College-based projects.

Dealing with “Slackers” Reflection

– Read HR Ethics: Working with Slackers Hurts Motivation in the textbook

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Slacking is a common problem in businesses. HR must train employees to deal successfully with slackers by confronting them. Given these issues, think about some of the “slackers” with whom you have interacted over the last several years when working on job-related and college-based projects. Consider what the specific problems were, what your initial reactions were, and what you did to resolve these problems.

Using the questions in the HR ethics box as a guide (i.e., 1. how did you identify the incidences of slacking, 2. how did you report the slacking, assuming you did report it, and 3. how would you prevent slacking in the future?), write a reflection on your experiences with slackers at work and/or at school, providing in-depth details about your experiences, decision making, and actions. The report should be approximately 2 single-spaced pages (12-point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins; page count does not include title page and bibliography).

Working with Slackers Hurts Motivation
Research suggests that a large majority of employees report having to deal with slackers who intentionally don’t work hard enough, making this issue a key ethical concern that relates to both workplace justice and fairness. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of individuals actually “cry foul” on colleagues who shirk their work responsibilities, which can perpetuate the problem and harm the motivation, satisfaction, and performance of other workers. Coworkers also end up working about four to six more hours each week to make up for the allocation of work that slackers don’t complete, which can harm their own ability to perform at high levels. But why don’t people report slackers so that something can be done? At a minimum, employees should confront individuals who don’t do their assigned work. Quite often, it’s just easier for people to look the other way because they believe confrontation isn’t worth the hassle. Unfortunately, most hardworking employees overlook all the risks associated with letting slackers get away with their selfishness and poor performance. Companies much teach employees how to respond to workplace loafing. Situations should be handled diplomatically, but shirkers need to be “called on the carpet” for their lack of conscientiousness. In particular, training can be provided to help workers address slacking so that their motivation remains high. Companies should consider the following issues as they provide training to help employees deal with slackers: coworkers:
• Don’t be judgmental. Start talking to your slacking coworker with an open mind and a curious demeanor. The individual might not understand how his or her slacking negatively affects you. • Make you coworker feel comfortable. Show respect and describe how there are work
objectives that you share in common. • Share your perceptions. Talk about the behaviors you are witnessing in an impersonal way and convey how such conduct is not meeting expectations. • Talk about the challenges. Describe how the slacking behavior is adversely impacting your own efforts and productivity. • Ask for feedback. Determine if your coworker views the situation in a different light. You may not fully understand some of the circumstances that lead to the slacking behavior.4 Slacking is a common problem in business, and HR professionals should be sensitive to the inherent challenges so that these issues can be effectively addressed. Consider the following questions: 1. What kinds of signs might you look for when determining whether slacking is a problem? How should you encourage employees to report such poor performance? 2. Besides the training already discussed, what do think companies and HR
departments can do to reduce the likelihood of coworker slacking?

Answer preview

Whenever people work in groups, especially if they are friends or have worked together for quite some time, a sense of loyalty and obligation arises. It is one of the reasons why people find it harder to report individuals they believe are slacking and, as such, interfering with their functionality. Rather than report them, people prefer to increase their work output to cover the work that should have gotten done by the slackers (Mathis et al., 2016). Initially, during the group work assignments, we had an intensive debate about whether we should let the professor know that we have a couple of slackers in the group. Almost everyone agreed that we should not report them, especially since they had only skipped a couple of meetings. The members believed it would be unfair to them if we report them, and they end up performing the tasks we allocated to them. We unanimously agreed to base our decision on whether to report them for slacking until the deadline for submitting individual work for compilation. The moment they did not submit their work, we decided that we would exclude their names from the group, knowing well that the professor will notice and enquire what happened. As such, we would have indirectly reported them to the professor for slacking. Before we did that, we decided to write an email explaining how their slacking inconvenienced the group and informed them of the group’s final decision.

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