As you all know, I have been living in Malaysia for awhile now, 7 years, and in this time I have, I think, adapted to most things Malaysian, most that is but not all. Time and how people treat it are things that I find interesting, infuriating, mythical but most of all inconvenient.
In many countries time is considered elastic or adjustable, here it is commonly referred to as "Malaysian Time" and in all cases it means something different to everyone. Learning what it means to everyone you are talking to is the key to your mental stability and happiness. The time you request to meet someone is critical to your business, right? To many Malaysians their time is always going to be more important than yours is, this is without fail the only constant in Malaysia when talking about time, this sadly trickles into the Malaysian social rules or common practices.
When I was working for a technology company and meetings at the clients offices was a common occurrence. I would always try to get my appointments in the morning, because as we all know, the morning is when the best decisions are made, when we are fresh. Right, sadly no, not here. After sitting and waiting in someone's outer office for 2 hours a few times I figured it out, schedule appointments in the afternoon, right? Not just any afternoons, the smart people never try to have meetings on Mondays because many management people here take mondays off. Friday is never a good idea either, most people blame this on the Malay people going to the Mosque on Fridays, it doesn't really make sense, since most of the clients I had were Chinese, and therefor not Muslims, but thats a Malaysian idea.
Ok. let me explain how time really works, 1 minute is made up of 60 seconds and an hour is 60 minutes (3600 seconds). With me so far? Ok, so lets move on to the work day, the day is 8 hours long, well not really 8 hours but 9 hours with a paid lunch of an hour and 2 15 minute breaks that are never really 15 minutes, still with me? Ok, lets move on to time of day we call the work day, now most Malaysians are asked to arrive as close to 8 am as is possible, fair, right? Nope, not fair at all, it seems that they will always get caught in the traffic jam on their way to the office.
I know what you're saying, leave earlier, right? No, thats not going to work, because it seems that as soon as they leave earlier, everyone else does causing the "Jam", but I know that when I leave an hour earlier, I get to the office more than an hour early, make sense? Look at it this way, I leave the house at 6:30 and I arrive at the office right around 8. Now if I were to leave at 6:00 I would actually get there at about 7:15, you do the math, it takes less time if I leave earlier!
Now I have to say that Westerners have a completely different philosophy when it comes to time, but is it really right? Lets look at it this way, if the staff arrived early, they would expect to leave early, so letting them come in late and allowing them to go home at the same time just makes it easier to handle, right? Well no,
I work for a BPO company in Kuala Lumpur and we have around 50 staff here in Malaysia, I handle the recruiting for KL, Manila and Taipei. Manila and Taipei are very similar to the practices found in most Western countries, where as Malaysia is very different. Malaysian employees have a sense of entitlement, they believe they deserve the job simply because they do. Being 30 minutes for the start of the work day is so common that many companies overlap the shifts to compensate for it. When employees go for lunch you aren't surprised when they don't return, or call, you just know that they might not come back. This goes the same for retention, employees in the BPO or Call Center industries are not known for staying in a position for a long time, typically for an agent, 1 to 2 years is a good and reasonable expectation, here in Malaysia expecting the staff to stay longer than 6 months is foolish, and naive. We plan on 3 months retention, we have tried different types of incentives, but the only thing that seems to work is to find the right people in the first place.
I have been back and forth to Manila a few times to do in-person interviews and as a whole the people I have been interviewing have been on time, the only exception was when there was a typhoon, then a couple of people were 30 minutes late, but they both called 30 minutes in advance and were very sorry. In Malaysia by contrast, applicants will arrive anywhere from 3 hours early to the next day. When I first started with the company we weren't scheduling the interviews, we would simply interview people as they came in, as a result we never knew when people would arrive. I have had people show up and demand I see them immediately because they were double parked and didn't want a ticket.
Interviewing people here is interesting, partly because the candidates are usually young, and inexperienced. We had a candidate that we gave the standard English assessment test to and left him to complete it, when we returned 10 minutes later the candidate was gone and there was vomit all over the wall behind the trash can, at least he tried to hit the can. The applicant never returned, the Employment agency that sent him, said " We are very sorry and will you be hiring him?". Needless to say we didn't.
We have staff falling asleep at their desks all the time, when woken they are not sorry or worried about their jobs, they are pissed we woke them.
Time in Malaysia is the same as anywhere else, but the culture is not willing to be dictated to by something as simple as a clock. Makes live as an employer amusing at times and infuriating at others.
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