Impacts of Work–Family Culture on Employee Job Performance in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The harmonized balance between work and family is tough to reach in modern industrial societies because of increasing demands at work and in family settings. Previous studies analyzed work–family culture and its relationship with employees’ job performance without focusing on specific industries. Paralleled with the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs), this study aims to analyze the relationship between work–family culture and employees’ job performance in selected industries in Malaysia. This study surveyed 336 employees working in four industries in Peninsular Malaysia, and data were collected using a self-reported questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using two statistical analyses, i.e., descriptive and inferential statistic multiple linear regression by assisting statistical software, namely SPSS version 26. This study found that organizational time demands, and managerial support have a significant positive relationship with employees’ job performance. Moreover, the career consequences variable does not have a significant effect on employees’ job performance. Therefore, the results provided valuable insights into the work–family culture among employees with family responsibilities. Applied implications for managers are suggested to give full support to the employees while juggling their family matters. This study also contributes to the existing work–family culture literature. After a thorough analysis of this field, the researcher believed that other factors might significantly affect employees’ job performance, such as religiosity, working environment, and integrity in the organizations.

1. Introduction

Malaysia, in 2030, is aiming for the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDG2030). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development serves as the collective blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all humankind. The new Goals are unique in that they call for action by all countries (poor, rich, and middle-income countries) to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. SDGs recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and the Goals address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities while tackling climate change and environmental protection. The Goals are a challenge to become serious about delivering an integrated and balanced social, economic, and environmental agenda. There are 17 indicators in SDG2030, such as no poverty, zero hunger, gender equality, and clear water and sanitation by 2030 all around Malaysia.

Hence, in order to achieve the Goals, this study attempts to clear the view for Malaysia in completing the 8th goal in SDG 2030, which focuses on promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, and supporting full and productive employment and decent work, as well as ensuring the healthy lives in Malaysia at the optimum level and promote well-being for all ages. The 8^th goal of SDG2030 indicates achieving full and productive employment and decent work despite gender to protect labor rights, and promote safety and a good workplace for employees’ well-being [1,2]. Hence, this study aims to investigate the factors in a work–family culture that will affect employees’ performances while juggling work and family responsibilities.

Productive employment is defined as employment yielding sufficient returns of labor to permit the worker and their dependents to consume above the poverty line [3]. Thus, it is undeniable that jobs are the key element of economic and social development [4]. However, even though productive employment and inclusive growth are widespread in development policies. Rammelt, Leung, and Gebru [5] found thsat productive employment is still more widespread as an endeavor than a reality. It is proven that the quality of available jobs is a matter of concern rather than payment issues and job security, similar to what Europe experienced [6]. To relate, the quality of available jobs is undoubtedly closely related to workers’ satisfaction.

Nair and Subash [7] found that job satisfaction and quality of work–family need to be addressed positively to keep the workers motivated to contribute to organizational effectiveness and growth. Furthermore, job satisfaction speaks for the fact that the workers like or dislike their job. Gragnano, Simbula, and Miglioretti [8] found that job satisfaction is also consistently correlated with employees’ job performance and work–family balance. Therefore, work–family balance has an impact on work engagement, both directly and through individual perceptions of organizational support for work–family balance. It is worth noting that employees were said to provide productive employment when they practiced a culture of support for work–family balance—which is here referring to work–family culture. Andreassi and Thompson [9] defined work–family culture as the “shared assumptions, beliefs, and values regarding the extent to which an organization supports and values the integration of employees’ work and family lives”.

Thus, it can be concluded that work–family culture is among the associated factors or contributors to achieving the 8th goal of SDG2030. It is to achieve full and productive employment and decent work despite gender, protect labor rights, and promote a safe, sound workplace for the employees’ well-being. Žnidaršic and Bernik [10] found that the organization’s work–family balance policies and practices (which represent the work–family culture), such as support from the leader, co-workers, and family-friendly policies and practices, have a positive impact on the individual’s work–family balance. Therefore, work–family balance leads to increased work engagement, and the individual’s perception of the organization’s work–family balance support leads to increased work engagement. Thus, it is understood that, ultimately, such an organization is providing productive employment as targeted by the 8^th goal of SDG2030.

