The SME Barometer of the Chamber of SMEs highlighted that one of the main problems facing the country is overpopulation. Yet the main challenge their businesses face is employee shortage. Given that the Maltese population is what it is, the answer for meeting employee shortage has been, for the last five years or so, to employ third-country nationals (TCNs).
After we joined the European Union, we did have an influx of employees from EU member states. A number came because we required skills we did not have locally, especially with the advent of iGaming companies, new investment in the industrial sector such as aircraft maintenance and the pharmaceutical sector, and the development of the ICT, back office financial services, and the tourism sectors. Others came in search of a job which they could not find in their own country.
A number went back for various reasons, such as Malta not meeting their career aspirations, living in Malta became more expensive, and remote working became more of a possibility with the onset of the coronavirus. This was when several Maltese employers consciously turned to employing TCNs, especially those employers who needed to make hay while, in their perceptions, the sun shone, and wanted to rely on low-cost labour.
TCNs came by the thousands and now, when it is too late in the day, we realised that our population has grown completely out of proportion when compared to our geographical size, and that our health, roads, electricity, water and drainage infrastructure cannot take it.
If we want our human resources to drive our economy up the value chain, we must give them value ourselves
The issue of overpopulation is a cause for concern not only for businesses, but also for the population in general as social and opinion surveys show. However, we are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. It may seem there is no way out of this impasse. But I believe there is, if we just change our mindset.
We need to think to look at our human resources from a different perspective, both nationally and at the level of the individual employer. There is consensus in our country that our human resources is our most important resource. It is what drives our value added, and if we want our economy to move up the value chain, we need take on a more strategic view of our human resources.
The first step is to measure our productivity, across the board – in both the public sector and the private sector. Productivity management has become a must and we need to understand what value certain categories of employees are giving to our economy, and our country as a whole. We need to ask whether we have employees in our labour force who are giving little to no contribution. If we do, then we have to call this by its real name – waste of resources. We are too small a country to allow for such wastage.
If we want our human resources to drive our economy up the value chain, we must give them value ourselves. To my mind, the rock and the hard place I referred to in the title of this week’s contribution is not so much whether to limit the influx of low-cost labour given our overpopulation, but whether we are willing to divert public financial resources from wasteful public expenditure to the strategic development of our human resources.