MGMT 453 Blog Posts – Ivan Ochoa

Decreasing effort is a behavior I exhbitied from a past job that was based on compensation. Working at a restaurant that is family owned was a new experience for me. I was a server, but when I had first started working there I was essentially doing many different jobs. Cooking, cleaning, greeting, seating, and ultimately serving were some job duties of mine. Being at a younger age, I assumed I was being a great worker and would love the extra work. My paycheck was based on the hours I put it in, but I was earning minimum wage at the time so it wasn’t very much. Talking about job pay in the workplace can be very awkward, especially when you find out that some employees are making considerably more than you and they don’t work as hard. Ultimately, this led me to believe I was being underpaid but with my experience level there wasn’t much advocating I could do for myself. Learning that a new employee was being hired, who was also closer in age to me, was exciting because it meant I got to train someone. After the first shift together, I learned that he had a higher starting wage than me and it saddened me. I felt I was being undercompensated, while performing many job duties that are essentially for a manager, I started obtaining a behavior of decreased effort. 

Outlined in this week’s lecture notes, compensation has an effect on employee fairness perception. Pay transparency is important because it allows for employees to know if they are being paid fairly among other employees, based on experience level. Compensation motivated this behavior because I valued extrinsic rewards over intrinsic. At the beginning, I was motivated to work harder and more for what I thought would be greater compensation. After learning that newer employees were earning more than a current employee, I developed a behavior that reduced my effort. Ultimately, this behavior contributed to me leaving the company but compensation was the root of it. 

References:

Week 8: Compensation Lecture Outline (Lectures 1-3)