As focused on by the Government regarding employee productivity, several factors may decrease employee performance. The issues may arise from the external or internal perspectives of the organizations, or they may also come from the personal traits of the particular individuals. Previous studies have proposed many factors that may or may not affect the quality of employees’ job performance [11]. The results were inconsistent based on the various cultural backgrounds, the diversity of the samples’ characteristics, different types of the industry environment, and many other related factors. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of work–family culture on employees’ job performance among Malaysia’s unique diverse cultures and races, and with different industries and working backgrounds. Of these, the current study aims to analyze the relationship between work–family culture and employees’ job performance in selected industries in Malaysia. This paper’s structure describes work–family culture and employees’ job performance in achieving SDGs in Section 1. Following, in Section 2, this study reviews several previous studies that focus on employees’ job performance and work–family cultures, as well as developing a research framework and hypotheses. Section 3 presents the methodological approach, which consists of research design, population and sample, sample determination, data collection, and data analysis. Results of the study are reported in Section 4 and Discussion follows in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes the study, discusses the policy implication of the current study, provides a recommendation for future research, and elaborates on the limitations that exist in this study.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Job Performance

Many factors may affect employees’ performance, from the firm or environmental, job-related, or employee-related factors [12]. Employees’ job performance is a major concern no matter what industry the organization is in because it is proven that a good performer will directly or indirectly affect organization performance. Previous studies suggested various factors that might affect employees’ job performance. These consist of motivation and work experiences [13], motivation, organizational climate, and time management [14], employee integrity, job environment, and management support [12], leadership style, employee motivation, and discipline [15].

Organizations that focus on and meet the needs for a work–life balance beneficial to employees indirectly contribute to increased productivity, improved employees’ job performance, and employee retention [16,17]. Work–family culture, work–life balance, and work–life or family conflict are evergreen issues in the career world. As these matters are inseparable, organizations must consider them, because it can also cost employees’ job performance. The situation at home, including family matters, will affect employees’ performance [18], but how far do the employees have to separate family issues while working? In most situations, employees will undoubtedly involve working time with family matters because both families and work are their obligations. Therefore, the researchers focused on work–family culture, which has three sub-dimensions: managerial support, organizational time demands, and career consequences. The purpose of these studies was to investigate the significant relationship between support from management, the time spent for organizations, and the effect of their career path on employees’ performance.

2.2. Work–Family Culture

While people keep moving forward in drastic global development, various challenges arise. Employees have to endure dual-career couples or dual-earner families where both spouses earn money, or in other cases, workers who are unmarried and stay with their parents have to fulfill their duty as a child. Still, at the same time, they have to carry the responsibilities included in their job descriptions.

The responsibilities at work demand employees to spend more than half of the 24 h of a day, and some even spend more time at their workplaces to make sure all tasks given have been fulfilled and completed. Even if several supporting pieces of evidence proved that reducing working hours by one hour per week impacts most self-reported performance [19], the working hours are still at their peak. This situation will eventually harm and create an imbalance between work and life culture. The balance between work and family time is crucial. Employees who can manage and maintain their time, and balance the involvement between work and life will experience better quality of life and positive family time [20]. Marescaux, Rofcanin, Las Heras, Ilies, and Bosch [21] proved that employee intrinsic motivation is the highest when both the employees and organization agree on strongly exhibiting family-supportive behaviors.

The organization should ensure that its employees are well-developed with the appropriate support for empowerment and well-planned team activities to acquire the needed competencies. Hence, the employees may adequately carry out the assigned tasks, and participate in decision-making and other processes relevant to their level in the organization to create a harmonious working relationship among members, and to drive organizational performance [22].

