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 recommends implementing an electronic monitoring software to keep track of their employee’s internet use from their workstations, therefore preventing employees from wasting time, fostering a better work ethic, and improving overall profits. The vice president argues in an effort to reduce the misuse of company time, this software could be used to identify and punish employees. While the argument appears well reasoned at first glance, upon deeper analysis, several unsubstantiated assumptions are revealed, that dramatically weaken the persuasiveness of the author's recommendation.
A major flaw in the given argument is the unjustified assumption that the installation of the monitoring software will achieve the predicted results. However, the vice president fails to provide sufficient evidence as to how monitoring their employee’s internet use engenders the predicted results. Before settling on this course of action, the author might benefit from exploring more empirical tested methods for increasing productivity and preventing the misuse of company time. Perhaps, a competing industry struggled with a similar issue and found success by blocking access to certain websites categorized as inappropriate or nonessential to their duties. Moreover, it is unclear exactly by what the author means by “punished”. Before this software is implemented consequences should be clearly defined. Therefore, it must be considered if there exist other methods that could be more effective to achieve the desired goals and one that may eschew punitive action on part of the company.
Another error made in the given argument is that the vice president has unfairly assumed that a significant number of employees are misusing company time. The author does not provide any relevant evidence that indicates that a high number of employees are misusing their internet access on their workstations. Perhaps, implementing the monitoring software reveals only one or two employees that have been spending work hours on personal or recreational activities. In the absence of detailed information regarding whether a significant number of employees are misusing company time, the author cannot convince the president of their company this represents a serious problem within their company. In view of the above, the recommendation provided by the vice president of HR seems extremely unreasonable.
The author makes the assumption that the misuse of internet access is negatively affecting employee productivity. This assumption underlies the author's claim that productivity needs improvement. Maybe, employee productivity is at an adequate or above-average level and employees spend their time on personal or recreational activities after they have finished their days' work. While it may be true that employee productivity needs improvement, the author fails to make a connection between this and their internet use. Perhaps, employee productivity is down because they feel they are not being paid well enough, therefore not feeling motivated to do the work required of them. If either of these scenarios proved true, the vice president’s recommendation would fail to address the real issue facing their employee’s productivity levels.
In sum, the recommendation outlined by the vice president is fallacious, at least without additional evidence to support it. The arguer needs to bolster the argument with information related to how exactly this software would help to improve worker productivity, evidence showing that computer misuse represents a serious problem, and the relationship between internet use and levels of productivity.
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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: 23 15
No. of Words: 545 350
No. of Characters: 3070 1500
No. of Different Words: 257 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.832 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.633 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.042 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 250 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 207 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 153 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 100 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.696 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.618 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.435 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.309 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.466 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 601, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ically weaken the persuasiveness of the authors recommendation. A major flaw in the ...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 625, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...siveness of the authors recommendation. A major flaw in the given argument is th...
^^^
Line 2, column 735, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Before” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...by what the author means by “punished”. Before this software is implemented consequenc...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, may, moreover, regarding, so, therefore, well, while, as to, at least
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 41.0 28.8173652695 142% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3145.0 2260.96107784 139% => OK
No of words: 545.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 5.77064220183 5.12650576532 113% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.83169070408 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.14614110537 2.78398813304 113% => OK
Unique words: 269.0 204.123752495 132% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.493577981651 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 987.3 705.55239521 140% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.1496798561 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.739130435 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.6956521739 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.86956521739 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.396360352333 0.218282227539 182% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.114664776269 0.0743258471296 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0961663965834 0.0701772020484 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.23364780353 0.128457276422 182% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.093596316708 0.0628817314937 149% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.6 14.3799401198 122% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 31.21 48.3550499002 65% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 16.48 12.5979740519 131% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.18 8.32208582834 110% => OK
difficult_words: 152.0 98.500998004 154% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.5 12.3882235529 125% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.