The Complete Guide to Using AI as a HR Professional in Malta in 2025

HR professionals in Malta in 2025 face a pivotal moment: generous public investment, a proactive Malta Digital Innovation Authority and sector pilots - from AI traffic management to BreastScan radiology - mean AI is moving from experiment to everyday practice, but the legal and ethical scaffolding is complex (see the detailed legal primer from Ganado Advocates).

With EU rules like the AI Act and GDPR (Article 22) already shaping employment uses, Maltese regulators (MDIA, MFSA, IDPC) expect human oversight, transparency and careful procurement; national debate at the Malta Chamber forum underscored the urgent need for reskilling and governance.

This guide translates those rules and risks into practical HR actions - how to classify hiring and monitoring tools, run safe pilots, and upskill staff - while pointing to hands-on training like the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - Nucamp registration to build prompt-writing and workplace AI skills quickly.

Think of this as a short, pragmatic roadmap for protecting people, complying with regulators, and using AI to lift productivity without losing the human touch.

“The need to carefully manage potential risks means that a successful framework for AI integration requires more than investment in technology. It necessitates a comprehensive, cross-functional approach to decisions, bringing IT, data privacy, legal, compliance, risk management and business leadership, among others, to the table to ensure AI systems are safe, ethical and compliant. For a period of time, it is also recommended that a human validate the results and outputs to avoid unintended consequences.” - Mark Bloom

For HR teams in Malta the promise of AI is painfully practical: tools that automate resume screening, candidate ranking and job matching can shrink slow hiring cycles and help combat local skills shortages, while Applicant Tracking Systems and talent‑intelligence platforms let organisations spot internal movers before posting new roles - a vital edge when the best candidate is often on the market for less than two weeks.

But opportunity comes with risk: AI can boost efficiency and personalise L&D and performance coaching (see the big-picture benefits in “AI in HR: Benefits, Examples, and Trends for 2025”), yet it also raises real concerns about biased models, data privacy and employee trust unless HR builds governance, vendor monitoring and role-based upskilling into every rollout.

Malta's tight labour market and rising labour costs make the upside tempting, but the safe path is deliberate - pilot with human oversight, validate outputs, and link AI adoption to clear reskilling plans and change management so AI augments human judgment rather than replacing it (practical local steps and ATS guidance are covered in Talexio's analysis of recruitment challenges in Malta for 2025).

The result: AI that frees HR to focus on strategy and people, not paperwork - provided transparency and training move at least as fast as the technology.

“Be careful when applying AI, but don't let an overabundance of caution prevent your organization from realizing its benefits.” - Andrea Lagan

Across Malta HR teams are already applying the same practical AI plays seen globally - using generative models to draft job descriptions, personalise learning paths and shift routine tasks so people can focus on higher‑value work - an approach well captured in Deloitte's

Generative AI and the Future of Work

briefing.

On the operations side, AI agents and chatbots are handling onboarding and offboarding flows, routing benefits and leave requests, and powering 24/7 self‑service knowledge bases so HR can scale support without ballooning headcount, as explained in Zendesk's guide to AI in HR. Locally, that global playbook is being tested through MDIA grants and TechXpo showcases and by talent‑intelligence platforms that map skills and promote internal mobility - tools like Eightfold AI can help spot retention risks and reduce external hires - so Maltese employers are piloting concrete use cases while also preparing for the regulatory and governance checks that come with broader rollout.

The result is a pragmatic blend: automation for routine processes, generative AI to accelerate content and learning, and talent‑intelligence to keep people development human and strategic - plus the occasional vivid win, like an AI agent resolving new‑hire questions at midnight so a recruiter can focus on a strategic hire the next morning.

Will HR professionals be replaced by AI in Malta? The short answer: unlikely as wholesale replacement, but very likely that many HR tasks will be reshaped - screening, routine scheduling and first‑line queries can be automated, while judgment, legal compliance and people strategy stay human.

Malta's own exposure to AI is high (the IMF notes around 60% of the labour market is highly exposed), yet national analysis and local market conditions point the other way: a tight 2025 labour market with acute skills shortages means HR teams remain central to hiring, upskilling and retention (see the state of hiring in Malta for 2025).

