J24 - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor ProductivityReturn

Trends such as advances in digital technologies and diversity in talent management necessitate continuous learning in the workplace and make European employers think about what competencies of their employees, in addition to basic digital competencies, are most in demand both today and in the foreseeable future. Considering this, identifying the main trends in employee training and development in the automotive industry in Central Europe and their impact on current and future competency profiles becomes the main purpose of this article. Both primary and secondary data have been analysed. The qualitative methodology in this article is based on the processing of the primary data from eight semi-structured interviews conducted from June to October 2023 with human resource managers and learning and development managers of selected Czech companies related to the automotive sector. An essential secondary data source was Eurostat’s Continuous Vocational Training Survey on employee training and development within European countries in 2020 among 113,000 businesses. The findings in this article demonstrate that digital competency and soft skills are currently the most important competencies for employee development within the automotive sector in Central Europe.
Implications for Central European audience: The results presented in this article emphasise the importance of adapting actual employee training and development programmes to technology trends influencing the automotive industry. It has been proven that employees’ soft competencies are preferable today and will be in great demand in the next three years. This is because soft skills support the successful implementation of change and improve the competitiveness of the business in the long term, and both education and development managers and employees themselves realise this.

Criticism as a result of an evaluation process is a common topic of everyday communication within the working environment. The research starts from the assumption that criticism significantly affects the self-perception of employees and it evokes negative emotions that in the end influence job satisfaction and motivation to perform work tasks. The paper presents the frame of a new concept of impact that the criticism has on employee motivation and the first results of the study prove that concept in particular. The main aim was to define whether criticism expressed inappropriately evokes more negative emotions. Hypotheses that focus on its correlation with gender, age, level of education and work status are discussed in the continuation of the paper. The research was conducted on 520 participants in Croatia. The results show a significant impact of the quality of communication on the perception of criticism and its significance in correlation with gender, while hypotheses that correlated evoking negative emotions when expressing criticism within the working environment with age, level of education and work status were rejected. The hypothesis about the correlation between expressing criticism inappropriately and the occurrence of demotivation was rejected.
Implications for Central European audience: The working environment is recently focusing on the digital transformation of all processes and so communication as well. By this transformation, people become alienated and lose basic communication skills. This paper brings together the presentation of long-established communication starting points and the most modern thinking and research on the impact of communication on the motivation, satisfaction and productivity of employees. Based on this, but also with the presented results of the conducted research, it proposes a new communication concept of communicating negative messages that are an integral part of everyday business communication in the organization.

Frequent alterations, unpredictable workloads, and blurred lines between professional and personal life all contribute to adverse effects on mental health. As a result, there is a growing need for managers to be attuned to their employees' emotional well-being and to cultivate the ability to openly, safely, and confidentially address mental health matters. Training in mental health awareness can equip managers with the skills to recognize early signs of common mental health conditions, engage in conversations about mental health, and actively promote well-being to prevent mental health challenges. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of mental health intervention on self-compassion and stigmatisation attitudes among leaders and their followers. The present study is a part of a large European research project. A pre-post research design was implemented in two Czech SMEs to investigate the effect of mental health awareness training on leaders and their followers. The research focuses on two dependent variables – self-compassion as a personal resource and stigmatisation as the attitude towards mental health. The moderating role of learning transfer and the opportunity to use the training was taken into account. For the leaders, the results indicate a statistically significant increase in self-compassion and a decrease in stigmatising attitudes toward mental health issues. There is no statistically significant moderating role of training transfer variables. For the followers, a statistically significant change was evident in decreased stigmatising attitudes. The results need to be interpreted in the context of organisational changes that both companies went through during the research project resulting in more stress, workload, and drop-outs.
Implications for the Central European audience: There is a need for knowledge on how to prevent well-being-related problems in a changing world with more remote work and more mental health issues. The present study adds to this need by exploring the effect of mental health awareness training on two organisational levels – leaders and their followers. The practical contribution of this research is to provide specific recommendations on how to stimulate mental health awareness for leaders through training interventions and thus promote employee well-being.

Using the arguments of conservation of resources theory and social identity theory, this study investigates the impact of abusive supervision on organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) through the mediating effect of burnout. Simultaneously, the moderator effect of organizational identity on the relationship between abusive supervision and burnout is examined. The intention here is to examine whether organizational identity would increase the negative effect of abusive supervision on burnout and to test the underlying mechanism by which abusive supervision affects OCB, with the most affected parties. According to this, we aim to contribute to the literature on the potential effects of organizational identity on coping with workplace stressors. Also, this study aims to be contributive in terms of filling the gap in the existing literature due to the limited number of studies examining how and by which mechanisms abusive supervision affects OCB. Using the data collected from 256 full-time employees from hi-tech, banking and manufacturing industries, it is found that burnout fully mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and OCB. Moreover, it is seen that the negative effect of abusive supervision is stronger for employees with higher organizational identification, suggesting that suffering from abusive supervision can be more overwhelming for employees who see their organization as a vital aspect of their identity. According to the study findings, both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Implications for Central European audience: The present research fills the gaps in the literature by revealing the “black box” that underlies the association between abusive supervision and OCB. Victims of abusive supervision may feel burnt out and possess fewer resources to engage in OCB. To eliminate the negative results of abusive supervision and increase positive work outcomes, organizations should emphasize delivering a code of conduct and organizational culture that stresses proper behaviours within the work environment. Implementing a zero-tolerance to deviant behaviour policy may also improve and generate a positive and deviant behaviour-free work environment. 

