EMPLOYERS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE ROLE OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE COMPETENCE OF ECONOMISTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY OF ENTERPRISES

Economic transformation and intensified international competition increase the demand for specialists capable of operating across linguistic and cultural borders. This study examines how employers in Ukraine assess economists’ English language competence and how they relate it to enterprise innovation. The aim is to explore employers’ evaluations of economists’ English skills and their perceived contribution to innovation-related activities and overall company performance. The analysis is based on a quantitative survey of 50 employers from the IT, financial, service, and production sectors who evaluated selected economist employees using five-point Likert scales. The questionnaire captures three groups of indicators: perceived level and use of English at work, perceived impact of English on individual performance, and perceived impact of English on enterprise development. Descriptive statistics show that employers rate initial English proficiency at 3.6 points on average, frequency of use at 3.9, and quality of English-mediated task performance at 3.7, which indicates regular use with considerable room for improvement. Employers also give high scores to the impact of English on communication with partners and clients (4.6) and on overall work effectiveness (4.4), while they rate its contribution to participation in new or international projects at 4.1. At the enterprise level they rate the contribution of English to partnership expansion at 4.0 and to entry into new markets at 3.8. In result, employers treat English not as a marginal asset but as an integral element of professional competence that supports innovation-related communication, project work and external relations. The findings offer practical guidance for revising economics curricula and aligning language training with workplace expectations, while also indicating the need for deeper, multi-source studies of the link between language competence and innovation capacity.