Following the Budget announced by Minister Scicluna, one of the added benefits to all those working in Malta is an additional day of vacation leave, increasing the total number of leave to 26 days for all employees within the country. This news undoubtedly brings with it several smirks as employees have won an additional day of leave again for the upcoming year.
In addition to this, Government is working towards a scenario in which employees are compensated for all ‘lost’ public holidays when they fall on weekends.
As impressive as this may sound, there is another less attractive side to look at. To the business entity, this means an additional substantial expense. If we take an organisation of 20 employees with an average salary of 20,000 Euro yearly per employee, this means that the business loses 77 Euro per employee (a total of 1,540 Euro), due to this extra day of leave. Needless to say, such expenses need to be made up for and the easiest way out would be through reductions of yearly bonuses and salary increases. Another solution would be to increase the cost of selling which will still impact the consumer negatively. With that said, Government needs to ascertain that business are well equipped to withstand such changes to ensure that such measures do not backfire on businesses.
