Surely many of those who have ever worked in a team have encountered the situation where someone on the team clearly does not try very hard to do their job with full responsibility, does not give 100%, assuming that someone else in the team will do it anyway. This is a very common phenomenon that occurs in the process of teamwork, and it is called the social laziness effect, or Ringelmann effect. Let's talk about this in more detail, what this effect is, how it manifests itself and how to act in such cases.

The essence of the Ringelmann effect is that as the composition of the team increases, the productivity of team members begins to decline. This effect was discovered by the French agricultural engineer Maximilian Rengelmann in experiments he first conducted with animals, the purpose of which was to determine the number of draught animals to move certain objects.

Soon realizing that his observations were similar to teamwork, the first experiment involving humans was conducted in 1913. The essence of one of these experiments was that the men had to pull the rope, first individually, and then the number of people increased to 7 and 14. Each phase of the test lasted about 5 seconds, which resulted in the following.

The pulling force was measured with a dynamometer, which recorded the following parameters: the maximum value of individual pull reached 85.3 kg, the maximum value of pull in groups of 7 persons - 65 kg, and the maximum value of pull in groups of 14 persons - 61.4 kg. Well, the results speak for themselves.

As a result, Rengelmann determined a formula that establishes the individual contribution of each group member:
C = (100 – 7) / (K – 1) where:
C - the average individual contribution of a group member;
K - the number of group members.

Thus, despite the fact that the members of the group (team) believe that they give their all, yet there is a loss of motivation and the effect of social laziness, that is, people working in a group make less effort, relying on their colleagues to perform tasks. Therefore, social laziness can be both intentional and unintentional. So what are the factors of social laziness? Such factors include the following:

• increase in the composition of the team: the more people involved in teamwork, the more the participants will have confidence that someone else can do the work;
• lack of evaluation of work by others: if a person works on a task individually, knowing that he is being watched and his work is subject to evaluation, he approaches the task more responsibly;
• gender structure of the group: it has been scientifically proven that women are less socially lazy in teamwork, while team cohesion and friendship minimize the risk of the Ringelmann effect.

What to do and how to avoid the Ringelmann effect? This can be done by using the following:

• make each member of the group recognizable and enhance their role;
• minimize the possibility of changing roles, functions, and tasks;
• focus on motivation and a system of reward for certain results and achievements;
• goals should be set clearly and distinctly, so that everyone understands what they are achieving with their work;
• strengthen team spirit, develop ownership and a sense of "we".

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Well, following these tips will help maximize the effectiveness of teamwork and minimize the risks of social laziness effects.