Personal Narrative: My Personal Experience With Social Loafing

Describe your experience with social loafing. How have you dealt with this concept in the past? After reading this chapter, how would you approach such an incident moving forward? How would you describe your personal approach to group work? As the saying goes “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", when we are in a group, there is a tendency for the people to exert less effort to achieve a goal than when working alone. I strongly believe that social loafing appears in one way or the other within every team. Based on my experience, i have seen so many social loafers who benefit from the work of other individuals in the group, without exerting any of their potential. I worked for a multinational company, in the credit card department; we had a set of sales target to achieve for certain months. It was the target for the team. Our team was of 8 members; initially everyone participated actively and gave their best performance. However, eventually after sometime, there was a decrease in productivity of the team’s performance because few of the team members did not perform. They thought that the final evaluation does not just result on the individual but the team
Certain employees will tend to reduce their own effort when they see their peers not taking the equal responsibility. If certain standards or rules are initiated before the team task is given, then there is a possibility to prevent or limit the effects of social loafing. The group size plays a major role, the larger the group the more social loafers. It is always recommended to have a small group. Establishing individual accountability should be a focus area when group task is given. Encouraging group loyalty, implementing peer evaluation, engaging individuals and managing discussions are some other ground rules which should be set before the assignment of the task which will obviate social