Introduction The following is an investigation of the human resource issues at The Clybourne.

Located in the heart of campus at the University of Illinois, The Clybourne is one of three bars owned and operated by parent company Cochrane Enterprises. The Clybourne draws from the local student population for both its customer base and staffing needs and faces a number of human resource issues as a result. The following investigation considers these issues from the perspectives of a bartender and the general manager. High turnover is a primary concern of management at The Clybourne. The workforce at the bar is largely comprised of college students seeking status, work experience and/or a little extra cash. Employees who seek status are disappointed when they learn they must start from the bottom. Entry-level positions at The Clybourne include bouncers and servers, and their duties are much different from those of the glorified bartender. For example, bouncers are expected to clean toilets, pick up trash, check identification cards and deal with unruly customers. Only when these lower level employees have done their time will management consider promoting them. For these reasons, The Clybourne experiences high turnover in the bouncer and server positions. This job dissatisfaction becomes a staffing issue because management must continuously search for new employees to fill the lower level positions. Another concern of Clybourne management is employee participation in counterproductive work behaviors. Employees of all positions regularly steal cash, alcohol and supplies from the bar, and this in turn eats into its profit margins. Employees also engage in social activities at the expense of their work duties. While management realizes the social nature of this job, excessive amounts and certain types of socializing have led to significant productivity loss. For example, some bartenders regularly consume alcohol while on the clock. This behavior depletes company resources and affects the efficiency with which employees perform their duties. In the current system, the general manager immediately fires employees who are caught participating in such behavior. This results in additional turnover and signals larger organizational problems with employee motivation. Analysis The main human resource concerns at The Clybourne, as identified in the interviews, are high turnover and counterproductive work behaviors. These phenomena are indicative of larger issues with job satisfaction and motivation. Low job satisfaction is apparent in the high turnover rate of lower level employees. Predictors of job satisfaction are job characteristics, pay, justice and social environment. The Clybourne holds fault with several of these predictors. In terms of job characteristics, lower level positions offer little task variety. Bouncers and servers must stick to their respective duties whether it be cleaning up trash or selling shots to patronsand have no opportunity to crosstrain for other positions. This means, for example, that a server would not be permitted to bartend. The Clybourne is a hierarchical work environment and defines each position as

exclusive from the next. Lower level employees thus experience monotony in their tasks, which affects their level of job satisfaction. In terms of pay, employees perceive distinct inequities between the different levels of workers in the organization. The system is structured so that bartenders keep 65 percent of their tips and give 30 percent to the bouncers and five percent to the manager. Bartenders and bouncers must split their respective amounts between the number of them that are present that evening. This is significant because bartenders keep the majority of tips and only have to split it between two or three people; on the other hand, bouncers receive a smaller share and must divide it between 10 to 15 people. Servers keep all of their tips, but they make considerably less than the bar. The Clybourne attempts to compensate for this difference by offering separate wage rates: bartenders and servers make $4.25 per hour, and bouncers make $6.00 per hour. However, the reality is that bartenders make significantly more money, tips and paychecks combined, than the other positions. This difference in pay contributes to low job satisfaction among employees. In terms of justice, employees perceive limited procedural justice in the promotional process. The Clybourne does not have explicit guidelines that explain how to get promoted or suggest a standard timeline for the process. The only certainty is that all employees must start at the bottom of the hierarchy. For these reasons, many students who begin working at the bar become discouraged by the unpleasant tasks and time it takes to be promoted. Performance metrics are even less explicit for bouncers since they do not make sales. This ambiguity causes employees to speculate about the promotion of certain people over others and raises issues of procedural justice. Once acquainted with the system, employees often opt to leave The Clybourne and seek alternatives that offer better pay and/or working conditions. In this way, inequity also affects job satisfaction. The organization also faces significant issues with motivation. Many employees do not feel the need to go beyond their job descriptions, much less perform the minimal task requirements. In addition, employees regularly engage in counterproductive work behaviors. The equity theory of motivation is instrumental in dissecting this issue. The theory compares employee inputs job outputs to determine if there is a balance between what one is giving to and receiving from the organization. An important employee input in this case is time commitment. The Clybourne operates for five hours each night, and employees stay an additional hour after close to clean up. Oftentimes the nature of this business conflicts with early class schedules of the student employees. In the interview with the bartender, she expressed that finding a work-life balance and maintaining good grades can be stressful. Employees also input effort in completing job tasks. For example, a bartender can increase his or her effort input by working faster and more efficiently to serve drinks to customers. One of the most obvious outputs in this case is compensation. The current compensation system at The Clybourne is not particularly attractive to some employees. A previous example explains how bouncers share a smaller portion of the tips between a larger number of people. The sharing process also reduces the incentive for individual performance. These restrictions

