Any employer would tell you that the employment situation has become impossible. The results of the 2022 Misco HR Developments Survey show that staff retention is the main strategic objective of the HR function, while the issue of salary demands is, by far, the key challenge. Salary demands feature as the main reason for experiencing recruitment difficulties, followed by a lack of experienced applicants and a lack of job applications.

Staff turnover has increased when compared to last year and this is mostly attributable to better compensation packages offered by other employers.

These results would tend to indicate that employers are being faced with a four-pronged challenge – a demand for higher salaries from employees; employees and job applicants who do not necessarily have the appropriate skills that meet their requirements; a difficulty in attracting talent; and a difficulty in retaining staff.

Anecdotes abound. Employers have experienced concluding an agreement on Friday for the employee to start on Monday, but the employee never turns up on Monday. When the employer enquires as to why (the employee did not have the decency to inform the employer they will not be taking up the job), they are told that, over the weekend, the employee received a job offer at a higher salary and so accepted this second job.

Employers have also experienced being asked for a salary of €26,000 by fresh graduates, because that is what they have been advised to expect. Who told them this, whether it is family or friends or an academic, is still unknown.

There have also been employers who were asked for salaries that were totally out of line with the market and do not reflect their skills, capabilities and experience. And every week brings up new experiences.

We used to be made to feel afraid of the boat people coming from North Africa, but we have been nicely coerced into accepting persons coming from Asia

Employers are being held hostage and some have decided to pay the ransom, not looking further than their nasal bridge. This situation is unsustainable. It is unsustainable for individual businesses and for the country. Eventually, it will also come back to bite employees. It has not been helped at all by a public sector which is equally hungry for staff and has decided to compete head-on with the private sector in terms of wages.

We have sought to remedy the situation by importing non-Maltese workers. Initially, most of the workers that came were EU nationals and were brought here for the skills they possessed and which Maltese workers did not seem to have. However, over the years, we have moved from just over 44,000 non-Maltese workers in 2017 to just over 76,000 in 2021, 55 per cent of whom are non-EU nationals. Most of these workers have not added one iota to our skills base.

We used to be made to feel afraid of the boat people coming from North Africa, but we have been nicely coerced into accepting persons coming from Asia.

We have rendered ourselves more vulnerable as our social welfare system is now dependent on them. They pay national insurance and tax but get little to no benefits in return. With our population reaching 520,000, of whom around 115,000 are non-Maltese, we must admit that we have gone beyond saturation point and need to look at things strategically.

The here and now is becoming unbearable, let alone what it will be like in future. The importation of foreign labour cannot be seen as a solution to the current and expected recruitment situation in Malta.

One elephant in the room is the price of property. With persons earning an average wage affording to pay only 75 per cent of the average price of property, wages are being pushed upwards by property prices.

Employers need to appreciate this point and speak up about it. Businesses are being rendered uncompetitive because of property prices.

Another elephant in the room is that a salary has become a status symbol. If you are earning less than a certain amount, you would be ashamed to admit it to friends and family. Young people seem to vie with each other as to who was able to extract the highest salary from their employers, irrespective of what they are capable of doing.

I strongly believe that employers need to take a stand. Those who have invested in this country because they believed in it and not in the hope of making a quick buck on the back of our tax regime, cannot just see their business collapse because of an impossible employment situation. There needs to be an increased awareness that salary demands have reached unsustainable levels, rendering businesses uncompetitive.