Over 50% of Malaysian employers cite family needs, maternity leave as barriers to hiring women: World Bank report

In a panel discussion at the report launch, Hamidah Naziadin – the former chief people officer of CIMB Group – said that employers need to understand the need for family-friendly policies. The CIMB Group is one of the largest banking groups in the country. 

Hamidah added that these policies must be looked at as an investment rather than thinking of it as just a cost. During her tenure at the banking group, CIMB introduced a six-month maternity leave scheme and one month of paternity leave. 

In Malaysia, female employees are typically eligible for 98 consecutive days of paid maternity leave while males are eligible for only seven days of paternity leave.

She said that there were those who questioned the extended paternity leave.  

“When you formulate policies, you do it for the majority. Such family-friendly policies give you greater value in terms of branding and help to promote productivity through employees who find the company to be thoughtful and caring,” she said, adding that strong policies come from understanding the employees’ needs. 

She also believed that the flexible work arrangements, for example, are here to stay.  

“At the end of the day, it is the employees who make up the company. Let’s do what we can to provide them with that support system. One important word is trust. If you want to implement policies, a lot of it will require trust.“

Meanwhile, Nazrul Aziz – who is the group chief strategy officer at TalentCorp – said that smaller firms face the biggest challenge to implement family-friendly policies in order to attract women back into the workforce. 

TalentCorp is an agency under Malaysia’s Ministry of Human Resources that drives the country’s talent strategy.  

Nazrul said that only 30 per cent of Malaysians work with multi-national companies or government linked companies while the majority work with the MSMEs. 

“If you want to make a shift in the ecosystem, we have to go to this group but of course with the guidance from the bigger companies,” he said.