Environment and Benchmarking: Industry 4.0 Sustainable Work Readiness Framework

This paper presents a sustainable work readiness framework for engineering students, incorporating core skills, personal skills, and self-efficacy as mediating variables. The study aims to investigate the impact of core skills and personal skills on engineering students’ work readiness, as well as the mediating influence of self-efficacy on this relationship. The researchers designed and tested a work readiness framework with three focal points: skills, personal skills, and self-efficacy, and their influence on engineering students’ work readiness. The findings indicate that core skills, personal skills, and self-efficacy positively and significantly influence engineering students’ work readiness. Self-efficacy can be explained by the core skills and personal skills variables at 87.8%, while the work readiness variable can be explained by core skills, personal skills, and self-efficacy at 85.4%. This study contributes to the existing literature by proposing a sustainable work readiness framework and measurement instrument that link core skills, personal skills, and self-efficacy as mediating variables influencing work readiness. The results are beneficial not only to Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia, as they directly reflect the work readiness of UTP’s final-year undergraduate engineering students but also to individuals, universities, teaching staff, organizations, human resource specialists, and public administrators. They can use these findings to enhance the development of individual work readiness skills and increase the work readiness of students in their respective universities. The novelty of this study lies in proposing a sustainable work readiness framework tailored to equip engineering students with the skills required and acquired in Industry 4.0. Keywords: student, engineering, PLS-SEM, skills, self-efficacy, sustainable, work readiness