According to Simms & Nichols (2014), social loafing can be described as the tendency of certain affiliates of a group to get by with not as much effort as what they would have put when doing it alone.
I once experience social loafing in one of the groups I worked with in the previous summer. We were working at a restaurant during the summer season, and the hotel was experiencing an unusually large number of guests. The employees were divided into separate shifts. After some time it emerged that the shift in which I was serving was experiencing an unusually large amount of complaints from the guests compared to other teams. My team was expected to perform well given the fact that it had more members who had worked at the hotel during peak seasons before. The customers complained about slow service, and unclean rooms. A look into the cause of these complaints revealed that some members were not giving their best to the team. In a team of twenty individuals, it emerged that at least five individuals were slow in their reaction to client requests and also spent a lot of time on their phones, most likely on social media. These five were free-riders who did not feel the need to give their best (Bhasin, 2018). In many instances, the team had to cover up for the sluggishness of the five. Some members were now suffering a sucker effect (Bhasin, 2018) since they had become disillusioned with the team and did not feel like giving their best when others are not giving their best.
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It was necessary to deal with the social loafers be dealt with to ensure the team’s performance improves (Ying, Li, Jiang, Peng, & Lin, 2014). First, the group members developed rules that were to be adhered to by every individual worked in our shift (Moon, 2017). Second, we divided all the tasked that had to be performed during our shift and assigned them equally to all members (Mariama-Arthur, 2014). We agreed that any individual who did not adhere to group rules or failed to accomplish their tasks would be kicked from the team. We got the hotel management to support us and or resolutions. It was also agreed the if social loafing continue the group size would have to be reduced (Cherry, 2018)
Teamwork is critical in dealing with social loafing (Mcfarlin, 2001). The leadership and cooperation of the member were critical in dealing with social loafers. After a streak of complaints from customers, the team leader called the team members that worked on our shift to a meeting and demanded to know what was happening. The members cooperated by reporting their grievances and experiences. After deliberating on the issues and agreeing on the social loafing as the cause of the poor performance, all members participated in suggesting solutions and afterward they participated in ensuring the agreed resolutions are enforced.
References
Bhasin, H. (2018, August 2). What is Social Loafing? Marketing91. Retrieved from https://www.marketing91.com/what-is-social-loafing/
Cherry, K. (2018, November 6). How Social Loafing Is Studied in Psychology. Very Well Mind. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-social-loafing-2795883
Mariama-Arthur, K. (2014, November 3). 3 essential steps to discouraging social loafing. Black Enterprise. Retrieved from https://www.blackenterprise.com/3-steps-discourage-stop-social-loafing-team-building-leadership-tips/
Mcfarlin, D. (2001, July 9).'Social loafing' often disrupts work teams. Bizjournals . Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2001/07/09/smallb3.html
Moon, L. (2017, December 6). The Secret To Removing Social Loafing From The Workplace. Trello. Retrieved from https://blog.trello.com/avoid-social-loafing
Simms, A., & Nichols, T. (2014).Social Loafing: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 15 (1), 58-67.
Ying, X., Li, H., Jiang, S., Peng, F., & Lin, Z. (2014). Group laziness: The effect of social loafing on group performance . Social Behavior and Personality: An international journal , 42, 465-472. http://dx.doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2014.42.3.465
