We are engaged in capability development with tertiary education partners across Canada and regional workplace partners in Canada’s “Automobility Hub”. Industry 5.0 concepts are not well-known amongst these companies, except for Canadian companies with European worksites – e.g., Magna International – and a Canadian SMEs integrated into Canadian value chains for European manufacturers.
We report here our in-progress planning to engage those companies through links to Industry 5.0 content in our learning resources on Workplace Innovation. This will come initially through our tertiary education students on-site with them in work-integrated learning placements.
After a brief description of our three contexts for capability development, we outline the process of adapting research insights from Bridges 5.0 partners to create a case story learning resource for use by both students and industry partners. We are seeking further collaborations with tertiary education institutions and workplace partners interested in integrated Industry 5.0 concepts into their workforce development for workplace innovation.
Capability Development in Workplace Innovation:
We are currently engaged in three contexts for capability development in employee-led workplace innovation:
Preparing new entrants to the workforce with ‘Every Employee’ capability through a shared set of online learning resources on Understanding and Applying Workplace Innovation. These resources have been adapted by a diverse set of colleges and universities in Canada and beyond (Nobis et al 2022; Carey et al 2023), engaging over 900 students and working learners last year. (An example of these diverse adaptations for a specific context – the Workplace Innovation Skills for Employment Success modules of the University of Toronto’s Arts and Sciences Internship Program – is accessible at https://q.utoronto.ca/courses/307280)
In parallel, a new regional workforce development initiative in “Canada’s Automobility Hub” is adapting research insights from EUWIN partners to enhance employer and employee capability for workplace innovation (Carey et al 2024). A key role as Workplace Innovation Catalysts is emerging to support that knowledge mobilization.
A new project links these two initiatives together, by developing capability for senior students to support Innovation Catalysts in work placements with industry partners.
Most of the students developing their workplace innovation capability with our educational partners come from the Liberal Arts and Sciences (with others from Business, Education, Engineering, etc.) Many have already encountered Inclusive Innovation concepts – e.g. in projects linked to Sustainable Development Goals – and we are using the concept of “Inclusive Innovation in the Workplace” to link to their values and interests.
Leveraging a Case-Based instructional design:
To prepare learners for their workplaces, case stories in the online learning resources are used as illustrations or as practice exercises. This instructional design supports customization in tertiary education and sector- or workplace-specific contexts for workplace development. For Industry 5.0 content in our Workplace Innovation learning resources, case stories should focus on Human-Centric Design aspects and complement Bridges 5.0 competences.
Ideally, such case stories will: :
Address real-world issues in employee-led workplace innovation and Industry 5.0
Demonstrate relevance to industry partners in Manufacturing and other workplace contexts (e.g., a provincial network of long-term care homes)
Appeal to diverse learners without specialized technical knowledge in the application domain
Highlight social and technological systems in the workplace, with implications for Industry 5.0 competences and outcomes
Build on the workplace innovation activities in the learning resources for tertiary education: Job Crafting, Innovation Adaptation, Design Innovation (Carey et al 2023).
Building an illustrative case story:
The Collaborative Robots (“Cobots”) work domain meets most of the criteria above. For example, we identified research studies linking Collaborative Robotics to workplace innovation issues in Job Crafting (Tausch & Kluge 2022; Clemmensen et al 2023; Picco et al 2024), Innovation Adaptation (Elia et al 2025; Hearn et al 2025), and Design Innovation (mostly using Design Thinking) (Ang et al 2024; Cao et al 2024).
We are now developing a fictionalized case story – “based on true events” – to introduce Industry 5.0 concepts using Cobots, to test with learners in our 2025-26 academic year and with industry partners in 2026-27. This case is based on recent Dutch research on Industry 5.0 issues and Cobots as applied in “high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) production contexts” in Manufacturing, including research[1] on the following topics:
Building the Business Case for Cobot Application in HMLV Production (Wolffgramm, Corporaal & Groen 2025)
The Introduction of a Human-Centered Robotization Method (Wolffgramm et al 2023)
Scoping the Interdependence Between Operator and Cobot (Wolffgramm et al 2024)
The plan for the adapted case story includes an Operator role (to engage Engineering and Science students) and a Workplace Innovation Catalyst role (to engage Social Science and Humanities students). Catalysts collaborate to help the Operator apply insights from the research in an HMLV context at a fictionalized Industry 5.0 workplace. An overview of Industry 5.0 will be included in the learning resource in a textbox and the following video clip:
Next steps:
This new resource will join our online learning resources on Workplace Innovation, which have already been adapted for several diverse institutional contexts.
