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05 May 2014, 13:43
The following is part of a business plan being discussed at a board meeting of the Perks Company:
“It is no longer cost-effective for the Perks Company to continue offering its employees a generous package of benefits and incentives year after year. In periods when national unemployment rates are low, Perks may need to offer such a package in order to attract and keep good employees, but since national unemployment rates are now high, Perks does not need to offer the same benefits and incentives. The money thus saved could be better used to replace the existing plant machinery with more technologically sophisticated equipment, or even to build an additional plant.”
The argument claims that since the more people is seeking a job than the jobs are available currently the perks and other incentives’ packages is no longer cost-effective and useful, instead it is a more sensible to allocate its funds in more sophisticated equipment purchases or undertake extra plant construction. Stated in this way the argument fails to mention several key factors on the basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Therefore, the argument is rather weak and unconvincing. Thus we cannot accept it as valid. The following flaws are debatable.
First, the argument readily assumes that during the period of high level of unemployment incentives for employees is not beneficial and profitable. This argument is a stretch and not substantiated in any ways, since it fails to demonstrate the correlation between the specific trend of unemployment and the frequency entitling incentives to employees. To restate, the author ignores the state that the Perks Company might experience due to not motivating the employees by incentives. Namely the decline in productivity should be anticipated. To illustrate this point further, the employees, in spite of not having any other opportunities to pursue beyond the current job, might got offended and upset for not being provided any incentives and, consequently, either decline in productivity or even give up their jobs. Therefore, this represents the variable that must be evaluated before taking such a radical changes in the underlined strategy.
By overlooking such points the author casts shadow on the argument and drives it to the inadequate conclusion. In order to eliminate an ambiguity and substantiate the argument even further the author should explicitly provide an empirically proven statistical data on this issue, along with the surveys among the employees about their attitudes towards not being awarded by any type of incentives throughout the year. Otherwise, the argument is devoid of essential foundations.
Furthermore, besides missing the crucial information, the argument suffers from further flaw as well. In the final portion of the argument the author cites that instead of spending the money for workers perks it is more sensible to use this fund for building a new plants or advanced equipment. This argument, again, suffers from severe logical flaw, since the author neglects to demonstrate any evidence or example that obviously indicates that this plan is going to boost the profit of the company, and moreover, the benefits got from this plan exceeds, or at least are same as, the ones that could be obtained from entitling incentives to workers.
If the author shed light on the anticipated outcome of this alternative way of spending the fund then the argument would sound a bit more convincing. To restate, the argument needs to clearly expose the details of this alternative plan and the expected outcome. The variables and individual circumstances should also be evaluated and demonstrated in order to enable one to judge the merits of this strategy and, in turn, assess the accuracy of overall argument. Without being knowledgeable of all these information one is left with the impression that this claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than a substantive evidence. Therefore, the conclusion has no legs to stand on.