LABOUR-RESOURCE COMPETITIVENESS OF SME: ESSENCE, ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY, AND ANALYTICAL INDICATORS

Abstract

The article substantiates the expediency of identifying labour-resource competitiveness of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises as a distinct analytical category under conditions of intensifying global competition for labour. The relevance of the topic is determined by the fact that, for SME, labour shortages have ceased to be a local issue of personnel management and have become a systemic constraint on growth, innovation activity, and business scaling. The purpose of the article is to clarify the essence of labour-resource competitiveness of SME, distinguish it from adjacent concepts, and develop a methodological approach to its assessment through a system of interconnected indicators. The methodological basis of the study combines the provisions of competition theory, approaches to analysing competition in the labour market, the multidimensional logic of the OECD Job Quality Framework, and generalisations of contemporary Ukrainian research on personnel security, employer branding, and staff stability. Labour-resource competitiveness of SME is defined as the integral ability of an enterprise to form, implement, and maintain such a system of employment conditions, work organisation, motivation, professional development, and staff stabilisation that provides relative advantages in attracting, retaining, and productively using labour resources compared to other employers in the relevant labour market. The proposed assessment model is based on an index approach including three blocks: staff attractiveness, staff stability, and personnel use performance. The article substantiates the procedure for normalising stimulating and de-stimulating indicators, shows the logic of aggregating indicators into partial and integral indices, and demonstrates the possibility of applying the methodology at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Special attention is paid to the fact that SME cannot be assessed only through wage indicators because their competitive position in the labour market is also shaped by flexibility of work organisation, proximity of management to employees, opportunities for training, reputation in the local labour market, and the ability to keep a stable personnel core under conditions of migration pressure and labour scarcity. The study also argues that strengthening labour-resource competitiveness of SME requires a combination of internal managerial decisions and systemic public policy measures aimed at improving the business ecosystem, reducing administrative and regulatory barriers, expanding access to finance and training, and creating institutional conditions that enable SME to compete more effectively for labour resources. The practical implication of the proposed methodology is that it can be used both for an internal HR and management audit of a single enterprise and for comparative diagnostics of groups of SME by sector, region, or organisational model. It also provides a basis for identifying systemic barriers that weaken the ability of SME to compete for labour, including tax and administrative burdens, limited financing opportunities, insufficient support for staff training, and weak institutional mechanisms of labour-market matching. Future research should focus on empirical testing of the index on Ukrainian SME and on the calibration of indicator weights for industries with different labour-intensity and qualification profiles.


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