Human Resource Management and Pro-Environmental Behaviour of Young People in the Context of Industry 5.0

Abstract

 Industry 5.0 shifts the focus of enterprise transformation towards sustainability and human-centricity. This places new demands on human resource management (HRM), which needs to understand the pro-environmental values and behaviour of young people as the future workforce. The aim of the paper is to identify how young people in Slovakia experience climate change, to what extent their pro-environmental attitudes are reflected in their economic decisions and what this implies for HRM. The empirical basis is an online questionnaire survey of 427 young adults aged 18 to 30 in Slovakia in 2026. Climate change experience is measured by the Climate Change Anxiety Scale, and economic decision-making by willingness to pay more for green products and services, saving for green investments and limiting expenditures due to climate change. Descriptive statistics are used. Young people experience climate change mainly through behavioural engagement in everyday sustainable practices, whereas cognitive-emotional and functional impairment are rare. When saving for green investments, economic motives, particularly reducing household costs and gaining energy independence, prevail over environmental ones, and decisions requiring financial resources are made only by a minority. The pro-environmental economic decisions of the future workforce thus follow primarily an economic logic. For HRM, this implies connecting sustainability initiatives with tangible employee benefits, such as support for green investments or sustainable mobility, and bridging individual values and organisational environmental goals through green HRM practices.