Losing top talent is painful. It reduces your company’s stock of assets and often affects team morale, customer relationships and technical expertise. How are enterprises dealing with talent nowadays? Is the management of talent even more important in a small island state economy like Malta? And what does it take to engage employees and build a successful corporate culture? Questions such as these will be answered in detail and explained in depth at this year’s annual HR Conference on the topic of talent management organised by the Foundation for Human Resources Development (FHRD).

Maltese companies are all competing for the attention of new hires, the loyalty of existing employees and the reputation of being a good and innovative place to work. It is no secret that in today’s economy talent is the most strategic asset and people are the greatest creator of value. This trend will continue and amplify in the future and will lead to a constant increase on the value of talent per se as well as the costs associated in replacing that talent should it be lost. Estimates suggest that the cost of employee turnover ranges from 50 to 200% of the employee’s annual salary based on the type and level s/he holds.

Specific talent shortages will increase in the next few years, in the process limiting the ability of companies to expand and in turn, jeopardise their own chances of survival. A recent survey by the US-based association World at Work points out that in the western world 20% of employees plan to look for a new job in the next two years while another 20% plan to leave within the next five years. All this, coupled with the baby boomers retiring, the increasing specialisation and technical demands of jobs, global competition for talent and education systems not keeping up with the demand of businesses, has created quite a headache for today’s HR community. Few companies can state nowadays to have an adequate supply of talent and a high-quality, engaged workforce. 

When it comes to talent retention in Malta, some aspects are all the more intensified. While the single market has opened Malta’s employers to a wider pool of talent, job mobility within the EU remains low. Sectors such as the financial services, back-office work, aviation, computer gaming and online betting have faced a number of skills shortages. Malta’s growth over the past few years has created a situation of significant skills mismatch. HR practitioners in Malta are increasingly facing numerous hitches in trying to source the right talent at the right time. It is even more difficult to retain such a cohort of people in their current job and ensuring that the right work place environment is created and maintained.

Going forward, in order to attract, retain and engage their employees, organisations need to think about developing a sustainable employee value proposition that is flexible and constantly updated. Efforts such as the introduction of organisation-wide reward programmes with different strata, business-centred leadership programmes that are tied to companies’ stratagems and more emphasis on performance management and employee learning and development should assist entities in nurturing their internal talent.

The ability to effectively hire, retain, deploy and engage talent – at all levels – is really the only true competitive advantage an organisation possesses. Engaged employees lead to happy customers, which are the key to revenue growth and profits. As companies around the world come to realise that if they can attract and maintain top talent, they will have a competitive advantage vis-à-vis other market players.

This year’s annual HR conference will be held on 17 October at the Radisson Blu Golden Sands.

For further information visit www.fhrd.org/2014-conference or send an email to

Marvin Cuschieri on [email protected]