Wellbeing in the Industry 4.0 to 5.0 transition: a study on Corporate Social Responsibility in manufacturing and service sectors

Industry 4.0 has radically transformed the manufacturing sector through its nine pillars, redesigning new tasks and skills. Within this framework a new role has emerged, the Operator 4.0, who interacts with data and advanced interfaces while taking on new responsibilities in human-machine coordination. Industry 5.0 redirects this transformation toward human-centric and sustainable objectives, emphasizing human-machine collaboration, resilience and social impact. It’s therefore important to understand how employee wellbeing is influenced in the current working environment and how this dimension can be integrated into Corporate Social Responsibility practices. The Workplace Wellbeing is framed in three complementary components which are physical wellbeing, cognitive wellbeing and the perception of safety. This study combines a targeted literature review with an empirical research methodology carried out through a startup’s platform to analyse employee wellbeing in 15 Italian SMEs from both the industrial and service sectors, involving 561 employees. The analysis, based on an indicator called Wellbeing Index (WI) and eight thematic areas, showed important insights within specific employee clusters where factors such as organizational structure, company size and territorial context appeared particularly influential.