sustainability Article Comparison of the Level of Personnel Work in the Czech Republic and Slovakia Lukáš Smerek 1, * , Milota Vetráková 1 ,Šárka ˇ Cemerková 2 and Vojtˇ ech Malátek 2   Citation: Smerek, L.; Vetráková, M.; ˇ Cemerková, Š.; Malátek, V. Comparison of the Level of Personnel Work in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Sustainability 2021, 13, 287. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010287 Received: 4 December 2020 Accepted: 23 December 2020 Published: 30 December 2020 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu- tral with regard to jurisdictional clai- ms in published maps and institutio- nal affiliations. Copyright: © 2020 by the authors. Li- censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and con- ditions of the Creative Commons At- tribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Faculty of Economics, Matej Bel University, Tajovského 10, 975 90 Banská Bystrica, Slovakia; milota.vetrakova@umb.sk 2 School of Business Administration in Karvina, Silesian University, Univerzitní Námˇ estí 1934/3733, 733 40 Karviná, Czech Republic; cemerkova@opf.slu.cz (Š. ˇ C.); malatek@opf.slu.cz (V.M.) * Correspondence: lukas.smerek@umb.sk; Tel.: +421-48-446-2732 Abstract: After 1989, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe began to undergo significant social and economic changes associated with the process of transformation of the economy into a market economy. Transformation is not only associated with the creation of a business environment, with the formation of new legal and institutional mechanisms, but also with a change in the thinking and behavior of people including employees, managers and owners. The paper aims to identify important processes and trends in developing human resource management in companies in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. We conducted the questionnaire survey in 2018 and 2019 in various areas of business. We obtained the opinions of respondents from 1542 companies. In the research, we assume that in the conditions of a market economy compared to a centrally managed economy, employees are the most important source of development and performance of companies. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the sampling unit. The other methods used to evaluate data in the paper were the Mann-Whitney test and Spearman Correlation coefficient. The research revealed that despite a long common history, differences in the field of personnel work have arisen in the last 20 years of the independent existence of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The only exception is employee care. It was also found that in the Czech Republic the strategic orientation predominates, on the contrary, companies in the Slovak Republic focused on operational processes. Differences were also found in the way of adaptation and further training of employees. The results of the findings can be used to design processes with the highest positive impact on business performance. Keywords: enterprises; human resources; human resource management; sociological research; trends of HRM 1. Introduction Slovak Republic (Slovakia) and the Czech Republic are connected by a common 74- year history, which began with the declaration of Czechoslovakia in 1918. From the point of view of political and economic development, a new state called Czechoslovakia was established. Compared to the more industrially developed Czech Republic, Slovakia found itself in a strong competitive environment. The reason was the disproportions between the individual areas of the economy caused by the internal structure of industry, agriculture and infrastructure in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The implemented reforms led to economic recovery and Czechoslovakia gradually joined the developed countries of the world. The benefit of the new state grouping for Slovaks was the raising of the culture and self-confidence of the Slovak nation. Subsequent developments, but which led to a decline in restructuring and development of industry due to the great economic crisis in the years 1929 to 1933. After the Second World War, Czechoslovakia became part of the so-called Eastern Bloc, a typical feature of which was the centrally planned economy. Only a few employers were Sustainability 2021, 13, 287. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010287 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability