Industry 4.0, how does it challenge and support HRM.

Industry 4.0 become a general trend in corporate world, more and more companies start to adapt smart factories and office environment than ever. Introduction of new technology such as IOT, AI, Enterprise resource planning, machine learning, etc. these innovations helps corporates not only to automate operational activities but also to make machine learn decisions (Maja, 2018). Industry 4.0 is refers to a new phase in the industrial revolution that focuses heavily on interconnectivity, automation and smart digital technology to change the way business operates and grows through improving manufacturing efficiency and faster decision making (Hecklau et al., 2016).

There are plenty of advantages on industry 4.0 in the prospect of Human resource management (HRM), interconnected systems and big date management systems help business to adapt decentralize decision-making. Where decentralized decision enable business to make quick and accurate decisions. (Maja, 2018).  Introduction of social media such as Linkedin revolutionized how companies attract and recruit employees. The communication with other employees is done via special social media which are not only productive. Also help employees to build better social connection, which can has positive effect on intrinsic motivation of the workers (Bodella and Antonio, 2016). Traditional personal management consist of administration works to maintain accurate employee data. Industry 4.0 and it technologies help companies to outsource or automate these administrative function of HRM which helps organizations to concentrate on its core competencies also lead to major financial savings.

Absolutely, industry 4.0 creates many new opportunities for companies, but at the same time several challengers arising for the business from the Human Resource Management (HRM) perspective. HR managers will face difficulty on creating an open to change culture in the organization since employees tend to believe that automation of work might result in losing job, but the reality is complete opposite. Jobs will not be lost but they might go through certain transformations. The next challenge for managers is to train and develop employees to adapt and make use of newly implemented technology (Pentek, Harmann and Otto, 2016; Bonekamp, 2015). Employees will need completely different competency such as entrepreneurial thinking, creativity, technology skills, leadership skills etc. different jobs need different requirements, the identified competencies are becoming progressively important and this need to be addressed by HR departments (Peter and Happlemann, 2015).

            Companies would require an effective Human resource management strategy to cope up with the challengers of Industry 4.0.  This would allow HR department to play a major strategic role in the organization growth.

Reference

Hecklau, F. Galeitzke, M. Flachs, S. Kohl, H. (2016) Holistic approach for human resource management in industry 4.0: CIRP Conference on Learning Factories. Pp, 1-9.

Brijesh, S. Rajasshrie, P. (2018) Smart HR 4.0 – how industry 4.0 is disrupting HR: Human Resource Management International Digest. 26(4), pp.7-11,

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 Hermann, M. Pentek, T. Otto, B. (2016) Design Principles for Industrie 4.0 Scenarios, International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Koloa, USA.

Bonekamp, L. Sure, M. (2015) Consequences of Industry 4.0 on Human Labour and Work Organisation, Journal of Business and Media Psychology.

Porter ME, Heppelmann JE. (2015) How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Companies. Harvard Business Review, pp.96–114.

Bedolla, J.S. Antonio, G. Chiabert, P. (2017) A novel approach for teaching IT tools within Learning Factories, Procedia Manufacturing 2(9), pp. 175-181.