The employees need moral support from the higher level of management, and hence, management support is a crucial part of work and family balance. Mukanzi and Senaji [23] stated that managerial support can moderate the issue both in work and family culture, and family and work conflict. Baker and Kim [24] stated that emotional support from the management team can significantly impact employees’ work and quality of life. However, these studies contradicted Wassem [25], who suggested that managerial support has an insignificant impact on employees’ performance.

Both employees and organizations have to play a role in supporting a good quality work–family culture and in reducing work–family conflict. In contrast, some previous studies have mentioned that a non-supportive work–family culture in a working organization can negatively affect individuals. For instance, emotional fatigue that ultimately leads to stress and disturbs one’s psychological well-being, will eventually affect work performance (e.g., Campos-Garcia et al., [26]; Kalliath et al., [27]; Krishnan et al., [28]; Thevanes and Mangaleswaran [29]; AlAzzam et al., [30]; Jabeen et al., [31]).

Work–family balance can be achieved with support from both parties, family, and organization; it tends to be neglected by organizational research, resulting in the effect of congruence versus incongruence concerning work–family integration preferences and the corresponding supplies at work [32]. The time demands from organizations and support from the management team may reduce the work–family conflict [33]; therefore, these three studied variables are crucial in conveying this study.

The career consequence reflects how organizations support the option taken by the employee to switch to a less demanding job for family reasons. Ke and Deng [34] agreed that organizations that practice family-friendly human resources have a significant positive effect on employees’ job performance. While organizations’ time demands focus on how employees mix working and family matters, are employees generally allowed to talk about family matters while at work? Moreover, the employee believes in staying at the same organization due to feeling satisfied with the organization’s demands [35].

2.3. Research Framework and Hypotheses

This study analyzes work–family culture’s direct effect (managerial support, organizational time demands, and career consequences) on employees’ job performance. The research framework in this study can be seen in Figure 1 below:

Based on the previous studies of literature searched, this study has identified the following hypotheses that need to be investigated:

H1:

Managerial support positively affects employees’ job performance.

H2:

Organizational time demands positively affect employees’ job performance.

H3:

Career consequences positively affect employees’ job performance.

3. Materials and Methods

This study uses primary data which are commonly used in a quantitative method. It means the researchers obtained first-hand information on the variables of interest to fulfill the specific purpose of this study. The individual employee acts as a unit of analysis. The data can be obtained through face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, and observation methods through videotaping or audio recording. The data were collected using questionnaires distributed to 336 respondents using a simple random sampling method.

This study will cover the area of peninsular Malaysia, including Terengganu, Johor, Pulau Pinang, and Selangor. These selected regions are aiming to represent Malaysia’s east, south, north, and west Peninsular, respectively. There are many industries in Malaysia, however, this study focuses on four industries with the highest number of employees, such as manufacturing, accommodation, food and beverage, education, and human health and social work activities. These industries were approached by sending a permission letter to the human resources department, and the researchers sent the self-administered survey to the employees.

The survey sets were divided into three parts: Part A, Part B, and Part C. Part A required respondents to fulfill their basic backgrounds such as age, religion, and current position. Part B was about instruments related to employees’ performance. The last section, Part C, investigated work–family culture. This study uses measurements from Suliman (2001) involving nineteen items. This self-administered questionnaire examines six factors of employees’ performance: work skills, understanding of work duties, qualities of work, the quantity of work, work enthusiasm, and readiness to innovate. The work–family culture instruments are adopted from Thompson, Beauvais, and Lyness [36] which consist of fourteen items with three dimensions, namely, managerial support, organizational time demands, and career consequences. The data were analyzed by using two types of statistics, namely, descriptive statistics (e.g., frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (e.g., exploratory factor analysis, correlation and multiple linear regression by assisting statistical software, namely SPSS version 26). The descriptive statistics analysis is conducted to identify the distribution of respondents who participated in this study. For the inferential statistics, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is employed to discover the factor structure of a measure and to examine its internal reliability. EFA is a statistical method used to uncover the underlying structure of a relatively large set of variables. EFA is a technique within factor analysis whose overarching goal is to identify the underlying relationships between measured variables [37]. In addition, the correlation matrix and multiple linear regression are used to examine the relationship among the studied variables.