The research focuses on the perception and implications of telework during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. The aim of the paper is to prove the validity of an existing theoretical model (presented in Romanian research before COVID-19) for the Czech situation during COVID-19 and draw managerial conclusions. Quantitative primary data were collected via questionnaires and analysed using structural equation modelling, evaluating cause-effect relationships between latent variables in two steps: a structural model (showing latent constructs and paths between them) and an outer model (displaying relationships between each latent construct and the indicators defining it). Ten latent variables were defined, and relationships among them were identified. Thirteen hypotheses were tested, of which seven were accepted. Concerning similarities with the previous study, the present study accepted two hypotheses identically to the previous one, while one hypothesis was accepted only in the Romanian research. Model relevancy was proved. The research contributed to extending current literature findings.
Implications for Central European audience: Based on the hypotheses tested, autonomy and homonomy in telework should not be understood as contrary but complementary phenomena; managers should support both. Positive emotions about telework should be cultivated because they contribute to work-life balance and positively affect the intention to work from home. Work-life balance is positively related to the positive perception of the social implications of telework.

Nowadays, many companies make a great deal of effort to take full advantage of digital transformation and stay ahead of their competitors. The influence of digitalisation on manpower development and human capabilities as well as on the business environment, in general, is especially noticeable in the construction and automotive sectors. That is why the main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of new digital technologies on employee competency development in Czech construction and automotive companies. The quantitative methodology is based on primary data collection conducted from July through October 2020 using the CAWI method. As a result, 27 responses from Czech construction companies and 39 responses from Czech automotive companies have been gathered in Survio software, processed and analysed by using descriptive statistics and Pearson’s chi-square test of independence. The qualitative data analysis applied in this paper includes three semi-structured interviews with human resource managers of selected Czech companies in the automotive industry. The advantages and disadvantages of the Covid-19 pandemic situation from the point of view of human resource management and employee training have also been analysed in the presented case study. The findings in this paper confirm that creating a digitally ready workforce and changing the employees’; mindset towards the new style of doing their jobs remain significant challenges to deal with in the Czech construction and automotive industries.
Implications for Central European audience: This paper focuses primarily on the training and professional development of people employed in the construction and automotive sectors, which have been highly affected by the ongoing digitalisation of business and the current Covid-19 pandemic situation. As the results further demonstrate, the widespread use of digital technologies can definitely help to enhance employees’; digital competencies. However, the employees still have to get used to a digitalised workplace. In such conditions, the role of human resource managers is key in the implementation of continuous training as part of the corporate culture.

Higher education institutions annually produce hundreds to thousands of graduates with the same or similar education. The new graduates only with academic background compete with the graduates from previous years who have acquired some practical experience. The individual will only assert themselves through the complex of superstructure competencies and the ability to apply them effectively and practically for the benefit of the employer. The paper aims to present research focused on the analysis of soft skills and summarising the requirements for the soft skills competencies of the graduates from the Technical University in Zvolen in terms of employers’ expectations in the Slovak republic. The research was carried out in the form of a questionnaire survey, and the results of the questionnaire survey were evaluated by the method of mathematical-statistical analysis by non-parametric testing of significance. On the basis of the testing of significance, the hypothesis for specific areas of soft skills competencies was confirmed, suggesting that students’ competencies in these areas do not reach the level demanded by enterprises, and therefore, it is necessary to improve the quality of education in that area to match students’ real knowledge with business requirements.
Implications for Central European audience: The global labour market requires the introduction of new competencies so that university graduates can work in a domestic or transnational context. An advantage is the added value showed by various interpersonal skills represented by soft skills. In the research, we focused on the analysis and summarising the requirements for the soft skills. Based on the testing of significance, the hypothesis of the statistical significance of the difference for specific areas of soft skills competencies was confirmed, suggesting that students’ competencies in these areas do not reach the level demanded by enterprises. Soft skills and emotional behaviours deficits could affect business outcomes.

Multinational companies that have settled in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) significantly contribute to the recognition of modern HRM concepts and implementation of the relevant HRM practices in the region (Lewis, 2005). To be a strategic partner, HRM managers have to possess various professional and personal competences (Orme, 2010). The aim of this paper is to analyze the main competences of HR managers and their impact on companies' performances. The research hypothesis, based on 2012-2013 CEEIRT data, is that there is a statistically significant relationship among the HR managers' competences and the performances of the MNCs' subsidiaries in Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The analyzed HR competences are: business knowledge, strategic contribution, personal credibility, HR services, HR information system and foreign language competences. The research analyzed the following organizational performances: profitability, service quality, rate of innovations and environmental matters.

Previous literature highlights employees' creativity as an important means of fostering innovation and competitive advantage in companies. Transformational leadership is an approach aimed at stimulating and encouraging the creative performance of employees. However, contradictory empirical findings indicate that the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity may be more complex than a simple direct link. Drawing from the existing literature, we propose that dependency on the leader is a partial mediator of this relationship, impeding employees' creativity. Synthesizing theories of leadership and creativity, we propose that empowerment, as a moderator, is able to reduce the dependency on the leader caused by transformational leadership as well as contribute to turning possible negative outcomes of transformational leadership on creative performance into positive outcomes. The findings of a PLS analysis of 271 employees support the predicted mediating and moderating effects. Our results indicate that the transformational leadership style should be combined with empowering behavior to enhance employees' creative performance.