Skills and Human Resource Management for Industry 4.0 of Small and Medium Enterprises

Abstract

This study is aimed at identifying the skills that small and medium enterprises in the food industry place importance upon, the skills levels of the food industry employees of the small and medium enterprises, the skills levels that students acquire from educational institutions, any skills gap between those salient to small and medium enterprises and those possessed by employees and students as well as the role of human resource management in addressing this skills gap, where it exists. The results show that social skills and personal skills are deemed very important, while technical skills and methodological skills are considered as being important for Industry 4.0. There is a gap in all these types of industry skills requirements in regard to employees of small and medium enterprises as well as those of 4th year students who are about to graduate. Moreover, human resource management in the recruitment process influences the reduction of the skills gap (β = −0.390) at a significance of level of 0.01, while such management in human resource planning impacts a reduction in the skills gap (β = 0.309) at a significance level 0.05 for SMEs in the Thai food industry.