Worker surveys echo this split globally - most expect AI to affect their jobs, but roughly as many foresee augmentation as displacement - so the pragmatic Maltese path is augmentation plus governance rather than headcount cuts.

Legal and regulatory guidance in Malta also emphasises human oversight, bias checks and governance, so HR roles that combine people insight, regulatory literacy and AI‑management skills will be the most secure.

The vivid takeaway: AI can take over repetitive screening in minutes, but it can't yet read context, cultural fit or settle a regulatory dispute at a labour tribunal - those are still quintessential HR responsibilities.

“AI has the potential to transform the recruitment and talent acquisition process, analyzing vast amounts of assessment and profile data - but the human role in managing and interpreting this data shouldn't be under‑estimated.” - James Pilkington, Director, Technology Industry Data Solutions, Aon

When asking “who is the AI expert in Malta?” HR leaders should think less about a single guru and more about a compact ecosystem: the Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA) is the national hub driving AI policy, sandboxes and voluntary certification while funding applied research, and the Information and Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) has been given central oversight for fundamental‑rights and data protection aspects under the EU framework - in short, MDIA and IDPC are the first ports of call for compliance and practical guidance; sector regulators such as the MFSA and MGA will steer finance and gaming use‑cases, and bodies like the National Accreditation Board, the Malta – EDIH hub, University of Malta and MCAST supply research, skills and testing capacity.

For HR teams that need legal clarity, Ganado Advocates' local primer explains liability, IP and workplace risks, and for pilot projects the MDIA page outlines sandboxes and conformity steps - while commercial partners (Microsoft collaborations, talent‑intelligence vendors such as Eightfold AI) are already being used in Maltese pilots.

The proof‑point that Malta is doing more than talking: the MDIA Applied Research Grant has awarded €284,217 across nine projects, signalling real funding for real experiments that HR can join or learn from.

“preparing for this responsibility by ensuring that we introduce the necessary legislative amendments and build the required expertize.” - Ian Deguara

Malta's AI policy for HR is dominated by the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, so local HR teams must treat EU rules as the primary compliance frame: the Act uses a risk‑based approach that explicitly lists recruitment and employee‑management tools as “high‑risk” and therefore subject to strict duties on transparency, data quality, human oversight and monitoring (EU Artificial Intelligence Act overview and compliance guidance), while general‑purpose models (the LLMs and image generators behind many HR chatbots) carry their own provider obligations from August 2025; in practice that means telling candidates when AI is used, running risk assessments and GDPR DPIAs where personal data are processed, training staff for AI literacy, and tracking vendor compliance rather than assuming a cloud service covers your legal exposure (for HR‑specific obligations see Hunton Andrews Kurth AI and HR compliance briefing).

Put another way: treat the Act's calendar like a recruitment shortlist - miss the key dates (AI‑literacy and prohibitions from 2 Feb 2025; GPAI and governance rules from 2 Aug 2025; most high‑risk obligations from 2 Aug 2026) and the organisation risks steep enforcement measures alongside operational disruption; start mapping tools, roles and vendor contracts now and document decisions so your next pilot isn't derailed by an avoidable compliance gap (EU AI Act implementation timeline and key dates).

“Transparency about the use of AI in application processes is required by law and is important for building trust.” - Marian Härtel

Data protection, monitoring and algorithmic management are front‑and‑centre for Maltese HR teams because recruitment systems, performance scoring and any systematic employee monitoring are treated as high‑risk processing under the GDPR as implemented in Malta (Data Protection Act 2018), so start by mapping who controls what data and why, then run a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) before piloting tools.

A DPIA is specifically required for systematic and extensive evaluation, automated decision‑making, profiling or large‑scale processing of special categories of data - details the local regulator sets out in its guidance on DPIAs (Malta IDPC guidance on Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs)), and practical templates and triggers are available from GDPR.eu to help structure that assessment (GDPR.eu Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) template and guidance).

