Skybold and Associates has seen a remarkable surge in productivity since it instituted its policy of allowing its creative staff to work from home for as many as two workdays (16 hours) per week. Results of this policy have included employees taking fewer sick and personal days as well as greater employee satisfaction and enhanced employee loyalty. In addition, Skybold envisions in the not so distant future a reduced need for office space as fewer offices and cubicles will be needed to accommodate a smaller in-house staff. This will result in dramatic savings for the company. Skybold’s new telecommunicating policy is clearly a win-win situation.
Write a response that identifies questions to be answered before deciding whether the conclusion and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Explain how the answers would help you determine whether the argument’s conclusion is logical.
While the passage does seem to give many indicators that Skybold’s new telecommuting policy has been a positive for the company, the passage lacks any hard statistics to back up its claims, opting instead for vague and imprecise language. Some of its logical conclusions also don’t hold up to scrutiny. For example, it is not a guarantee that just because telecommuting is an option for employees that office space will be less necessary for the company. Even supposing that the company can have a reduction in office space, there has been no accounting for other costs that may increase as more employees telecommute, and so the savings in renting office space may be greatly offset by other factors.
The most glaring concern of the passage is that very vague wording has been chosen to describe the supposed benefits of telecommuting. The passage mentions surges in productivity and fewer sick and personal days being taken without precise percentage increases or raw numbers. It is unclear how significant any benefits here have been; the only information we can glean from this argument is the use of the words ‘remarkable surge’, which is a very subjective and qualitative measure and varies from person to person. Another thing that has also gone unmentioned is the method by which these metrics have been calculated, which is important to be aware of as the methodology of how a statistic is taken can greatly affect the statistic itself. These problems are further exacerbated when we look at the claims of greater employee satisfaction and loyalty, which seem like very amorphous measures and not something that an argument should be based upon.
Furthermore, the argument has at times taken facts and drawn unwarranted conclusions from them. For example, the belief that, because employees can telecommute, there will be a reduced need for office space. This is far from certain. The argument has not in fact even mentioned whether or not employees are actually taking advantage of their newfound perk, let alone any potential plans for expansion for the company which, in conjunction with the fact that employees still need to be in the office three days a week, could potentially result in an increased need for office space.
The argument has also not taken into account any new costs that may be introduced by the option of telecommuting. There could very well be inefficiencies introduced to the company caused by poor communication from telecommuting employees, among other problems. The argument has failed to factor in these potential downsides, instead opting to only consider the benefits of reduced rent.
In conclusion, though the argument does make a few points in support of its argument, these points are not backed up enough by objective numbers and surveys, and has at points drawn conclusions that are not necessarily warranted by the facts.
- Claim: The surest indicator of a great nation is not the achievements of its rulers, artists, or scientists.Reason: The surest indicator of a great nation is actually the welfare of all its people.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which 66
- Skybold and Associates has seen a remarkable surge in productivity since it instituted its policy of allowing its creative staff to work from home for as many as two workdays (16 hours) per week. Results of this policy have included employees taking fewer 55
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 17 15
No. of Words: 472 350
No. of Characters: 2355 1500
No. of Different Words: 228 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.661 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.989 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.734 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.765 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.554 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.324 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.552 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 597, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this metrics' or ''?
Suggestion: this metrics;
...gone unmentioned is the method by which these metrics have been calculated, which is importan...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 279, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...argument has not in fact even mentioned whether or not employees are actually taking advantage...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, furthermore, if, look, may, so, still, well, while, another thing, for example, in conclusion, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2434.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 471.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.16772823779 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65859790218 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88825860438 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 234.0 204.123752495 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.496815286624 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 764.1 705.55239521 108% => 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: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 79.463817363 57.8364921388 137% => OK
Chars per sentence: 143.176470588 119.503703932 120% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.7058823529 23.324526521 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.94117647059 5.70786347227 122% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.150737664834 0.218282227539 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0489104017472 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.038603228166 0.0701772020484 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0745795179914 0.128457276422 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0484976574746 0.0628817314937 77% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.8 14.3799401198 117% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.73 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => 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.