The term “social loafing” is synonymous with social psychology yet is equally apt, if not more, to the corporate context of 2011.

I mention this because businesses are once again challenged to create synergy or ‘more with less’, the hangover from a binge on financial credit leaving much of the world’s major economies feeling groggy and less inclined to indulge in the same poison, even in smaller, healthier doses.  As always, the first thing to cut is the HR budget line – less training; less staff; smaller bonuses; pay freezes.

German Max Ringelmann’s 1913 studies were a pre-runner to our contemporary understanding of “synergy”; the magical osmosis that takes place when you put a group of people together with a shared goal; the result greater than the sum of its parts.

Ringelmann actually discovered that people perform greater as individuals than they do as part of a group.

Further studies in 1974 by Ingham et al discovered that the greater the number of participants in any group, the lesser the effort expended by each individual in that group – even when the resultant output was found to be greater.

This phenomenon gave rise to the term ‘social loafing’.  Expressed in numerical terms for example: 8 people each giving 90% effort would equate to 720%; 10 people giving 80% (10% less effort than the smaller group) would achieve 800%; 12 people giving 70% effort would achieve 840% collectively and so on.

As the number of participants increases, the collective output is greater but the individual input is reduced (90%, 80%, 70%) whilst ‘social loafing’ remains masked by the cumulative result (740%; 800%; 840%) as a result of focus on outputs and outcomes rather than inputs.

Tying all this together with more contemporary studies into employee engagement and the recommendation UK Plc taps into individuals discretionary effort to make businesses sustainable; viable and competitive, what can managers do?

Small Groups

If possible, nullify opportunity for social loafing by creating short term, small membership groups.  If possible, allocate responsibilities to individuals.

Collective responsibility creates and encourages social loafing as accountability for failure will be dispersed across all participants leaving you, as the Project / Programme Manager, with the blame so try to break the goal into component parts and allocate these to individuals.

Systems

If people are doing the same or similar work, basic mathematical equations can determine a collective “norm” or average.

Basing individual performance targets on collective averages negates any anomalies and exceptions thus leaving no room for manoeuvre when it comes to attaining these targets.

Such systems also aid meaningful appraisal of an individual’s performance and contribution.

Once individuals realise they can no longer hide in the crowd, performance will improve or you’ll have meaningful evidence to start conversations about ongoing suitability to do this line of work.

The benefit of measuring ‘averages’ is that it aggregates out anomalies and it’s statistically unlikely that the same staff member will always get the difficult case / poor machine / difficult clients / slow computer /poor sales leads or whatever other variable you care to substitute in.

Such systems create virtuous circles – once staff start seeing the benefits of increased effort through appraisal systems, they’ll be driven to maintain or improve their results further.

Spin Off

Don’t let functions get too big or too diverse.  Some of the most successful entrepreneurs recognise the power of “spinning off” business ideas.

This keeps the small units focussed whilst capitalising on opportunities for growth.

Synergy

The collective result of individual performances will always create synergy – but that can be ‘negative synergy’ or ‘positive synergy’.  Focussing on the inputs as well as the outputs will help ensure that the synergy you’re team’s creating stays positive!

This is a guest article by Colin Millar, an ambassador of the Chartered Management Institute.