4. Results

4.1. Demographic Profile of Respondents

This section reports the results of the demographic profile of respondents.

Table 1. Result of Demography Profile of Respondents.

Demography	Category	Frequency	Percentage
Sex	Male	37	27.80
	Female	96	72.20
Age	19 and below	9	6.80
	20 to 29	40	30.10
	30 to 39	52	39.10
	40 to 49	22	16.50
	50 to 59	10	7.50
Religion	Islam	117	87.97
	Hinduism	2	1.50
	Buddhism	7	5.26
	Christian	6	4.51
	Others	1	0.75
Race	Malay	113	84.96
	Chinese	10	7.52
	Indian	5	3.76
	Others	5	3.76
Marital Status	Single	47	35.34
	Married	84	63.16
	Divorced	2	1.50
Industry	Manufacturing	39	29.32
	Accommodation and FnB	25	18.80
	Education	47	35.34
	Public Administration	22	16.54
State	Terengganu	27	20.30
	Pulau Pinang	17	12.78
	Johor	30	22.56
	Selangor	59	44.36

displays that the research included 37 (27.8%) male and 96 (72.2%) female employees from Terengganu, Pulau Pinang, Johor, and Selangor states, representing each east, north, south, and west Peninsular Malaysia, respectively. The ages ranged from 19 to 59. The majority of participants were married, 84 (63.16%), 47 were single, and 2 were divorced. A large number of respondents were Malays (84.96%), others were Chinese (7.52%), Indian (5%), and others (5%). Regarding industry, 39 respondents were in the manufacturing industry, where 25 persons were in accommodation and food and beverages, 47 in education, and 22 in public administration.

4.2. Exploratory Factor Analysis for Studied Variables

Table 2. Result of Exploratory factor analysis for Work–family Culture.

Code	Items	Component
		1	2	3
Managerial supports
A_6	To be viewed favorably by top management, employees in this organization must constantly put their jobs ahead of their families or personal lives.	0.808
A_5	To get ahead at this organization, employees are expected to work more than 50 h a week, whether at the workplace or at home.	0.798
A_7	In this organization, employees who participate in available work–family programs (e.g., job sharing, part-time work) are viewed as less serious about their careers than those who do not participate in these programs.	0.786
A_8	Many employees are resentful when men in this organization take extended leave to care for newborn or adopted children.	0.765
A_4	Many employees are resentful when women in this organization take extended leave to care for newborn or adopted children.	0.707
A_9	In this organization, it is very hard to leave during the workday to take care of personal or family matters.	0.668
A_2	Employees are regularly expected to put their jobs before their families.	0.649
A_1	Employees are often expected to take work home at night and/or on weekends.	0.599
Organizational time demands
B_3	In this organization, it is generally okay to talk about one’s family at work.		0.793
B_2	In the event of a conflict, managers understand when employees have to put their family first.		0.743
B_4	Higher management in this organization encourages supervisors to be sensitive to employees’ family and personal concerns.		0.714
B_1	In this organization, employees can easily balance their work and family lives.		0.691
B_5	In general, managers in this organization are quite accommodating of family-related needs.		0.677
Career consequences
C_3	This organization is supportive of employees who want to switch to less demanding jobs for family reasons.			0.727
C_4	Middle managers and executives in this organization are sympathetic toward employees’ elder care responsibilities.			0.712
C_2	Middle managers and executives in this organization are sympathetic toward employees’ child care responsibilities.			0.709
C_1	This organization encourages employees to set limits on where work stops and home life begins.			0.693
C_6	In this organization, employees are encouraged to strike a balance between their work and family lives.			0.624
C_5	In this organization, employees who use flex time are less likely to advance their careers than those who do not use flex time.			0.585
KMO and Bartlett’s Test
Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy				0.880
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity		Approx. Chi-Square		3779.149
		Df		171
		Sig.		0.000

