The global company Gallup (of Gallup Poll fame) has deve-loped a service focused on measuring the well-being of employees. They claim that employee well-being has a direct and significant impact on the bottom line and therefore provides companies with a financial and competitive advantage. Gallup describes employee well-being as being a strategy for the sustainable growth of the business. The mythical Thesaurus provides words such as happiness, comfort, security and welfare as alternatives to the word well-being. In the past there have been surveys measuring the level of happiness of the Maltese, from humanistic perspective rather than an economic perspective.
This week I would like to take this notion of well-being and apply it to our country’s economy. The question that I would like to pose is “Where does Malta’s economic well-being originate from?” I do not wish to attempt to answer the question of how high or low our economic well-being is. I would simply like to adapt Gallup’s notion to a country rather than an individual business, and to focus exclusively on the economic perspective, thereby making other perspectives subject to the economic one.
The first aspect is most certainly the financial one. Economic wellbeing needs to be linked to growth in the economy, as expressed by the gross domestic product. Admittedly, this measure that has served us so well for the last decades is being seen as too restrictive as a measure of economic growth.
On the other hand, it is difficult to think of our economy’s well-being as being high if we do not register economic growth. Moreover, that economic growth needs to be fairly distributed across the whole economy, that is, it should trickle down to the low income earners and needs to be felt across all economic activities. Another point to consider with regard to the financial aspect of our economic well-being is whether we are using our resources efficiently and effectively.
The second aspect of our economic well-being is the people – our most valued asset, as we have so often been told. Is there enough job creation in the economy? Are we upgrading our skills in line with today’s and tomorrow’s requirements? Are our employees doing jobs that provide them with satisfaction and a sense of fulfilment? Do we have idle or under-employed human resources in our economy?
These and other questions are very relevant to sustain our economic growth. Looking at other countries, one does note that their income per capita may be higher than ours, but the level of skills of their workforce is much lower, with the result that they will not be able to sustain their economic growth in future.
The next aspect is our social cohesion, as reflected in two elements. First is the human relationships that exist within our country and second is the pursuit of the common good. Both are essential ingredients for economic well-being.
A country that does not enjoy social cohesion is never too far from having internal conflicts. Such internal conflicts, by their very nature, inhibit economic growth. The pursuit of the common good is a theme that I have often mentioned in my contributions. We can only speak of economic wellbeing if society is better off, and not simply individuals.
The final aspect is health. Does the population enjoy a healthy lifestyle? What is the level of primary healthcare? What is the level of the qualtiy of life? Economic sustainability requires a healthy population.
When we speak of Vision 2015 and the transforming of Malta into a centre of excellence, we need to appreciate that, although we are essentially talking of an economic strategy, there is more to it than just economics. There are several other factors that will help us concretise this vision. It is these other factors that will render economic growth sustainable and, therefore, we need to appreciate that our economic well-being as a country is not only about growth of the gross domestic product, but also about a number of peripheral issues that I have touched upon.