Non-Technical Skills in Social Networks: The Spread of Safety Communication and Teamwork in a Warehouse

Abstract

Safety at work should be considered as the result of the daily interaction of operators. The present research wants to analyze which factors are involved in the development of social networks about safety at work. We assumed that two relational non-technical skills, such as safety communication and safety team member support, affect the in-degree and out-degree bonds of workers in social networks. One hundred and eight workers of a warehouse were the participants of the research, in which they were asked to fill out a self-reported questionnaire. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Results confirmed that safety communication and safety support skills play a role in determining the quantity and the quality of social bonds that workers can create at the workplace. To be specific, while safety communication was found to be associated with out-degree centrality (b = 0.24; p = 0.01), a nonsignificant relationship was found for in-degree centrality. In contrast, safety team member support was found to be associated with in-degree centrality (b = 0.28; p = 0.04). In other words, on the one hand, it was found that high levels of safety communication skills are associated with the tendency of workers to proactively search for colleagues with whom they can share information about safety. On the other hand, workers with high levels of safety support skills tend to be considered as reference points in terms of safety by colleagues, who are more prone to look for their help. Implications for both scientists and practitioners are discussed.

Assessing the Mediating Role of Safety Communication Between Safety Culture and Employees Safety Performance

“…Safety hazards, regulations, goals, warnings, area guidelines, rules, and progress reports should be communicated to employees via a variety of media for a truly protected workplace to be implemented ( 69 ). Organizational safety culture, leadership, and group climates are all part of the bigger picture when it comes to safety communication ( 70 ). The use of researcher-based evaluation and feedback to operational and production workers to improve their daily oral safety communication with employees resulted in considerably higher levels of safety performance in the workplace environment ( 71 , 72 ).…”

The Interaction of Civil Engineering Students in Group Work through the Social Network Analysis

“…The most frequent methods for selecting students for GW are random association, by the affinity of the students, or selected by the instructor [19]. When selected by the instructor, team members can be chosen by the relevant skills needed for the tasks assigned to the group, looking for an optimal distribution of those skills across the teams [22,23] or the use of a criterion of rotation of the members of the groups to achieve diversity in each task. This diversity is understood as a reduced presence of close friends or acquaintances in the same group.…”