 group experiences can be really exciting like this right we're all on the boat together you're rowing down and battling this river all working in the same at the same thing for the same goal then you turn around you realize Steve's back there not even paddling them and even out or in his hand I didn't have the respect to have a paddling as a hand to pretend that he's doing some work right and that's pretty typical for group work as well so in this video we want to take a look at some ways that we can confront and prevent social loafing now what is social loafing well let's take a look social loafing is a phenomenon in which individuals exert less effort when working as a group than when working independently so you know for some reason when people get in a group they feel like I don't really need to do all the work now I don't need to do as much work as I would have on my own because other people are here to pick up the slack and so we have a tendency to do less than we would and exert less effort when we're in a group than we would otherwise and that happens more for some people than and others of course but there are a variety of causes of social loafing a variety of reasons that people do it and and fall into this trap one is equitable contribution if they feel like they don't have the opportunity to contribute in the same way that others do where their contributions aren't being heard aren't being recognized aren't being valued then then you may see them engage in social loafing submaximal goal setting so as a group if you just set your set the bar too low people feel like they don't you don't need my help anyway to do this so I don't really need to put my full effort in and put that much effort in because we've set the bar so low so you want to be sure your goal setting is optimal and and at an appropriate level sometimes it's because there's a lessened contingency between input and outcome so there's there's less you know they feel like there's less going on between the input of the group and the outcome like the group has you know somewhat lessened input to how the how things work out in the end anyway a lack of evaluation if they don't feel like they're being evaluated people don't feel like they're being evaluated then and there's no you know consequence for for loafing then they may choose to do so an unequal distribution of compensation if they feel like others are being compensated more than they are not equitably you know for equal but looking for equity if they're not being compensated appropriately and they feel like others are but they're being undercompensated then they may not work as hard and just generally having a non-cohesive group if your if your group is not cohesive which is something we talked about in a previous video in creating that positive group climate but if you don't have a cohesive group then people just don't feel connected they don't feel really compelled to get very involved and so you start to see some social loafing in those instances as well so as far as the effects of social loafing what's the impact of social loafing well just generally if we look at it first as for groups we see decreased output we see dissatisfaction among the members and with the members and we see a creation of in groups meaning groups within your group so clicks or groups within your group and that's not that's not always great for for groups if it's not intentional if it's not task related you don't want those in groups you want to be one cohesive group so it can affect the group as a whole in those ways it also affects individuals individuals feel lack of satisfaction with the the social loafers themselves and other people in the group will find that they feel lack of satisfaction they feel lack of growth and the lack of esteem or accomplishment in relationship to the group groups tasks and group work so we see it affects both the groups as a whole and individuals in negative ways so social loafing is just not it's not great it's not great so what can we do we confront the social loafer we can confront that person we can we can take it to them in a variety of ways we can we can we can bring this up with them in a variety of ways the first to be a private consultation i'd always recommend starting there pulling that person aside having somebody that they do connect with from the group pulling them inside and saying look it's clear you're not pulling your weight and we need you to we need you as part of this effort but we're not getting your full effort and that's obvious so but you can you can pull that person aside into a private consultation that's where i would start you could also have a group discussion with this person they'll bring it up amongst the entire group have an open discussion among the group and and try and come up with some solutions there and through through that whole group discussion you can pull in your supervisor are you super your superior somebody who has uh you know authority over the members of that group or over the group itself and ask them to take on the the social loafer and confront them about that you could exclude the person eventually it may come to this it may just get to we're just gonna leave this person out we're not gonna bother we're just gonna you know basically kick them out of the group and that's pretty extreme but but we can exclude that person if it comes to that and either in conjunction with that or even without that we can just circumvent if you don't have the power to kick that person out of the group you can still engage in circumvention where you just reassign things you basically just don't put anything on that person's plate and and you really if you basically decide if they don't want to be part of the group there it can not going to contribute then you just find other ways to get that work completed and you just kind of cast them off to the side you know you circumvent and work around that reassign the tasks and and keep moving forward as a group so that's what you do that those are some things you can do if you have a social loafer and you need to confront them but what can we do before that before we get to that stage to prevent social loafing what can we do to kind of avoid the situation to begin with well first we can write a team contract and really enforce that and hold people to that we can create that charter for the team and lay out our expectations very clearly and what will happen what we expect of people and what happens if people are not performing up to their to their agreement and so we can look at that and we can write a contract at the very beginning for the team we can create appropriate group sizes make sure that we have groups that are the appropriate size to the task so that people aren't don't feel like well they don't really need me anyway so there's not you know less work to go around than there are people that's what you're trying to avoid so create groups with an appropriate size in mind you can establish individual accountability we can you know set up systems where we are holding people accountable where we are stressing that to people making a public knowledge within the group who's responsible for what and what what stage and and the holding people individually accountable for those things that we can specifically define a task we can we can get into the detail make sure that we have that ready down for what that person is expected to do and what's going to happen if it doesn't get done what's going to happen if it does get done we can create personal relationships with those people that's a that's a key factor too people are going to be less likely to engage in social loafing if they feel like they have relationships within that group that are significant because they won't want to let you don't want to let down your friends and you don't want to let down people that you like and that you respect so when we create those personal relationships people are more inclined to avoid social loafing they're more inclined to to do what they should be doing a few other things we can do to prevent social loafing we can manage discussions meaning we can make sure that we're pulling everybody in to that discussion that we're we're getting everybody's input that we're helping everybody feel involved we can engage individuals we can be intentional and specific about pulling them in if we if we need to so we can we can again be intentional about that about making sure that we're calling people in and call asking for their input and things we can highlight achievement and help people feel like their efforts are being seen and and and respected and and valued so we can do that and we can evaluate progress of individual group members we can make sure that we're evaluating people so that people know that that that's happening as we found out earlier that's a you know one of the things that contributes to social loafing is if there's no evaluation at all if people know they're not being evaluated and they're more inclined to feel like they can get away with social loafing so we can evaluate progress as part of the group effort and we do these things we're more inclined to see people who are engaged in a group who are part of that group who are putting their full effort in and not and not engaging in social loafing right because it's the great philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said only the guy who isn't rowing it's time to rock the boat so we want to avoid social loafing because when you have somebody who's not rowing along with the rest of the group and that's when you have the potential to have that person start rocking the boat so we want to avoid that want to avoid that that type of conflict and confrontation and that kind of social loafing and just nip it in the bud and help everybody feel engaged and part of the team if you have questions about social loafing or other aspects of small group communication please feel free to email me I'd love to communicate with you that way in the meantime I hope this is giving you some insight into the basics of social loafing how we can prevent it and then how we can confront it when it does happen