How do you reduce social loafing?

Answer 1

Social loafing: occurs when an individual is less productive (exerts less effort) working in a group/team than s/he is working independently.

• Most likely to occur in large teams where individual output is difficult to measure
• When task is boring
• When objective is not important
• When team doesn't value membership

How you could reduce this is by

• Creating some form of performance measurment for each individual, that way they will be motivated to do well, as it will be indicated to their peers and managers
• Add some creativity to the task so that it is not boring, when something is fun people are more motivated to do it
• Make the importance of the task known, explicitly state its impact and consequences
• Increase team cohesion through team building activity (just a suggestion)