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 argument above states an analogy between measures adopted by Tobor Technologies and those proposed by Diord Corp in reducing employee absenteeism, focusing on mental illnesses as a cause of absenteeism. The argument is logically flawed since it overlooks certain crucial logistics and makes erroneous assumptions.
One of the first faulty assumptions that the argument makes is that the psychologist is successful in curing the mental illnesses of employees. The employees may or may not have benefitted from the psychologist's help. Also, it assumes that the reduction in number of sick days is solely due to the implementation program. It cannot be assumed so, when here exists a possibility of other reasons causing a decrease in number of leaves. The number may have been reduced due to better health facilities, decreased occurrences of diseases or decrease in casual leaves. On similar lines it assumes the mental illnesses to be the only reasons of decrease in employee attendance.
Secondly, the argument assumes the working conditions to be the same in the two companies. The results in Tabor technologies cannot ne extrapolated to Dior Corp. unless we consider the working conditions in the companies which may or may not be suitable for employees. Similarly the reason for increase in sick days in Dior Corps may be other than mental illnesses, in which case, the insurance program and the counseling sessions won't work.
The last wrong assumption of with argument is that increase in attendance will increase in productivity. This does not consider the fact that productivity may not increase if other factors like employee negligence, strikes, shutdowns, technical difficulties may lead to a decrease in productivity.
The argument can thus be shown to have many unstated assumptions that weakens its claims and puts forth a weak statement. The argument could have been strengthened by giving a percentage of leaves in Dior Corps that were caused by mental illness, or the similarities in the working conditions that could endorse the implementation of same measures in both companies.
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
More content wanted.
For issue essays, around 450 words, for argument essays, around 400 words.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 335 350
No. of Characters: 1742 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.278 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.2 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.978 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.272 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.347 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.606 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.128 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5