Measuring Workers' Competitiveness in Malaysia's Services Sector: Formulating the Competitiveness Index

Malaysia's economy has to be very competitive to face new globalisation challenges in order to enhance and remain sustainable, especially among its leading sectors such as the services sector. Since the nature of activities and output within the services sector are closely related to its available human resources, it is likely that the competitiveness of this sector is also very much dependent on the competitiveness of its workers. Thus, it is crucial to examine the workers' competitiveness using a suitable index in an attempt to measure the competitiveness of the sector. The purpose of this article therefore is to compose and subsequently analyse the workers' competitiveness index based on data collected from 1,136 workers in the services sub-sectors that include education, health and ICT services. The competitiveness index in this study is a composite index comprising the workers' competency index and performance index. Our results show that the competency index is relatively high for all sub-sectors studied. In contrast, the performance index for all sub-sectors is still at a moderate level. Subsequently, the level of the composite index for workers' competitiveness is also moderate. Subsequent analysis shows that workers' satisfaction and the working environment significantly affect the level of workers' competitiveness within the sub-sectors in the service sector. Thus, in order to increase the competitiveness index within the sub-sectors, it is crucial to improve the level of workers satisfaction and their working environment.