Methods for Educating and Improving Employees In the Era of The Fourth Industrial Revolution

We live in an era, in which the world economy is undergoing a very rapid transformation. The change is serious enough that, according to many authors, it should be recognized as revolutionary. This new era in economic development is sometimes called the Age of Industry 4.0. The change also applies to the requirements, which the labor market places on the employee, who should have slightly different competencies than they used to, and hence other professional qualifications (on the one hand more specialized, on the other hand more versatile). This necessitates the modification and expansion of qualifications, which is made possible by more enterprise-level training and lifelong learning.

Due to the revolutionary nature of changes to the economy of the Industry 4.0 era, priority significance should be ascribed to the creation and use of adequate methods and tools to raise the level of employees’ qualifications.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the workshop method as the preferred training method emplyed in enterprises of the Industry 4.0 era. The implementation of the goal required typologization of the methods used thus far and specification of those that are adequate for the Age of Industry 4.0.

The hypothesis adopted in this article is the assumption that the workshop will become the preferred training method in Industry 4.0 companies. In order to verify this thesis, literature on the subject, research reports, and a case study of the implementation of an innovative training project by a Polish-Italian consortium of companies were used.