Co-workers compensatory behaviors

While an organization should have formal supervisory arrangements to help ensure new employee safety, as discussed above there are factors, such as the number of new employees arriving, which may limit supervisory arrangements. To help overcome these limitations, and to ensure complete integration into a new work environment and the acquisition of familiarity, the organization and supervisors should formally organize input from one or more of a new employee s co-workers. 

Co-workers are the individuals that know the work environment, understand the idiosyncratic features of the equipment which employees may use, and appreciate the way in which individual team members, and the team collectively, works. Coworkers may in fact be better placed than supervisors to familiarize a new employee, and help ensure workplace safety (Floyde et al. 2013 Turner et al. 

The general hterature on teams, and their reaction to, and acceptance of new employees, suggests a complex situation which might have safety implications. This hterature suggests that the degree to which team members engage with a new employee is partially determined by a concept labelled team receptivity (Rink et al. 

Group cohesion is strongly linked to shared beliefs and values, and intensity of normative pressures to conform (Trice and Beyer 1993). Within the safety literature considerable attention has been devoted to safety climate (e.g., Bosak et al. 2013), which also has strong links to shared beliefs and values, but specific to safety issues, and also has a normative influence on group or team member s behavior. The factors which define safety climate are reasonably well understood (e.g., Clarke 2006), and it is also clear that a strong safety climate is positively associated 

Co-workers reactions to new employees have been termed compensatory behaviors (Geller et al. 1996). These are behaviors which attempt to compensate for the fact that the employee is new to the job, and needs familiarizing with all aspects of the job. Of course familiarization is required in both directions the new employee will need to become familiar with all aspects of the job, including their co-workers behavior and attitudes, and co-workers will need to become familiar with the new employee s behavior and attimdes. The latter is particularly important for co-worker safety. New employees can be somewhat unpredictable in their behavior due to a desire to be helpful (Burt et al. 2014). Chapter 8 focuses specifically on helping behaviors which new employees may engage in and the risks these may pose to co-workers. In addition to unexpected helping behaviors, new employees can be unpredictable in how they work, and co-workers need to be veiy mindful of this. 

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At this point, I will not explore in detail the issues around the acquisition of experience in a specific situation. These issues are dealt with in Chap. 7 where concepts such as familiarization and co-worker compensatory behaviors are discussed in detail. For now, it is sufficient to realize that new employees vary in experience and this variance has important implications for safety. Table 3.1 shows the key variables which an organization should consider the type of new employee, the experience they have before starting their new job, the ability of that experience to generalize to the new job, and the relative time it may take for the new employee to be considered experienced. It is impossible to acmally place specific times into the last column of Table 3.1, as this will vary considerably from job to job, from organization to organization, and from individual to individual. However, the general pattern shown in Table 3.1 is likely to apply to most situations. 

A further factor which can influence co-worker compensatory behaviors is the performance demands which are placed on them. Interaction with a new employee requires time, time which will be taken away from other productive activities. A number of studies have shown a relationship between workload/performance pressure and safety (e.g., see Christian et al. 2009 for a review), with safety decreasing as performance demands increase. One mechanism which may explain these findings is the limitations which high performance demands place on employees, and in particular how they limit employees ability to provide compensatory behaviors for new employees. Arguably new employee adaption, and their familiarization, will be slower in a situation where performance demands placed on co-workers preclude effective interaction with new employees. Thus any formal arrangement between a co-worker and a new employee needs to allow the co-worker the time necessary to provide the degree of support the new employee needs. 

Co-worker compensatory behaviors may also be determined by how well the coworker knows the new employee (Burt et al. 2008). The acquisition of knowledge about a new employee is at the basis of the finding that similarity between a new employee and co-workers is likely to prompt acceptance (e.g., loardar 2007 Ziller and Behringer 1960). Basically, if the new employee appears to share similar values, interests and attitudes to exiting co-workers— he or she is likely to be liked and responded to in a positive way. This result is consistent with findings from basic social psychology research which have demonstrated that individuals tend not... 

Recognize and manage contexmal Umitations that can restrict co-worker compensatory behaviors... 

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