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 proposes to cease usage of Internet at work place and assumes that such a measure will increase productivity of the employees. It is conventional that human resources want employees to work effectively and the task is not one of the simple ones. Though it might seem that the more time for work a person possess, the more time he or she will spent on it, the implication does not stand scrupulous scrutiny because it rests on plethora of flawed assumptions.
To begin with, HR representative must have found out whether employees use Internet for doing their jobs. Imagine extreme picture, when you catch up your marketing intern with Facebook page open at his computer. What a boisterous violation of working routine! But, in fact, he might be checking response of target audience for a new content developed for product’s social page. Or think about less extreme example, open Google page with a search “retailers near me” may indicate not intention to shop but research of a new possible vendor conducted by sales representative. Thus, if Internet usage will be ceased, ability of some employees to perform their duties successfully will be compromised. As a result, the policy of internet usage should take into consideration specific needs of each and every position of the company to determine how much and to what exactly should an employee have access to.
Another point to think about before implementing forbidding policies is abilities of human brain to work constantly, non-stop, without breaks. It’s well-known that we, humans, perform better when arduous work interrupted with small breaks for recreation. The arguer assumes that Internet shopping and/or games do not provide necessary for successful performance break. Reasonable person would pinpoint that live chat with a colleague or brief exercise will bring much more recreational value than internet search or on-line games, but people are different and what is restores vital energy for one won’t do anything for another. Thus, if company takes away restorative gaming from employees, the productivity (at least for part of them) will go down.
One more flawed assumption which led the author to fallible implication is that employees naturally tend to violate productivity and spent working time on activities other than those related to job. That is not necessarily true. Think about employee who have an important business meeting tomorrow and busy with development of solid slides but, apart from job responsibilities, she needs to do shopping; thus, she safes time for commute to shopping mall and back while doing shopping online and spends that saved time for development of these slides. Barely one could call her violating productivity. Now, let’s think what would she do if internet shopping were forbidden: either come for meeting with less solid slides and were unhappy with her results or came home without groceries and were unhappy with herself as a mother, wife, healthy-life styler and so on. Anyway, the outcome is obvious: she will be unhappy. And unhappy employee will very probably search for a better place to work.
In conclusion, the measure suggested by HR department obviously intends to improve work processes of the company but remains open for contestation among reasonable people until the administration will know for sure that opposite effect won’t take place.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
the 3 arguments are not exactly right on the topic.
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the correct arguments should be:
argument 1:
By installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers, can we prevent employees from wasting time?
//maybe not, for example, people may use their own smart phone.
argument 2:
can we foster a better work ethic at Climpson?
//maybe not, for example, people may hate it if they found out they are monitored.
argument 3:
and can we improve our overall profits?
//maybe not, for example, the software itself may be expensive.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 551 350
No. of Characters: 2799 1500
No. of Different Words: 305 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.845 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.08 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.715 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 198 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 154 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.957 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.94 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.478 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.253 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.457 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.122 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 381, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'will' requires the base form of the verb: 'spend'
Suggestion: spend
...n possess, the more time he or she will spent on it, the implication does not stand s...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
anyway, but, if, may, so, thus, well, while, apart from, at least, in conclusion, in fact, as a result, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 24.0 11.1786427146 215% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2894.0 2260.96107784 128% => OK
No of words: 548.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 5.28102189781 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.83832613839 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84135280054 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 310.0 204.123752495 152% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.565693430657 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 901.8 705.55239521 128% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 76.7617328906 57.8364921388 133% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.545454545 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.9090909091 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.31818181818 5.70786347227 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.199229072685 0.218282227539 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0590104359154 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0391820465952 0.0701772020484 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.116617633144 0.128457276422 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0425394431112 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.9 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.64 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.09 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 148.0 98.500998004 150% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.