Have you ever worked on a project where you noticed that some team members are not working as efficient as they can? Have you tried figuring out why those team members are acting the way they do? Have you tried adding more people to expedite execution and eventually it turned out you are not getting the expected performance? If you have already experienced any of these, and you still need to find out the reasons behind that, Social Loafing is the answer!

I personally believe that the project manager or the leader has to understand each and every team member’s personality, I see this as a prerequisite to lead, and in order to lead you have to motivate, and in order to motivate you have to understand the team member’s personality, you can not simply motivate every one the same way, some team members are motivated by incentive, bonus, or pay hike, however the money is not always a motivator, this is according to Two-Factor Theory by Frederick Herzberg, in contrast some people are motivated by being recognized, given important assignments, learn new technologies, etc. so the project manager or the leader (project manager and leader are synonymous in this post) has to understand everyone’s character.

Social Loafing is a phenomenon that you must have encountered before, but maybe you do not know the name of it, however it almost exists in all life aspects starting from school to the biggest organizations the one can work in.

Ringlemann Effect

Max Ringelmann (1861-1931) is a French agriculture engineer, who made a very interesting observation about how people act when they work in a group, he noticed that whenever more people are added to a task, even though the total effort was higher, less effort was being exerted by individuals, then he decided to conduct an experiment where he got a rope and attached a strain gauge to it, and started by assigning two persons to each side, he found that individual’s effort dropped to 93%, when three persons were added to each side, individual’s effort dropped to 85%, and when eight persons were assigned to each side, the individual’s effort dropped almost to the half! Then he started adding more people to each side, and in turn effort was dropping in a non-linear fashion, what he concluded was that people tend to exert less effort when they work in a group, this has been called as Ringlemann Effect.

Some scientists conducted similar experiments such as Clapping, they found that people clapped less efficiently when they were clapping in a large number of people, in fact we all have encountered the same, sometimes when you find yourself obliged to clap for someone, you barely move your hands relying on other people that they will clap and also on the fact that no one will call you by name and ask why you are not clapping! A similar experiment has been done for yelling,it is almost the same concept and it gave the same results that people yell less when they yell in a group, same applies for working groups, sports teams, project teams, college projects, and you can think of more patterns!

Reasons of Social Loafing

Social loafing is a very dangerous phenomenon, if not addressed it can destroy the entire team’s work even worse the ecosystem, sometimes the social loafers are called “free riders”, you know those people who take the bus and escape the conductor, imagine if this becomes a habit, the system will eventually collapse, because of the inability to make revenue, those free riders are everywhere, wherever you find a group you will always find at least one social loafer, there are so many reasons behind being a social loafer, I will try to summarize those from working in projects perspective:

• Trivial project: team members will not work efficiently if they do not see the importance of the project, the project may not be strategic one, or they may see the project as trivial and useless
• Lack of motivation: if team members are not motivated, they will tend to save their efforts, they can do this consciously or unconsciously due to being unmotivated, again motivation should be tailored for everyone’s needs
• Lack of fair reward system: if people do not expect to be rewarded on fairly basis, nor get recognized they will exert less amount of effort
• Team incoherence: some teams do not get along because of different cultures, education, background, conflicting needs, politics, etc.
• Relying on others: like in the rope pulling case, people will rely on other people to finish their tasks, and they will always look for new ways in order to escape paying the fare!
• Laziness: that’s self-explanatory
• Hiding in the group: people may think they can hide in the group, especially in large number of people, and so they exert less effort relying on the fact they will not be caught

Social Loafing Preventive Actions

Project manager should stand against social loafers from the very beginning, if the project manager ignores the symptoms of it, social loafing will get contagious and the entire team will wear the social loafer’s hat, the same way, this absolutely will have an impact on the project, a set of preventive actions have to be taken in order to avoid the social loafing:

• Clear Objectives: objectives have to be set and communicated to all team members, they have to understand the strategic importance of the project and how it fits in the organization’s vision and key values, some projects do not have this strong business case, it will be the responsibility of the project manager to market the project and ensure the team members buy into it, I cannot think of any real successful project whose a team does not buy into its objectives.
• Continuous Motivation: a tailored continuous motivation for team members will always keep the team energized and will minimize social loafing
• Ground Rules: Ground rules have to be identified and communicated to the entire team, it is the project manager’s responsibility to set the rules that define all the relationships amongst team members, this would ensure that everyone knows what’s expected from him and would also minimize conflicts amongst team members
• RACI Matrix: Responsibility Assignment Matrix is one of the most effective and yet ignored project management tools, you will find too much resistance from the team and stakeholders to identify each member by name, people simply fear responsibility, and as always if they are afraid to do one thing, get them to do it, RAM is very effective and efficient, it will let you corner those who want to always be free riders.
• Team Building: each and every collective activity can be considered as a team building exercise, such as WBS session, brainstorming session, group R&D activity, picnic, etc. those promote the group theme and promote the value of team work
• Conditional Recognition: ideally there has to be recognition rules set from the beginning, a Key Performance Indicator has to be defined for each and every team member, this will let team members know what is expected from them and they will try to work to fulfil those goals

Social Loafing Corrective Actions

Even though you take all the above actions to prevent the social loafing, it is very likely that one or more team members will be social loafers, like I said before, it is a contiguous behaviour and you will have to fight it as soon as observed, if you a spot loafer in your team you have to act immediately, you also need to understand that social loafing is very painful and unfair to people who perform and sometimes work on more than 100% throughput, you can apply the following corrective actions:

• Team Importance: you will need to boost the team’s morale by emphasizing the importance of the team and the value the team adds to the organization by delivering the project successfully
• Individual Importance: whenever you spot a social loafer start by speaking about his positive traits and try to establish his image as a key player in the team, this would change the attitude of a social loafer and it is likely that his performance will increase, speak about stuff like if the task the social loafer is not completed, it can negatively impact the entire project
• One-On-One Resolution: if the above two techniques do not work, you can start by confronting the social loafer in private, make it clear for him that you know he is not exerting what is expected from him, try to focus on whatever special skills he has and then ask him to do more, give a week or two, and then has a similar meeting to examine whether his performance and attitude have been improved, you also may need to give a second chance!
• Isolation: a social loafer is sucking up your budget and is a risk to any project, and one strategy to manage a risk is to avoid it, you may need to isolate the social loafer or ask the resource manager for a better resource, make this your final resort!

The Law of Diminishing Returns

Based on my observation, there is a tight relationship between the Social Loafing (psychology) and The Law of Diminishing Returns (economics), according to the economist David Ricardo the law of diminishing returns identifies the relation between a production system input and output, where at a certain point the more inputs you add into the system result in small expected output rise, this is basically the same concept of the Social Loafing, in a layman’s language adding more into some task will not necessarily result in a linear performance gain.

Social Loafing Lessons Learned

• Roles and responsibilities have to be defined upfront
• Adding more resources will not always give you the expected performance gain
• Understand team members’ needs and motivate each team member based on his preferences
• Social Loafing exists in everyday’s life and projects are no exception, you need to keep your eyes open to uncover social loafers and let them change their attitudes, otherwise team members who are performing at 100% will eventually become social loafers

If you have encountered social loafing before in your team, please leave a comment.

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