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.
The argument above presents a new policy of company X which wants to switch from 5-day workweek to a 4-day workweek by increasing working hours per day for its employees. The first stated reason that shutting down offices on Fridays will increase profit. However, this is contingent upon various circumstances. First, it is important whether the office building is in company's property, because, for example, if company rents it and pays fixed sum of money per month, closing offices for one more day will not affect payment at all. But if the company owns this building, by shutting down it may save on electricity spendings. Another possible situation, is that the company can act as a landlord for other businesses and earn money from renting offices during the free days. Such assumptions should be clarified for the policy to be reasonable.
The second claim is that workers will appreciate the reduction in the commuting time. This might be true, but also need to be clarified. For strengthening the claim, one need to assume that commuting is a really time-consuming part of the work routine for most of the employees. For instance, if the office building is situated on the outskirt of the city and employees live far from it, thus , it takes a lot of time for them to get to work. In the reverse situation, when the building is in the center, the heavy traffic might serve as an obstacle to get to the office quickly. In such case there is a possibility of employees' approvement of what company offers. However, if we assume that none of such problems exist workers will not be inclined towards new policy. Moreover, they might be disgruntled by the fact that they need to work 10 hours per day which could be quite tedious for many people. Another thing to mention is that employees might have some other leisure activities during the week such as sports or education clubs which they participate after 8 hours of work, and shifting from the old system will certainly hinder their free-time planning and could make them feel dissatisfied.
In short, there are a lot of circumstances that might impede or increase company's efficiency while implementing new policy of switching to a 4-day workweek. Aforementioned assumptions should be taken into consideration in order to evaluate the argument and find out whether the company economizes and satisfies its workers at the same time under such policy, or not.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- ?
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 410 350
No. of Characters: 1968 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.5 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.8 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.664 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 133 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 105 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.778 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.675 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.295 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.428 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.081 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 3 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 393, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...ity and employees live far from it, thus , it takes a lot of time for them to get ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, moreover, really, second, so, then, thus, while, another thing, for example, for instance, in short, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2014.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 410.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.91219512195 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.49982852243 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73957725478 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.531707317073 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 612.0 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.6340784061 57.8364921388 108% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.888888889 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.7777777778 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.0 5.70786347227 140% => OK
Paragraphs: 3.0 5.15768463074 58% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.306541895867 0.218282227539 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0938753828699 0.0743258471296 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.116545945982 0.0701772020484 166% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.217890449708 0.128457276422 170% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0758917505187 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.49 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.12 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Minimum four paragraphs wanted.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.