The following is from a recent email by the Diord Corp. Human Resources manager: "Tobor Technologies found that mental health problems and mental illness were responsible for about 15 percent of employee sick days. Tobor amended its employee insurance plan so that workers receive the same coverage for mental illness as they do for physical illness. In addition, the company hired an on-site psychologist and created a system that allows workers to schedule confidential counseling appointments. After one year , the number of sick days used by employees declined by 10 percent . Diord Corp has had an increase in employee sick days over the past two years, so we should introduce a similar insurance plan and counseling program. These measures will surely reduce employee absenteeism and cause an increase in productivity."
Write a response in which you examine the argument 's unstated assumptions, making sure to explain how the argument depends on the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The company Diord believes that Tobor were able to decrease the sick leaves by adapting a mental health insurance scheme goes boneless. The idea behind amending mental health insurance has lot of holes and flaws. The belief that because of mental issues there has been more leaves is itself a hideous assumption.
It is completely and morally wrong for the company to think and judge that because of mental illness there has been increase in sick leave.It has never quoted that after amending insurance there is an increase in production.It has only stated that the sick leaves have decreased. There is no rule and implication that employees having 100% attendance mean that they have given 100% satisfactory work to the company. They may be whiling away the time even though being in the company.
The attendance increase in the company could have been due to increase in pay scale or it can be due to better due to change in managerial conduction of the employees. It is wrong to assume that as they got cured though psychiatry resulted in more attendance because 100% cure is not possible because of psychiatric consultancy.
The point that 15% of the employees had sick leaves because of mental illness is wrong.An employee will not be self aware that he is sick because he is mentally upset or depressed. There data might be wrong because one who has physical illness might wrongly diagnose himself and would have voted for the fact that he was ill because he was mentally ill.
One cannot critically distinguish between mental and physical illness.Because most of the times the physical illness prolongs for a longer period because of a bad belief psychologically and fear in mind. When this is the case how can one tell that it started because of psychology or because of physical exposure to infected environment.
On what basis can the the insurance companies be giving compensation to mental illness. If it was a physical ailment different compensation can be given based on the degree of illness. For cold and fever $100 ,for heart surgery $3000 and so on.But for mental illness on what basis can one decide the differential amounts.
There might be an other possibility that employees may be tricking the company by giving a false appearance of mental illness . By doing this they might be receiving the compensation even though they are mentally fit. Or some might be reluctant to disclose their physical illness like STD'. So they might have opted to vote for mental illness as they reason to protect themselves form embarrassment.
Mental illness could have been a result of bad environment at the workplace like hostile environment ,bad managerial process, meeting a project deadline pressure. So, the mental illness may be because of the company itself.SO,it can be more company created than personal.
Instead of employing an on site psychiatrist one can develop a more amicable and less pressure schedule and giving more time to meet the deadlines. By doing this there can be increase in productivity.
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK
argument 4 -- not OK
argument 5 -- not OK
argument 6 -- not OK
argument 7 -- not OK
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In GRE, we have to accept all data or evidence are true. It is important to find out loopholes behind surveys or studies. Loopholes mean that we accept all surveys told are true, but there are some conditions applied, for example:
It works for time A (10 years ago), but it doesn't mean it works for time B (nowadays).
It works for location A (a city, community, nation), but it doesn't mean it works for location B (another city, community, nation).
It works for people A (a manager), but it doesn't mean it works for people B (a worker).
It works for event A (one event, project... ), but it doesn't mean it works for event B (another event, project...).
....
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flaws:
Number of Paragraphs: 9 5 //only need to find out 3 arguments
para 1: introduction
para 2: argument 1
para 3: argument 2
para 4: argument 3
para 5: conclusion
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 513 350
No. of Characters: 2465 1500
No. of Different Words: 228 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.759 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.805 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.6 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 179 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 135 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.304 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.814 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.261 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.665 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.133 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 9 5