Effects of Work Conditions on Communication Errors

Abstract

In this paper, we study the influence of workers' experience and poor visibility on communication errors in a collaborative work site. These factors were set up as experiment conditions, and communication errors were experimentally induced. One hundred persons participated in the study. Each participant was assigned to a two-person team. Each team was asked to complete assembling toys within its limited work area. At that time, the condition that each team passes the work area of another team was set up. Furthermore, rules for communication within and between teams were established. Deviations from the rules were defined as communication errors. The main findings are as follows: Experience made workers more active and lowered the ratio of senders' communication errors. This means that a team consisting of inexperienced workers cannot obey simple rules during simple work. Poor visibility did not significantly influence workers' behavior or the occurrence of communication errors. There were several significant correlations among the ratios of communication errors.