A team justifies its existence only if it brings added value through numbers. That means if 1+1=3.
An employee has the tendency to ‘free-ride”. It is human nature.
Social loafing is an organizational behavior of an employee that makes less effort in a team compared with the way he behaves next to an individual task. The reason can be that he feels his contribution is not correctly evaluated, but what allows this behavior to happen is that the employee knows he is not evaluated.
There are a lot of preventive measures ranging from establishing individual accountability to peer evaluation or writing a team contract. The only question remains who will implement these measures? A functional manager will not have sufficient authority due to the fact that team members can be from different departments. The only approach that proves to be efficient is using a project manager or a team leader that has basic knowledge of organizational behavior.
The key to avoid social loafing seems to be not to develop the sense of community that is expected from a team member, but to define better the individual tasks of the respective employee. Being part of the team is motivating as long as “I am a member of this team” and not so much when “we are a team”.