displays the results of exploratory factor analysis of independent variables. The results show three components rotated by factor analysis: managerial support, organizational time demands, and career consequences. However, item A_3, i.e., To turn down a promotion or transfer for family-related reasons will seriously hurt one’s career progress, has dropped due to the low factor loadings. This organization shows the high factor loading in managerial support and organizational time demands (redundant factor loading). Therefore, this item is omitted. Meanwhile, all factor loadings of each item are higher than 0.5 for each variable. Besides, the (Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin) KMO and Bartlett’s Test of 0.880 indicated that the sample size of this study is adequate for the exploratory factor analysis. Additionally, the result of Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity is significant and it implies that there are strong relationships between the item in the respective variables.

Table 3. Result of Exploratory Factor Analysis for Employees’ Job Performance.

Code	Items		Component
			1
JP_3	Job responsibilities.		0.86
JP_2	Understand my work goals and requirements.		0.855
JP_1	Know equipment and tools to be used.		0.841
JP_9	Co-operate with my peer(s).		0.733
JP_8	Co-operate with my supervisor(s).		0.724
JP_7	Desire to carry out the job.		0.696
JP_5	Steps, procedures, and methods		0.666
JP_10	Concentrate and give the best to the job.		0.665
JP_6	Skills.		0.627
JP_13	Work speed is satisfactory.		0.816
JP_14	Complete working on time.		0.794
JP_12	Able to complete quality work on time.		0.782
JP_11	Work outcomes are free from errors and accurate.		0.695
JP_15	Used to established rules and procedures when doing my job.		0.636
JP_18	Question old ways of doing things at work.		0.851
JP_17	New ideas in work.		0.656
JP_19	Old established habits when doing the job.		0.652
KMO and Bartlett’s Test
Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy.			0.937
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity		Approx. Chi-Square	4630.15
		Df	136
		Sig.	0.000

presents the result of the exploratory factor analysis of the dependent variable. The result shows that only one component in employees’ job performance is rotated by factor analysis, comprising only one factor included. However, item JP_4: I have sufficient know-how to carry out my work proficiently, and JP_16: I search for fresh new ways of resolving problems when doing my job, indicated redundant factor loadings. Therefore, these items are dropped. Meanwhile, all other factor loadings of each item are higher than 0.50 for each variable.

The results of the normality test are shown in

Table 4. Results of Normality Testing.

Unstandardized Residual	Statistic	Std. Error	p-Value
Skewness	−0.071	0.133
Kurtosis	−0.873	0.265
Kolmogorov–Smirnov	0.043		0.200 *

Note: * This is a lower bound of the true significance.

. The test statistics of skewness (−0.071) and kurtosis (−0.873) are between −1 and +1, and those imply that the data are considered normally distributed [38]. Moreover, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov result shows the lower bound of the true significance with a p-value of 0.200, more than 0.05. It indicates enough evidence to state the data are normally distributed. Data are reduced to 336 after removing outliers by the normality test.

The reliability test results for studied variables can be seen in

Table 5. Results of the reliability of the studied variables.

Variable	Cronbach’s Alpha	Number of Items
Organizational time demands	0.833	5
Managerial supports	0.878	8
Career consequences	0.843	6
Employees’ job performance	0.899	17

. All variables show the Cronbach’s Alpha exceeding 0.8, respectively, which are organizational time demands (0.833), managerial supports (0.878), career consequences (0.843), and employees’ job performance (0.899). It indicates the high internal consistency, which means that the items in the variable are highly correlated. Regarding internal consistency, nearly all item-total correlations in the respective variable are higher than 0.3, indicating good internal consistency.

4.3. Level of Work–Family Culture (WFC) and Employees’ Job Performance

This section presents the results of descriptive statistics using mean and standard deviation to identify the level of WFC dimensions (e.g., organizational time demands, managerial supports, and career consequences) and employees’ job performance.

