The EU is facing formidable demographic challenges. While today there is little consensus on how these challenges can be addressed through controlled immigration, there is broader agreement on the need for employers to give their employees certain rights to enable them to care for their dependents from birth and beyond.

In 2019, the European Parliament approved the Work-Life Balance Directive that member states must implement by August 2022. The EU directive aims to provide parents and carers with greater work flexibility and an improved level of work-life balance.

The EU’s overreaching strategy is to support parents and carers in the job market, encourage higher participation of mothers in paid employment and boost a better share of leave arrangements between women and men.

Malta has still not implemented the directive in full. However, pressure is building up from civic groups to speed up the implementation. Two thousand persons signed a petition to parliament calling on it to implement paternity and parental leave in Malta under the directive as soon as possible. This petition was created by ‘Positive Birth Malta’, organised by midwives, women and the childbearing community.

Implementing the Work-Life Balance Directive should act as an opportunity to rectify specific issues that may not fall strictly within the scope of the EU regulation. Fathers who are not married should have the same rights as those who are. Families taking long-term care of chronically sick children or elderly relatives should also be supported so that working-age family members would be encouraged to join the labour market.

In 2019, the initial reaction of the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises was to shoot down the directive. The Malta Employers’ Association said it was resisting “any further financial burdens on employers”. Some politicians have argued that the government should use taxpayers’ money to pay for this social measure.

The pandemic has shown how the thinking about the role of government in the economy is changing fast. When things go drastically wrong, it is only the state’s resources that can help the economy from collapsing into a deep recession or even a depression. But since money does not grow on trees, any government would have to juggle the different priorities that could help the economy grow and preserve jobs.

One can understand the reluctance of employers to increase their operating expenses. Small enterprises are even more vulnerable as the workload spilling onto other employees from parental leave would have to be spread to a smaller number of people. But human resource strategies need to reflect the realities in which today’s businesses are operating.

While increasing legal obligations cause some hardship to employers, all employers must face the paradox of caring about the success of their business and, at the same time, caring for the well-being of their employees.

Significant changes are taking place in the workplace. This is not just because of the way that COVID has disrupted the old model of working but also because of the growing recognition that both small and large businesses need to improve their employees’ general well-being and work-life balance, partly to reduce the risk of burnout as well as in the design of policies that will attract the best talent to their company.

The government has a role to play in supporting parents with heavier family responsibilities. Still, employers cannot abdicate from their increasing responsibilities at a time when new realities are creeping into the labour market.