The new challenges that will currently affect the existence and sustainability of businesses stem from the dramatic changes that come from the fourth industrial revolution. Based on the concept of intellectual capital management as a resource-based strategic management approach, which leads to the management of structural, human, and relational capital, sustainable human resource management underlines the involvement of partnerships and external relations in learning and personal development processes. Industry 4.0 expects major changes in human resource management and processes such as education. Organizations will benefit from the new knowledge in the near future that will need to be brought into the internal environment of the organization constantly. However, this will require cooperation with the external environment, and the resulting new education opportunities built on cooperation with external partners, organizations, and educational institutions. Innovations as essential factors in adapting to major changes in the environment will be key in all organizational processes, including educational. This paper focuses on comparing highly innovative countries and less innovative countries in Central Europe, analyzing 1482 businesses by looking at differences in attitude towards employee education and individual forms of employee education. The main statistically significant difference is in the strategic approach to employee education and development and the set-up between innovative countries and moderate innovators.

The ability to do business successfully and to stay on the market is a unique feature of each company ensured by highly engaged and high-quality employees. Therefore, innovative leaders able to manage, motivate, and encourage other employees can be a great competitive advantage of an enterprise. Knowledge of important personality factors regarding leadership, incentives and stimulus, systematic assessment, and subsequent motivation factors are parts of human capital and essential conditions for effective development of its potential. Familiarity with various ways to motivate leaders and their implementation in practice are important for improving the work performance and reaching business goals. Pearson’s chi-square test is used to test correlation between the motivation factors relating to career aspiration and education. Following the research results, the fact that there is dependence between the motivation factors relating to career aspiration and completed education can be stated. The motivation factors relating to career aspiration are important, even very important for highly educated employees and employees with upper secondary education. Following the research results, the fact that the requirements and expectations relating to career aspiration are more demanding when the education completed by employees is higher is confirmed.

The operation of companies in the current environment, introducing the concept of Industry 4.0 and the establishment and expansion of inter-company networks, as well as open and knowledge-based systems in organizations, is a precondition for success in the efficient acquisition, processing, storage, and sharing of key information. The instruments created for this purpose came to the market gradually during the Third Industrial Revolution; however, with the outbreak of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, their development underwent a leap, whereas this stage is associated with the introduction and use of big data in human resources management. The aim of this paper is to analyze the current state of organizations operating with a focus on Slovakia, as well as the importance and knowledge value of the organizations, their way of internal sharing, and the level of knowledge database use for this purpose in the context of the region in which the organizations operate. On one hand, the results show a lack of businesses orientation with regard to this issue, especially in comparison with neighboring countries; however, on the other hand, they also show relatively significant progress in this area, which may increase competitiveness internationally in the near future.

The European Union (European Parliament) understands industry 4.0 as a term for an environment of fast transformations of production systems and products. The basic characteristic of the change in the methods of creating added value in the conditions of the fourth industrial revolution is digitalization. Digitalization changes people management in two stages. The first stage is the adaptation of systems to the integration of physical inputs into digital systems, and the second stage is the redefinition of values for the internal and external customer. The purpose of this paper is to examine the content of the first digitalization stage and its impact on the transformation of values of corporate people management in the second stage of digitalization. The study published in this paper points out the level of digitalization applied towards the internal and external customer. The research results verify relations in the portfolio of corporate value and prove their present implementation of digitalization and its and importance for the future sustainability of the business. The study confirmed the independence of the levels of corporate digitalization and companies’ value portfolios. Furthermore, the study proved the universal nature of corporate value orientation, irrespective of the size, business focus or performance of the people management system. Meaningfulness, communication and cooperation dominate in terms of importance for business sustainability. The results of the study in Slovakia support the opinions of published foreign research, which emphasize the importance of introducing technological innovations aimed at employees to a much greater extent.

The examination of the impact of digital innovations on employee motivation and engagement is crucial given the rapid technological advancements. This study focused on digital HRM practices, such as digital interaction platforms. The results indicated that respondents generally had positive to neutral views on these practices, with big data analytics receiving the highest rating for its potential to enhance organizational performance and employee engagement. The study revealed a moderately strong positive correlation between the use of digital platforms and big data analytics, suggesting a holistic approach to digital transformation in HRM. However, a weak correlation between digital innovations and engagement suggests that the direct impact of digital tools on employee engagement is limited by other factors. Larger companies tend to implement advanced digital HRM practices more due to their greater resources. The study’s limitations include a restricted sample from the Central and Eastern European region and reliance on self-assessed data. Future studies should include more diverse regions and long-term studies, combining quantitative data with qualitative insights. Digital innovations in HRM offer promises for process improvement and data-driven decision-making, but their impact on employee engagement is complex and requires an integrated approach of technological and managerial practices.