AI is being used to help make hiring, promotion and dismissal decisions at 15% of Maltese companies surveyed, compared with 9% across the EU. The figures point to a notable workplace use of AI, though they do not mean the software is making those decisions alone.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
MaltaToday reports that a Eurobarometer survey of SMEs and mid-caps found 41% of Maltese businesses engage with workplace AI, broadly in line with the EU figure of 42%. The survey defines staff-related decisions as individual personnel actions involving hiring, promotions or firing.
Among Maltese businesses using AI, 59% said it makes suggestions while a person makes the final decision. Another 16% said AI makes decisions that can later be revised by a human; fully automated decisions without human intervention accounted for 2%. The survey included 260 Maltese companies.
Why it matters
These figures distinguish AI-assisted HR from systems given the final say. They also show why “AI in the workplace” can mean very different things: a tool that suggests a shortlist is not the same as one that dismisses someone without human involvement.
The same survey found that 12% of Maltese enterprises use AI-assisted recruitment or candidate screening, against an EU average of 11%. Those are reported business practices and employer views, not independently verified measures of better hiring or working conditions.
Our read
The useful headline is not that robots are hiring the nation. It is that AI already has a foothold in decisions affecting workers, while the survey says human oversight remains common. That is worth watching closely, especially where a decision can shape someone’s livelihood.
What to watch
- Whether future surveys show the share of AI-assisted HR decisions rising.
- How employers explain human review in practice, not just in policy.
- Whether workers are told when AI has informed a decision.
Discussion spark: Should employers have to tell workers whenever AI has influenced a hiring, promotion or dismissal decision, even when a person makes the final call?
Sources and evidence
- Maltese firms use AI in hiring, firing and promotion decisions (30 October 2026, 00:00 UTC)
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.