A five best practices

1. Create a common work culture: Friends are often less likely to 'socially loaf' on work teams (Kunishima & Welte 2004).

2. Using dispersed teams with a lack of social facilitation factors can be undercut by increasing levels of difficulty and responsibility "As tasks become more difficult and participants perceive they can make a unique contribution to the task, social loafing decreases" (Kunishima & Welte 2004).

3. Task uniqueness -- by ensuring members of the work teams have specifically defined roles, there is less of a chance to feel as if others can pick up the slack (Kunishima & Welte 2004).

5. Punishment for loafing may be effective but cannot be the only solution: "threats of punishment improved productivity levels, but did not eliminate the social loafing effect" according to researchers (Kunishima & Welte 2004).

Final recommendations for new managers

Creating individual as well as group accountability, making individuals feel as if their contribution is uniquely important and valuable, and including mechanisms for individual accountability are all vital parts of reducing the social loafing effect. Additionally, fostering social facilitation though team exercises and group meetings and monitoring is essential to create a common sense of purpose and to increase the emotional investment of group members. Managers must finally be cognizant of different attitudes towards individualism within different work cultures, particularly when dealing with geographically and culturally dispersed and diverse work teams, so that individualism does not result in social loafing by some team members.

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Social Loafing