Table 6. Results of the level of organizational time demand, managerial support, and career consequences.

Variable(s)	Mean	Std. Deviation	Level
Organizational time demands	3.33	1.47	Medium
Managerial supports	4.82	1.38	High
Career consequences	4.50	1.29	High
Employees’ job performance	5.56	0.48	High

displays the results of the descriptive statistics and level of organizational time demand, managerial support, and career consequences. The results indicate the level of organizational time demand categorized as medium with a mean value of 3.33 and a standard deviation of 1.47. The managerial support mean value is 4.82 and 1.38 for standard deviation. Thus, it could be concluded that managerial support is high. The career consequences mean value is 4.50, and the standard deviation is 1.29, reflecting a high level.

4.4. The Correlation Result of Studied Variables

This section reports the correlation result of the studied variables.

Table 7. The results of correlation of all studied variables.

	Variables	1	2	3	4
1	Employees’ job performance	1.000
2	Organizational time demands	0.304	1.000
3	Managerial supports	0.438	0.097	1.000
4	Career consequences	0.526	0.299	0.618	1.000

displays the results of the correlations matrix for all studied variables. This study used three dimensions for measuring work-life culture: organizational time demand, managerial support, career consequences, along with employees’ job performance, assigned as dependent variables. The results of the correlation matrix showed that work–family culture had a positive and significant correlation with employees’ job performance, i.e., organizational time demand (r = 0.304), managerial support (r = 0.438), and career consequences (r = 0.526) at the level of p < 0.01.

Table 8. Testing of Hypotheses.

	Unstandardized Coefficients		t	Sig.	Collinearity Statistics
	Beta	Std. Error			Tolerance	VIF
(Constant)	4.145	0.131	31.555	0.000
Organizational time demands	0.304	0.029	10.299	0.000	0.692	1.445
Managerial supports	0.046	0.023	2.048	0.041	0.874	1.144
Career consequences	−0.038	0.031	−1.229	0.220	0.621	1.611
R Square	0.304		Durbin–Watson		1.744
F	48.244	0.000
a Dependent Variable: Employees’ Job Performance

shows the results of regression analysis of the organizational time demands, managerial supports, and career consequences on employees’ job performance. The Durbin–Watson of 1.744 is in the range of 0 and 4, indicating that the residuals are not correlated. Besides, the variance inflation factor (VIF) for each variable is less than 5, implying no multicollinearity problems among variables in these regression models. Additionally, the ANOVA test of linear regression is significant at 0.05 (F = 48.244), showing that the regression line is a good measure in predicting the organizational time demands, managerial supports and career consequences towards employees’ job performance. Since all the requirements for these tests are fulfilled, then, the regression model is good to be performed. Besides, the R square of 0.304, indicates that around 30.4% of employees’ job performance can be explained by organizational time demands, managerial supports, and career consequences while about 69.6% of employees’ job performances can be explained by other factors.

The organizational time demands show the highest beta of 0.306 and are significant towards employees’ job performances (t = 10.299, p < 0.01). This implies that there is a significant and positive impact of organizational time demands on employees’ job performance. Meanwhile, there are also significant results between managerial supports and employees’ job performances (β = 0.046, t = 2.048, p < 0.05). It indicates that managerial supports positively affect employees’ job performance. Furthermore, there are insignificant results of career consequences towards employees’ job performance (t = −1.229, p > 0.05). This means that career consequences negatively affect employees’ job performance.

5. Discussion

This study adopted three dimensions for measuring work-life culture: organizational time demand, managerial support, career consequences, with employees’ job performance as the dependent variable. The results of the correlation matrix showed that work–family culture had a positive and significant correlation with employees’ job performance. Employee job performance is crucial for the organization because high-performance culture can certainly reduce employee absenteeism and promote a faster work effect with good quality. The high performance will support the organization with benefits. However, the employee needs to be supported by the management to be more productive and to produce a higher performance. The first hypothesis of this study was that managerial support has a significant result on employees’ job performance. This result was supported by Setianto et al. [39] and Chen et al. [40] who stated that management support had a significant positive effect on employees’ job performance.

