The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company."Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One

The argument given above by the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company favors Easy Read Speed-Reading Course. According to the personnel director, many companies have benefited from their employees taking this course and have shown an increase in productivity. There have been reports of graduates improving the reading speed and also getting promoted to higher ranks, and it is credited to the course since you can grasp more if you read faster. The course costs $500 per employee, including a three-week long seminar and a lifelong subscription of the Easy Read newsletter. This price, according to the personnel director, is not much compared to how beneficial the course proves to be. However, the assumption on which this argument is based is questionable due to which it seems to be lacking in logic.

The very fact that there is no first-hand experience of the course by the director and he relies on the result of other publishing companies to support his argument makes it week. It says that many other companies have stated that the course has proved to increase their productivity. What has proved beneficial for other companies may not prove the same to Acme because everywhere there are different working conditions. Moreover, there are other factors also that could have increased the productivity of the employees. It is possible that there has been a change in the composition of employees and the company has removed some of the employees who are old, inactive and unproductive. Such employees could have been replaced by young employees full of energy, which is bound to increase their productivity.

Increase in productivity is also a matter of the environment provided by the company. If the employees are given a healthy environment with enough time to rest, breaks between shifts and other incentives, there will be increased willingness amongst the employees to work. This can also increase productivity. Ignoring these issues and giving the credit of improved productivity only to the course can be foolish and a blind decision.

How much the employees benefit from the Easy Read Speed-Reading course depends from one employee to another. The argument mentions about one graduate who could read a five- hundred-page report in only two hours and another who rose from the position of an assistant manager to the vice-president of the company. However, these could be personal achievements and these employees could have been geniuses. It is possible that some employees have not been able to make use of the course as well as others because of their low aptitude. Moreover, it would be wrong to say that the faster a person reads the more he absorbs. Fast reading of the material does not ensure that the matter is being understood, it is likely that a person is reading the given material without paying attention to it and concentrating on reading it faster. This way there will be no use of reading and hence no improvement in the productivity.

Further, the director says that the fee of the course, which is $500, is not much compared to how beneficial it will prove for the company. He suggests that all the employees should be given this training, but in the excitement of the results he ignores many possibilities which might just prove the opposite. What if the employees take the course and leave the company later to join another company? In that case, after spending on the training of the employees, the company will not be benefited from it. Moreover, spending $500 on one employee may not sound too much, but when you take the total figure of expenditure, this could be a huge sum for which a decision should be taken only after a giving it a careful thought.

It can, therefore, be said that the argument is not logical and is based purely on shallow assumptions. While it is likely that the productivity increases after the course, it is also possible that it proves to be a disastrous decision.