations that are currently searching for a strategy that can improve productivity and employee performance should consider FWAs as an option.  However, the implementation ofFWAs needs to be customized according to the employee's needs. Offering FWAs in the organization will enhance organizational and individual outcomes.