References:
Ang, K. C., Sankaran, S., & Liu, D. (2024). Sociotechnical considerations on developing human robot teaming solutions for construction: a case study. Construction Robotics, 8(2), 23.
Cao, H. L., Elprama, S. A., Scholz, C., Siahaya, P., El Makrini, I., Jacobs, A., ... & Vanderborght, B. (2024). Designing interaction interface for supportive human-robot collaboration: A co-creation study involving factory employees. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 192, 1-12
Carey, T., Baregheh, A., Nobis, F., & Stevenson, M. (2023). Leveraging a diverse collaboration in tertiary education to develop capability for workplace innovation. European Journal of Workplace Innovation, 8(1), 107-135.
Carey, T., Frye, A., Leavitt, B. and Baregheh, A.(2024). Toward a Sustainable Professional Community for Workplace Innovation Catalysts. Presented at The Future of Workplace Innovation International Conference (Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, October 2024)
Clemmensen, T., Hertzum, M., & Nørbjerg, J. (2023). Job Crafting in Low-Usability Automation Situations: Sustainability through Human Work Interaction Designs. Paper presented at SHWID Workshop on Sustainable Human-Work Interaction Designs, York, United Kingdom.
Elia, G., Ghiani, G., Manni, E., Nucci, F., Giuri, S., & Paglialunga, A. (2025). Digital Factory 5.0: Experimenting Digital Innovation in the Reverse Logistics Process. In Digital Innovation Management: People, Process, Platforms and Policy (pp. 81-101). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Hearn, G., Laundon, M., & Williams, P. (2025). Knowledge Work in High Value Manufacturing: Preparing Graduates in an Innovative Industry-Based Learning Factory. In Higher Education and Work in the Knowledge Economy: Power, Prestige and Precarity (pp. 175-194). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Lucietto, A. M., & Peters, D. (2024). Engineering technology and engineering: incorporating the humanities into the classroom. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 9, p. 1534407). Frontiers Media SA.
Nobis, F., Stevenson, M. Baregheh, A., and Carey, T. (2022). Engaging Students with an Adaptable Model for Workplace Innovation Capability. Innovation & Entrepreneurship Teaching Excellence Awards 2022: An Anthology of Case Histories. Remenyi, D. (ed.). Winner of a 2nd place award in this 8th annual international competition.
Picco, E., Miglioretti, M., & Le Blanc, P. M. (2024). Sustainable employability, technology acceptance and task performance in workers collaborating with cobots: a pilot study. Cognition, Technology & Work, 26(1), 139-152.
Popișter, F., Horea-Ștefan, G., & Paul, C. (2024). Development of an Educational Cobot Structure. In International Scientific-Technical Conference MANUFACTURING (pp. 18-32). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Tausch, A., & Kluge, A. (2022). The best task allocation process is to decide on one’s own: effects of the allocation agent in human–robot interaction on perceived work characteristics and satisfaction. Cognition, Technology & Work, 24(1), 39-55.
Wolffgramm, M. R., Corporaal, S., & Groen, A. J. (2025). Operators and their human–robot interdependencies: implications of distinct job decision latitudes for sustainable work and high performance. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 12, 1442319.
Wolffgramm, M. R., Corporaal, S., Groen, A. J., & Preenen, P. T. (2024). The Impact of Collaborative Robot Arms in Dutch Small- and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises: A Comparative Case Study. Presented at The Future of Workplace Innovation International Conference (Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, October 2024).
Wolffgramm, M. R., Corporaal, S., Groen, A. J., & van Roij, M. J. (2023, October). Toward 1+ 1= 3 with Lean Robotics: The Introduction of a Human-Centered Robotization Method. In European Lean Educator Conference (pp. 86-99). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Wolffgramm, M., Tijink, T., Van Geloven, M. D., & Corporaal, S. (2021). A collaborative robot in the classroom: Designing 21st Century engineering education together. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 21(16), 177-187.
Footnotes:
[1] The research projects listed here are also part of Milan Wolffgramm’s Ph.D. thesis presented in February 2025, Design to Design: Collaborative Production Units for Modern Manufacturing at the University of Groningen.. This research is also linked to instructional design in tertiary education (Wolffgramm et al 2021).