Indika Thilakarathne from Sri Lanka was recently awarded the 2023 ‘Employee of the Year’ Award at Vivian. He is Vivian’s pharmaceutical warehouse supervisor and has been working at Vivian for the past year. But his story at the company started a few years ago.

“It’s a bit of a longer story actually,” Indika said in an interview.

“In Sri Lanka, I used to teach English at two universities. But my wife, who is an artist in Sri Lanka, wanted to come to Malta when a client here had acquired one of her pieces. So, we came here four years ago so that my wife could continue her artistic activity here and perhaps start our business together.”

As the couple started to settle in Malta, the COVID pandemic broke out.

“We found ourselves here for good,” Indika said. “That was when my wife’s client, who had bought the art piece, found me my first job with Vivian, whom I first joined as a warehouse operator.”

After 10 months, he started working as a contact centre representative with a bank and, a year later, he was promoted to recruitment officer. But one day he learnt that Vivian was looking for an experienced warehouse supervisor and he got the job.

Indika recalls that it was a very challenging time because he did not only need to refresh his memory and re-learn his job, but it was also when Vivian was moving to new and bigger premises.

“This move promised more responsibilities but made it also more exciting. The main challenge we kept facing was ‘how do you move a whole company set-up in just five days?’. But we managed.”

Asked about how he feels about his job, Indika says he feels very satisfied, especially given that today he is responsible for a team of eight people.

“My team is a multicultural one. Besides two Maltese, there is a Bulgarian, two Indians, two from Nepal and another fellow Sri Lankan − which helps me feel even more at home!”

We are all trying to make a better life

He reports directly to the operations manager at Vivian and is responsible for the handling of all operations within the warehouse, from leading the team to incoming and outgoing stock and anything in between, such as ensuring the right temperature conditions according to the storage requirements of each pharmaceutical or medical device in storage.

“I like to believe that the way I work makes it easier for everyone – be it my team, my drivers, the cleaners or my operations manager, and notwithstanding my responsibilities, there’s no harm in taking initiative if that makes it easier for others.”

He tries to abide by his motto ‘make the next step easy for the other person’ in everything he does and in so doing, he sets an example to his colleagues.

“The management and my colleagues at Vivian are very respectful people. What I like best about the workplace is the sense of belonging that I feel in the company. They seem to want to nurture this feeling in everyone and probably that’s what makes me love my job so much.”

Indika did not forget his roots as an English teacher and also dedicates time to helping his colleagues improve their English because he believes that better communication helps the work flow better.

Asked whether he is happy in Malta, he said: “After four years living in Malta, I know very well how some Maltese feel about third-country nationals and it bothers me a bit because we all come with our life story and we are all trying to make a better life.

“But I love Malta. I live with my wife in Cospicua where I have found a very beautiful community, and we are very nicely settled there. Every day, morning and evening, we pray and in our free time, we work on our art.

“We also like to visit different places around Malta because we love this country’s history, which I find fascinatingly enchanting, especially Mdina, Valletta and San Anton Gardens because as lovers of nature, we like to be surrounded by trees.”

Vivian’s managing director, Denise Borg Manché, described Indika as a very beautiful person who laughs a lot and is always wearing a smile on his face.

“People love him, and he is always full of initiative and so ready to help. In his job he is so meticulous that our teams found it very easy to vote for him as Vivian’s employee of the year,” she said.

“At Vivian, we have always believed in equality, and we constantly seek to promote multiculturalism and integration at our company. Indika gave us a beautiful opportunity to learn more about his culture and about how different cultures can effectively enrich the workplace. We are currently in the process of reconfirming our Equality Mark,” Borg Manché concluded.