The second hypothesis of this study was organizational time demands. This issue is one of the major problems in individual life today, and will be even more so in the future, with balancing work along with family responsibilities and duties. Hence, the flexible working hours arrangement appears to be a helpful solution to organizational time demands. This study proved that organizational time demands does have a significant and positive impact on job performance. The result parallels the studies by Ramakrishnan and Arokiasamy [41] and Adebayo Idowu [42], where organization time demands impacts performance. Employers and human resources managers must recognize the benefits of flexible working hours to ensure that employees do not work too hard, lowering their efficiency and, as a result, increasing employee turnover and job stress.

The last hypothesis of this study was career consequences, which portray the insignificant result of career consequences towards employees’ job performance. The result contradicts several studies in the field where career consequence and development were seen as a significant impact on employees’ job performance [43,44,45] and [46]. The difference in the result is believed to be because the employee in the selected research area was focusing more on support from the employer and the time demanded from the employee to complete each task given.

The work–family culture results, as a whole, show similarity with some previous studies by Kumar, Jauhari, Rastogi, and Sivakuamr, [47] and Mukanzi and Senaji, [23] while also contrasting to Wassem [25], who shows the insignificant relationship between work–family culture and employees’ job performance. Even though the setting origin instruments are varied from the unit analysis background, due to globalization, as most countries are now becoming one, the resulting pattern reflects similar polarity with previous research. Career consequences are not an impact on employees’ job performances, and it might be due to the employee feeling at ease about their future career endeavors.

With the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been much abrupt change in working style. Remote work has become normalized, and work and family matters are inseparable. Hence, this hybrid manner of working required more understanding and tolerance from both employees and organizations. Organizations can help assist their employees by applying several options such as flexibility hour policies with employee honesty to complete all duties and responsibilities given within the deadline. This is one reflection of managerial support for a work-life balance culture.

6. Conclusions

In conclusion, this study has identified the factor structure of work–family culture and employees’ job performance. Work–family culture consists of organizational time demands (5 items), managerial support (8 items), career consequences (6 items) and employees’ job performance (17 items). Additionally, the level of managerial support, career consequences, and job performance were categorized as high. Furthermore, the level of organizational time demand was categorized as medium. In addition, organizational time demands and managerial support have a significant positive effect on employees’ job performance. Therefore, the results of this study hope to give a solution and help both employees and organizations find the right balance between these two main responsibilities in employees’ life, which are work, as well as family. Moreover, this study contributes to the body of knowledge in providing which components in work–family culture have the largest implications for employees’ performance. This study has focused on three factors in work–family culture balance, involving the organizational time demands, managerial support, and career support, which will bring a huge effect in balancing the two major roles of the employee.

Flexible hours are one of the best options which the employer can offer to help with time demands by the organization. The most important thing expected by employees are their performance and output. Therefore, as long as all the tasks and job descriptions have been fulfilled, time should not be an issue for employees and employers. For future studies, the researchers suggest looking at other factors which might impact employees’ job performance, such as motivation, rewards, or leadership style. Except for the methods used in this paper, some of the most representative computational intelligence algorithms can be used to solve the problems, such as monarch butterfly optimization (MBO) [48], earthworm optimization algorithm (EWA) [49], elephant herding optimization (EHO) [50], moth search (MS) algorithm [51], slime mold algorithm (SMA) [52], hunger games search (HGS) [53], Runge–Kutta optimizer (RUN) [54], colony predation algorithm (CPA) [55], and Harris hawks optimization (HHO) [56]. The respondent’s scope can also be widened to other industries and countries as the performances not only matter for these four selected industries and countries. This study is limited by focusing on employees in selected industries in Peninsular Malaysia only. A more in-depth study of the respondents has covered all employees in all industries with various backgrounds of races, religions, and working cultures [57].