Work-Life Balance Policies and Human Resource Sustainability: Public Statistical Evidence from Malaysia’s MSMEs

Abstract

Work-life balance (WLB) policies are increasingly discussed as a lever for human resource sustainability, but evidence is often fragmented for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets. This paper synthesizes publicly available official statistics to situate the workforce sustainability challenge in Malaysia’s MSME sector. MSMEs accounted for 37.4%–39.1% of Malaysia’s GDP and 47.8%–48.5% of total employment during 2021–2023, indicating that retention and well-being risks in MSMEs have macro-level consequences (DOSM, 2024a; DOSM, 2023). Complementary official releases show that average weekly hours worked remain high in key sectors, reaching around 44.5–47.6 hours per week in late 2023 and early 2024 (DOSM, 2024b).
Together with industry reporting on the difficulty of retaining talent, these patterns support the policy relevance of practical WLB bundles (flexibility, predictable scheduling, leave clarity, and workload safeguards) as part of sustainable HRM in resource-constrained SMEs.