Treat employee consent cautiously (unequal bargaining power can make consent unreliable), document a lawful basis and the balancing test, consider whether a Data Protection Officer is required, and ensure breach plans meet the 72‑hour notification window; HR teams that skip these steps risk regulatory enforcement and large fines under the GDPR - a tangible reminder that governance and vendor contracts are as important as the model accuracy itself (DLA Piper Malta data protection overview (Data Protection Act 2018)).

Bias, fairness and non‑discrimination are not abstract compliance checkboxes in Malta - they are practical risks that HR teams must test for at every stage of an AI‑augmented hiring workflow.

Start with the basics: use a multi‑pronged selection process (psychometric or skills tests plus structured interviews and work samples) rather than relying on a single automated score, because research shows combining methods improves predictive validity and helps avoid the “wild‑west” roll‑out of unvalidated tests (see the evidence and cautions in the resource below).

Does Pre‑Employment Testing Help Prevent Bad Hires?

Treat background checks and screening as lawful but tightly governed activities: Maltese practice requires candidate consent and careful handling of personal data, so follow local guidance such as the Malta IDPC Employment Sector FAQs when collecting or sharing records.

Practical tests to run before scaling a tool include: A/B validation against real performance outcomes; subgroup analysis to spot disparate impact by age, gender or ethnicity; and a rolling evaluation plan that tracks hires and adjusts cut‑scores or features over time.

Keep governance simple but auditable - document why a test was chosen, how consent was obtained, and how results feed into decisions - and remember Malta's anti‑discrimination framework when defining job‑relatedness.

Finally, treat third‑party vendors like partners: verify their validation studies, insist on candidate consent for background checks (see Multiplier's Malta guidance), and log ongoing accuracy and fairness checks so one costly bad hire doesn't turn into a reputational or regulatory crisis.

Procurement of AI in Malta needs to be as much about contracts and governance as it is about features and dashboards: deployers remain legally responsible for harms or defects, so HR teams should insist on back‑to‑back obligations that push data‑quality, security and compliance duties down the vendor chain, require audit and explainability rights, and spell out incident response and liability caps before pilots go live - practical guidance on these allocation steps is set out in the Ganado Advocates Malta AI legal and procurement guide (2025) (Ganado Advocates Malta AI legal and procurement guide (2025)).

Use the EU Model Contractual Clauses and procurement templates as a checklist (these capture data security, third‑party obligations and audit rights) when drafting tenders and outsourcing agreements (see Cooley guidance on EU Model Contractual Clauses for AI procurement: Cooley guide to EU Model Contractual Clauses for AI procurement), and if local enforceability matters pick or confirm a Malta‑governed procurement agreement (a Malta‑compliant template can speed that step: Genie AI Malta procurement agreement template).

Don't forget IP and data traps: Malta currently lacks sui generis IP rules for AI outputs, so protect prompts, training datasets and know‑how through clear ownership, licensing and trade‑secret clauses and log governance decisions so a stray prompt or undocumented dataset won't turn a useful pilot into a costly liability fight.

Practical, Malta‑focused next steps: begin with a quick, honest AI readiness check (use a one‑page checklist to move from exploration to adoption), stabilise the data foundations that make AI trustworthy, then pilot one high‑value HR use case under strong governance so lessons are local and auditable.

Start by benchmarking current HR processes and data quality, appoint clear data owners and simple IT controls (Deloitte's playbook on data governance and AI readiness outlines focusing on high‑value domains first and setting metadata, validation and access rules), then map use cases, vendor responsibilities and legal triggers before any live rollout; Lumenalta's updated readiness checklist is a handy prompt to sequence those steps from discovery to scale.

Design each pilot with human‑in‑the‑loop review, a documented impact assessment, and a short rolling evaluation plan so subgroup bias or stale data can be detected early; parallel to pilots, run targeted upskilling for HR staff so the team can write prompts, validate outputs and negotiate vendor contracts - practical training like the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp helps build those workplace AI skills quickly (Deloitte data governance and AI readiness guide, Lumenalta AI readiness checklist (Updated 2025), Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp registration).