Social Sustainability in Practice: Bridging the Gap from Declarations to Real-World Scenarios on Sustainability Driven by Ergonomics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My main feedback is related to the use of language - I would advise funneling this through Grammarly for support of sentence structure, punctuation, and clarity throughout. Specific lines I noted - line 176 - is the comma needed after employees? The first sentences of both the Discussion and Conclusions need revision for clarity, Line 197 - Based on responses not responds. Figure 3 - the legend should read Women not Woman. Line 178 - the company or companies. Lines 146-147 do not make sense. 

Per the content, the purpose makes no mention of ergonomics. I would think it needs to. I originally had a hard time making the link between social sustainability and ergonomics, but the authors did a great job with the table. 

But I am still fuzzy on the method - Line 106 - what types of questions were specifically asked? How was this questionnaire developed? 

And then there is the linkage between the methods used and how these speak to ergonomics as a social sustainability conduit. There needs to be more discussion around why these particular methods were chosen to support the purpose.

When I see line 96: there is no model for effectively 96 integrating ergonomic innovations into business processes  I expect that the authors intend to provide this. And it is not clear that they did. 

Also - what do lines 107-108 mean in terms of processed into tabular form? Lines 146-147 indicate qualitative data were collected - and I assume it was by the questionnaire which I think asks about fatigue and...? And also 146-147 reference employee ratings - for what exactly? Fatigue. 

The abstract does a good job teasing the methods - but the narrative un-does this. Some extra time spent here of clarity and fully describing methods/measures is needed.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

My main feedback is related to the use of language - I would advise funneling this through Grammarly for support of sentence structure, punctuation, and clarity throughout. Specific lines I noted - line 176 - is the comma needed after employees? The first sentences of both the Discussion and Conclusions need revision for clarity, Line 197 - Based on responses not responds. Figure 3 - the legend should read Women not Woman. Line 178 - the company or companies. Lines 146-147 do not make sense. 

Per the content, the purpose makes no mention of ergonomics. I would think it needs to. I originally had a hard time making the link between social sustainability and ergonomics, but the authors did a great job with the table. 

But I am still fuzzy on the method - Line 106 - what types of questions were specifically asked? How was this questionnaire developed? 

And then there is the linkage between the methods used and how these speak to ergonomics as a social sustainability conduit. There needs to be more discussion around why these particular methods were chosen to support the purpose.

When I see line 96: there is no model for effectively 96 integrating ergonomic innovations into business processes  I expect that the authors intend to provide this. And it is not clear that they did. 

Also - what do lines 107-108 mean in terms of processed into tabular form? Lines 146-147 indicate qualitative data were collected - and I assume it was by the questionnaire which I think asks about fatigue and...? And also 146-147 reference employee ratings - for what exactly? Fatigue. 

The abstract does a good job teasing the methods - but the narrative un-does this. Some extra time spent here of clarity and fully describing methods/measures is needed.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and guidance - the responses are in the attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Rewiev of:

Social Sustainability in Practice: Bridging the Gap from Declarations to Real-World Scenarios on Sustainability driven by Ergonomics

 Authors:

Marcin Butlewski, Wiktoria Czernecka

 The authors investigate ergonomics in promoting social sustainability within the workplace. Empirical research was conducted among 147 assembly line workers, using Ergonomic Risk Assessment (ERA) method to evaluate the ergonomic quality of workstations and correlated these findings with employees' subjective experiences.

 The article is clearly structured and well-written in general.

Remarks:

 As a personal opinion, to establish plausibility, it was necessary to make a comparison between the results obtained by applying the ERA method with one of the methods widely used in the field: REBA method or OWAS method.

 line 150-Table 3

It is necessary to detail/explain the results from table 3:

- among the data presented are results accepted (are significant results) by the statistical analysis;

- why some results are negative and others positive;

- what the symbol * attached to some results represents.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and guidance - the responses are in the attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study interviewed 147 assembly line workers about their physical discomfort levels and used the ERA method to assess the level of ergonomic risk at their workstations. The relevant opinions are as follows.

1. Please provide descriptive statistics for ERA scores and other study variables.

2. The Results and Discussion section is too brief and does not present valuable findings.

3. 6. Conclusions section, “The study focuses on the ergonomic quality of work of employees, while also taking into account the broader sustainability and productivity goals of the company.” The ergonomic quality of work seems to only have an ERA score, and the ERA method only evaluates working posture and workplace condition, which is insufficient from ergonomic point of view. In addition, the content of this study tends to explore the correlation between the results of the ergonomic checklist and subjective discomfort of various parts of the body and overall fatigue. There is less discussion of company sustainability and productivity.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and guidance - the responses are in the attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Well done with the revisions. 

Author Response

Again, Thank you for the time and effort you devoted to our article. The insights raised have improved the quality of the text and will contribute to its greater merit and interest to the audience.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study only investigated the ERA scores, discomfort levels of various parts of the body, and overall fatigue levels of 147 employees of one company. There is no innovation in the field of human factors, either in terms of research methods or research results. Applying the DMAIC formula mentioned by the authors, this study only completed Define, Measure and a small part of Analyze. If more Analyzes can be carried out, and the stages of Improve and Control are completed, the company's sustainable management strategy can be discussed together to verify DMAIC formula value. So that the research results can show higher academic value.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf