The correlation between telecommuting and work life balance in oil and gas industry

Abstract

In line with the industrial revolution 4.0, telecommuting becomes more robust and relevant to be implemented in Malaysia even though this working arrangement is not widely accepted by most of Malaysia’s companies due to some hindering factors. There is a limited encouragement from the management and awareness of the benefit of telecommuting shared to the employer, employees, and organisation. For this reason, the researcher aims to determine the relationship of telecommuting among employees in the East Coast Region of oil and gas industry which is consisted of Kelantan, Pahang, and Terengganu with work-life balance. Employee acceptance with regards to telecommuting is the independent variable, and work-life balance was evaluated using a component of each dependent variables, which are: (i) more family time (ii) and increased productivity. The items in questionnaires are a closed-ended type using a five-point Likert scale and the sample of 70 respondents being selected from the oil and gas industry in the East Coast Region. The researcher distributed 70 sets of questionnaires and returned 60 questionnaires, with a return rate of 86%. Correlation was applied in analysing and interpreting the collected data. The findings of correlation between telecommuting and work-life balance generally support the hypotheses in this study and eventually had answered the objectives for this study. As a conclusion, there is a significant correlation between telecommuting and work-life balance which is associated with the acceptance of telecommuting among oil and gas industry in the East Coast Region, Malaysia.