The vice president of human resources at Climpson Industries sent the following recommendation to the company's president.
"In an effort to improve our employees' productivity, we should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use from their workstations. Employees who use the Internet from their workstations need to be identified and punished if we are to reduce the number of work hours spent on personal or recreational activities, such as shopping or playing games. By installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers, we can prevent employees from wasting time, foster a better work ethic at Climpson, and improve our overall profits."
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 vice president of human resources at Climpson Industries has suggested a few steps that need to be taken in order to improve the company's productivity and improve overall profits. The steps include installing a software that traces internet usage of company employees on their workstations. If someone is found to be using internet for personal use, he or she would be punished. The vice president thinks that preventing misuse of internet by the employees will improve the comapny's overall revenue and promote a better work ethic. Installation of a monitoring software seems like a foolproof plan to minimise employees wasting their time. Scrutinizing the vice president's recommendation thoroughly unearths a few alternate possibilities that could undermine the success of the vice president's plan.
Firstly, has the software, that will be installed on the employee workstations be quality checked? Are they efficient enough to raise an alarm when an employee uses internet for personal use? What if the employees find a way around the software and use the internet for personal use without getting detected? This could mean that the investment in software would be a huge loss of money. Moreover, the employees will continue wasting their time on the internet. As a result, the productivity of employees will continue to be low and it will not improve the overall profits of the company.
Secondly, even if we assume that the software, recommended by the vice-president is foolproof, how can the vice-president be certain that a restriction on internet use will compel the employees to increase their productivity? What if the employees switch to using instant messaging services among their peers through their own cell phones or some other means of wasting time? Personal cell phones cannot be tracked nor can the activity that it's user is performing in it. This would mean that even if the employees are not using their workstations or the internet for personal use, they are still wasting time. The productivity does not increase, nor does the overall revenue generated by the company.
Lastly, the arguer implies that restricting internet usage has a direct consequence on employee productivity and comapany profits. The arguer thinks that if personal time on internet is reduced, productivity and profits increase. It could be true, but the arguer fails to provide any empirical evidence to support his claim. What if there are other factors that affect productivity and profits? What if the comapany has a poor working enviornment and provides no perks to it's employees? Tracking their internet usage could probably enrage them further, and instead of an increase in productivity, the company will probably observe a sharp decrease.
In sum, the evidences and the premises provided by the vice-president are incomplete and dubious. There are erroneous interpretations to every evidence provided, as a result, it cannot be categorically claimed if the vice-president's recommendation would be a success.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 478 350
No. of Characters: 2492 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.676 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.213 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.971 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 188 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 165 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 117 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.12 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.545 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.56 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.309 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.502 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, if, lastly, moreover, second, secondly, so, still, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2549.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 478.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.33263598326 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67581127817 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.04025284722 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.456066945607 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 800.1 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 38.0715957112 57.8364921388 66% => OK
Chars per sentence: 101.96 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.12 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.32 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
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: 0.367748362053 0.218282227539 168% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.109692643636 0.0743258471296 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0781954710429 0.0701772020484 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.215546067854 0.128457276422 168% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0947464311381 0.0628817314937 151% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.63 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.38 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 115.0 98.500998004 117% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.