Experimental management of work collectives through social and socialization activities.

Introduction. The research refers to the experimentation of a group of researchers of the Research Center for Human Performance, of the University of Pitesti, Romania, of expert monitoring, for the performance of social and socialization activities at an economic company. The project aimed to combine some social activities with socialization activities. The social part of the project took place through a volunteer action in support of nature, by greening a wild segment of a mountain river, in order to make company members responsible for society's problems; the socialization part of the project aimed at conducting some team-building activities carried out in nature, to optimize the relations between the company's human resources. Material and methods - a group of 46 adult employees of a company (29 men and 17 women) participated for 3 days in a program that included an application carried out for social purposes and 6 applications carried out for socialization purposes. Before the program, an anamnesis of the needs of the workforce was conducted for one day. The potential participants unanimously accepted a set of 4 rules necessary to achieve psychological safety. The working procedures included the following techniques specific to team building: the metaphorical transfer of situations in an attempt to reduce the gap between real/fictitious environments; reflection used to produce changes in how participants feel and think, the facilitation techniques used were "Speaking for the experience" type at the end of each application. Results: Based on the data and observations made, the project achieved an increase in collective responsibility towards the issue of keeping the environment as clean as possible and the nature intact. Reasonable reactions were shown in the area of conflict resolution within the team; professional communication was optimized; solving difficult tasks by synchronizing the efforts of team members has been demonstrated; the "breaking of barriers" between the collective members was facilitated; the reflection of the participants expressed the achievement of well-being, relaxation and pleasure of joint movement. Conclusions: Based on the reflections verbally expressed by the participants, but also by their observations, the project managed to produce a change in the mentality of the work groups, improving the degree of awareness of the company's needs but also the awareness of the members in relation to the problems of society as a whole. The project had notes of originality by successfully combining social activities with those of socialization, focused together on improving teamwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]