Maltese companies wake up: why ignoring employee engagement is costing the island its best talent

**Why Maltese companies can’t afford to ignore employee engagement any longer**

Walk into any Valletta office at 4.30 p.m. and you’ll hear the same refrain: “Narak ghada, ey?” Laptops snap shut, the lift fills with the scent of Hugo Boss and pastizzi, and by 5 p.m. the city’s wine bars are already humming. It’s a rhythm that feels quintessentially Maltese—work hard, live harder—but beneath the bonhomie a quiet crisis is brewing. Latest JobsPlus figures show 28 % of local employees are “disengaged”, a number that jumps to 41 % among 25- to 34-year-olds. In a country where the labour pool is smaller than Mosta’s population, that’s not an HR headache; it’s an economic hand-brake.

“Disengagement here doesn’t look like open revolt,” explains Stephanie Calleja, partner at Deloitte Malta. “It looks like talented young Maltese quietly accepting remote jobs with Berlin start-ups while keeping the desk warm for the paycheck.” The cost? Lost productivity, ballooning turnover and—crucially—an exodus of innovation just when Malta is trying to diversify beyond iGaming and construction.

**The village effect**

Ask any foreign investor why they set up shop on the rock and they’ll gush about English, EU passporting and, whisper it, the 5 % tax refund. Rarely mentioned is the Maltese village effect: the invisible safety net of cousins, neighbours and ex-classmates that gets things done when official channels stall. Yet that same social glue unravels inside under-engaged workplaces. “When trust drops, people revert to family networks,” says Prof. Andrew Azzopardi, who lectures organisational behaviour at UoM. “Projects stall because deliverables sit in someone’s WhatsApp chat instead of the CRM.”

Investing in engagement, therefore, isn’t imported Californian fluff; it’s a defence of Malta’s most undervalued asset—its tight-knit social capital.

**From festa to feedback culture**

Anyone who has helped haul a saint’s statue through Gozo’s cobbled streets knows Maltese teamwork can move literal tonnes. The challenge is channelling that festa energy into Monday-morning KPIs. At pharmaceuticals start-up Nemysis, CEO Roberta Sammut did it by borrowing from the village feast playbook: daily 9 a.m. “band marches” (stand-up meetings), quarterly “festi tal-impjegati” where staff showcase pet projects over ħobż biż-żejt and Cisk. Result: staff turnover under 7 %, half the industry average, and a pipeline of patents that has multinational suitors circling.

**Euro-accredited, Malta-tailored**

Government is nudging firms to follow suit. Last October, Malta Enterprise doubled the cash-back rate on approved training to 70 %, while the newly launched National Employee Engagement Awards offers winners a fast-track to EU social-fund grants. “But you can’t photocopy Google’s slides and call it strategy,” warns Charmaine Gauci, whose HR consultancy specialises in Mediterranean work cultures. “Maltese employees score high on power-distance; they want to feel heard, but they also want to see the CEO sweat the details.” Her advice: pair 360-degree feedback with transparent metrics—think public dashboards in Maltese and English, not anonymous surveys that disappear into the HR black hole.

**Community dividend**

The payoff extends beyond balance sheets. Engaged employees volunteer 31 % more hours, according to the latest NSO survey, a boon for Malta’s overstretched NGOs. When Atlas Insurance introduced paid “community leave”, staff rebuilt the playground at Siġġiewi primary in a single weekend. “Suddenly our brand wasn’t just a billboard on the Coast Road,” says HR manager Karl Borg. “We became the company that gave our kids a safer place to play.”

**The takeaway**

With full employment, rising rents and AI snapping at routine jobs, Malta’s competitive edge will hinge on how fiercely people want to show up—not just physically, but mentally. Engagement isn’t beanbags or free breakfast; it’s the strategic decision to treat employees as citizens of the same village that once hoisted cathedral stones with rope and devotion. Invest in that, and the 5 % tax refund becomes a footnote. Invest in that, and “Narak ghada” becomes a promise, not an escape.