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force bouncers to look long term in hopes of receiving pay increases (through promotion). This compensation system is demotivating to an individual who will only work at the bar for two to three years. Another output in this case is promotion. As previously discussed, there is not a clear promotional track. Employees are again discouraged because they do not see how their inputs will lead to the desired output. According to the equity theory of motivation, employees at The Clybourne exhibit poor job motivation because they believe their inputs exceed the outputs of their jobs. Employees are compelled to even the scales by stealing from the bar and participating in other counterproductive behaviors. Recommendations A large part of resolving job dissatisfaction and motivation at The Clybourne involves clarifying goals and expectations. In the current system, employees do not see how their efforts can lead to good performance. They also do not trust that good performance will be rewarded. Application of expectancy theory suggests breaks in the expectancy and instrumentality links of the expectancy chain. Management needs to explicitly outline the promotional process so employees understand what is expected and the timeline in which they are working. For example, to increase job satisfaction and motivation for servers, management can outline three benchmarks for promotion after one semester: (1) The server must arrive on time to every shift, (2) the server must work a minimum of 20 hours per week, and (3) the server must hit $5,000 in sales a minimum of six times over the course of the semester. Benchmarks must be both challenging and attainable. In addition, the general manager can recognize recent promotions via staff e-mail in order to highlight the desired inputs that resulted in the outputs. Addressing job dissatisfaction also requires management to be considerate of employees work-life balance. The general manager could ease some of the students stress by offering a type of flex-scheduling plan. For example, instead of requiring all three bartenders to come in at 9 p.m, management could ask that one bartender come in at 9 p.m, one come in at 11:00 p.m, and one come in at 11:30 p.m. The additional hours away from work offer more time for sleep or homework. This is a feasible solution because the bar is not busy for the first few hours and gradually becomes busier. Additional benefits to The Clybourne include increase in productivity and decrease in wages paid. Reinforcement theory is useful in tackling the remaining motivation issues with counterproductive work behavior. This theory suggests that positive reinforcement would be more effective than the organizations current use of negative reinforcement. That is to say, management should not focus on firing employees who steal or drink on the job. Such a solution is temporary and only addresses the symptoms of the problem. Instead, management should set goals for reduction in the loss of inventory and reward the whole staff at the end of each period if inventory is on track. These goals should be made transparent to all employees because it is critical for everyone to work together in order to get the reward. The organization should also offer incentives to motivate individual employees to be more productive. For example,

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management could offer cash to bouncers who catch the most fake identification cards or individual recognition for bartenders with the highest sales. Both of these rewards discourage socialization because employees must focus on performing as efficiently as possible in order to beat out their co-workers. Potential Problems with Implementation The Clybourne can address several job satisfaction and motivation issues by explicitly outlining its promotional process. However, this solution will fail if management does not follow through with its promises. It is critical for management to demonstrate that good performance will lead to rewards; otherwise, employees will continue to distrust the system. In addition, it is critical for employees to value the proposed reward. For example, offering a promotion to a bouncer in his final semester of college is less rewarding than making the same offer to a bouncer entering his sophomore year of college. The two offers would incite different levels of valence. Management can resolve additional satisfaction issues by offering a flex-scheduling plan. However, there are a few problems that might arise in implementing this solution. The first is that the nature of the business limits The Clybournes hours of operation. In addition, employees are already paid modest wages, and cutting down on their hours would only further reduce their paychecks. Furthermore, all employees hold part-time positions and are inexpensive to replace. If they refuse to conform to the companys hours of operation, they can choose to work somewhere else. The Clybourne can tackle counterproductive work behaviors through positive reinforcement. Potential faults with this recommendation lie in the attractiveness of the reward and the process by which it is awarded. Employees will not stop stealing from the bar if they do not care about the month-end incentives. Bouncers will not be motivated if the cash incentives are trivial or if underage customers bribe them with larger incentives. On the other hand, if the cash incentive is particularly attractive, bouncers might be motivated to harass customers by falsely detecting fake identification cards. This behavior would cause additional problems and drive away business. Positive reinforcement will also not work if employees feel like managers only recognize their favorites or if guidelines for achieving the month-end reward are not objectively defined. Conclusion Investigation of The Clybourne business revealed problems with high turnover and counterproductive work behavior. These phenomena are indicative of larger human resource challenges with job satisfaction and motivation. Management should consider the expectancy and reinforcement theories of motivation, as well as the employee need for work-life balance. These recommendations are not without fault, but proper practice can help The Clybourne get at the root of its human resource challenges and effectively reduce turnover and counterproductive behavior.

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