Human resources development as an element of sustainable HRM – with the focus on production engineers

The concept of sustainability has been gaining importance and influencing the development of an approach towards employees referred to as sustainable HRM (SHRM). HR development is one of the principles of SHRM that should be implemented consistently along with other SHRM principles, which means, e.g., that the development of employees should be carried out having a long-term perspective in mind. It is crucial to acquire the so-called competencies of the future as the basis for implementing the idea of Industry 4.0. The purpose of the article is to present the development of human potential in an organization against the background of other detailed sustainable HRM principles, to be followed by confronting the theory and the research results on the development of future competencies referring to industrial engineers in Poland as the professional group responsible for implementing the idea of cleaner production and Industry 4.0. The Author analyzed the results of three research projects based on the survey method and representative data from Eurostat and Statistics Poland. The conducted research shows that industrial companies in Poland have more of a short-sighted perspective when it comes to developing the potential of their engineers. The HR development practices focusing only on current needs are not in line with the SHRM principles of a long-term perspective and flexibility. There is also a visible lack of employee participation in the process of making training-related decisions, which is another principle of sustainable HRM. In addition, environmental sustainability remains a neglected area of knowledge in terms of training, and the cooperation with external educational institutions is low. It results in certain implications for HR managers and educational institutions. The article also presents directions for further research.