Company X has just switched to a 4-day workweek, mandating that employees work 10 hours per day from
Monday to Thursday instead of 8 hours per day from Monday to Friday. Although the policy is new,
Company X claims that the policy will help to increase profits by shutting down offices on Fridays and to
boost employee morale by reducing commuting time to and from work each week.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to
explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
Every organization seeks to maximize profits and constantly look for ways in which that can be achieved. Some companies even employ experts that help them develop ways in which they can maximize profit. Company X in their argument decided to reduce the number of working days from five to four days in order to increase profit.
The company also claimed that shutting down the offices on Friday will boost the employees morale by reducing commuting time to and from work each week. There is not proof of any research done by the company in the argument to support their argument.
The company mandated employees to work 10 hours a day from Monday to Friday instead of 8 hours a day. The company assumed that working for 10 hours would automatically increase their profit. It was not stated if they carried out a research on their employees to know if the 8 working hours wasn’t enough for them. We do not also know if another research was carried on maybe their competitors to know if working for longer hours can automatically increase profit for the company. The 10 hours working hours can even cause low productivity on the part of the employees due to been over stretched and not having enough time to rest. Normally, humans at a point get tired of working and they would normally pack their bags even before the closing hours. If two more hours are added to their work time, this might even reduce their entire productivity as they don’t have enough time to rest.
Also, the company assumed that they do not make sales on Friday because if they do, they wouldn’t close down knowing fully well that they need to make more profit. Friday could even be the day they make most of their profits and they now want to shut down on that day. Before this stated assumption can be prove to be warranted, the company need to carry out a credible research to know if their expenses on fridays are greater than their profits in order to know if they say should be shut down.
Furthermore, the company assumes that the employees have nothing to do after working 8 hours a day that they just switched to 10 hours a day. Many people after office hours would like to go to the market, pick their children from school, cook, do laundry, prepare for the next day or even have family functions to attend. The company did not take into consideration this factors and how increasing working hours would affect these things. An employee may have to struggle more after work and even offend their children or family after missing important functions. This would not increase their morale in anyway, It would only give them more stress and reduce their morale.
In conclusion, the company did not give any tangible fact back up their decision. Their argument was just based on assumptions that might not work out for them or even cause them to lose out of the profit that they are already making. They need to carry out more intentional research on both their employees and customers to know how to get more profits before making such assumptions.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 539 350
No. of Characters: 2449 1500
No. of Different Words: 220 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.818 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.544 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.257 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 153 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 59 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 29 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.435 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.52 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.478 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.531 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 82, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'employees'' or 'employee's'?
Suggestion: employees'; employee's
...wn the offices on Friday will boost the employees morale by reducing commuting time to an...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 230, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[1]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'research'.
Suggestion: research
.... It was not stated if they carried out a research on their employees to know if the 8 wor...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 6, column 360, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[3]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'credible research'.
Suggestion: credible research
...arranted, the company need to carry out a credible research to know if their expenses on fridays ar...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 8, column 602, Rule ID: IN_ANYWAY[1]
Message: Did you mean 'in any way'?
Suggestion: in any way
...s. This would not increase their morale in anyway, It would only give them more stress an...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, anyway, furthermore, if, look, may, so, well, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 56.0 28.8173652695 194% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 80.0 55.5748502994 144% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2513.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 536.0 441.139720559 122% => OK
Chars per words: 4.68843283582 5.12650576532 91% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.81161862636 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.31871012793 2.78398813304 83% => OK
Unique words: 224.0 204.123752495 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.417910447761 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 752.4 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 33.3928328455 57.8364921388 58% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 109.260869565 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3043478261 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.21739130435 5.70786347227 56% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.268647183362 0.218282227539 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.115036941909 0.0743258471296 155% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.142250539204 0.0701772020484 203% => The coherence between sentences is low.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.156557902485 0.128457276422 122% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0758723350186 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.3 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 65.05 48.3550499002 135% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.22 12.5979740519 81% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.16 8.32208582834 86% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.