Hiring and Retaining Skilled Employees in Smes: Problems in Human Resource Practices and Links With Organizational Success

Abstract

The ability to attract and retain the talents is an important factor in the competitiveness of countries, as it is confirmed in our study. At the level of small and medium-sized enterprises, hiring and retaining skilled workers is one of the most difficult tasks of HR management, especially in transition economies with a high intensity of “leaching out” the skilled workers due to labour migration. Our research in Ukraine, which is a prime example of such countries, conducted via the cluster analysis allows us to conclude that the problems of hiring and retaining skilled workers have some connection with profitability: there is almost always a problem with filling vacancies with people of all educational levels in unprofitable enterprises, which is not typical of profitable businesses. The main problems with filling vacancies according to employers’ estimations are: 1) market factors – shortage of employees with the required skills; 2) internal problems of ensuring the attractiveness of jobs (material – pay, and intangible – career prospects, flexible working hours, legal employment); 3) internal factors of inefficient HR management, including recruiting; 4) psycho-physiological factors of job satisfaction. However, there are no close links between the factors of hiring effectiveness and retention of skilled workers with the economic success of the organization in the form of the growth of assets, revenues and stuff. This leads to the conclusion that the practices of human resources management in small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine are largely built chaotic, without analyzing the impact on the efficiency of the use of other resources and without providing links with the overall economic efficiency of enterprises.

Internationalisation motives and the multinationality-performance relationship: The case of Polish firms

“…In the context of post-transition economies, research evidences that lower labour costs of the foreign markets affect firm performance in foreign markets (Chan, Isobe, & Makino, 2008;Li et al, 2011;Uhlenbruck, 1997;Jansto, Polakovič, Hennyeyová, & Slováková, 2019). For domestic enterprises it becomes risk factor in recruitment (Bilan, Mishchuk, Roshchyk, & Joshi, 2020), however, foreign firm performance increases due to efficient labour attracting strategies. Taking into account that this strategic focus in international expansion will predominantly affect the cost side of performance due to lower production costs or costs of serving clients, we can obviously expect a positive effect on return on sales (ROS).…”

Developments in the income situation of the agricultural sector in selected the EU member states

“…Education is of key importance when it comes to people whose jobs are threatened by automationto help unemployed workers to find new jobs as well as to prevent an increasing skill premium and/or job polarisation. It becomes extremely important in some national and regional markets (Bilan et al, 2020) and demands relevant solutions in programs of regional development (Akimova et al, 2020;Kostiukevych et al, 2020). Policy-makers should quickly focus on skills upgrades and on ways to reconcile technological innovation with welfare.…”

Influence of age on selected parameters of insolvent companies

“…It takes some time and effort to learn enough to become flexible and be able to manage potential objectionable issues (Pakes & Ericsson, 1998). During these stages, entrepreneurial successes, including financial, have strong links with effectiveness of internal business environment management, particularly, human resource management (Bilan et al, 2020a), efficiency of marketing strategy (Sikora & Baranowska-Prokop, 2018) within the holistic system of business management. Some companies are not able to learn enough and they have to withdraw from the market at the end.…”