Minister for the Environment, Energy and Enterprise Miriam Dalli, together with the Chamber of Commerce, the Family Business Office and Malta Enterprise, launched training courses aimed for family businesses.
Family businesses amount to more than 70% of small and medium enterprises, and face particular challenges that require different needs. The training courses will be offered for free, and sessions will be held online on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. The sessions focus on how family businesses have to adapt their business if they want to ensure their existence.
Minister Miriam Dalli urged family businesses to be at the forefront in adapting these processes to be resilient.
“It is not always easy for these businesses to adapt to certain processes, such as recruiting non-family members, set up a board, adapt to new technologies or to perform auditing processes and management that are well-known on a global level. These are the challenges that we need to address if we want the Maltese economy to continue to be competitive and resilient, as well as addressing the needs of our businesses. As a government, we are offering assistance to businesses and continuous training for employees; however the operations deserve all the support during the renewal of the business,” explained Minister Miriam Dalli.
The sessions have been drafted by Chairperson of the Family Business Committee within the Chamber of Commerce Silvan Mifsud. He remarked that, “Challenges brought by the pandemic and the new challenges faced due to geopolitical tensions require family businesses to have better structure, take strategic decisions, and be more flexible and more efficient to adapt to the needs of the market that they operate in. To achieve this aim, we felt the need to offer training specifically in this regard”.
Dr Joe Gerada, the Regulator of the Family Business Office, explained how these sessions are additional tools amongst other schemes offered by the Family Business Office in collaboration with the Malta Enterprise. “Through the knowledge gathered from meeting with these businesses on a daily basis, we felt the need to provide these sessions, whilst we urge all those interested to participate in this short course.”
“It is a pleasure for us to assist family businesses with these training sessions. This goes beyond other schemes available for businesses, including providing operations assistance; schemes to improve processes to make businesses more sustainable and digital; investment in machinery and offering training to employees. All this whilst offering a holistic assistance, so that local businesses will continue to flourish and be resilient,” stated Malta Enterprise CEO Kurt Farrugia.
Training sessions can be accessed on Chamber of Commerce social media platforms as from 20th June.
