To reduce productivity losses from employees calling in sick. Corporat

Solution
Passage analysis         

To reduce productivity losses from employees calling in sick, Corporation X implemented a new policy

Corporation X wanted to bring about a reduction in the loss of productivity that was caused by employees falling sick and being absent from work.

requiring employees to come into work unless they were so sick that they had to go to a doctor.

As per the policy, the employees would have to come to office if they were not too sick.
“Too sick to come to office” would be allowed only if the employee was so sick that he had to visit the doctor.
If he was not sick enough to visit the doctor, then he was to come to office.

But a year after the policy was implemented, a study found that Corporation X’s overall productivity losses due to reported employee illnesses had increased.

However, a year after the policy was put into effect,
the overall losses in productivity caused by absenteeism of sick employees actually increased.

Prethinking
Thought process

We know:

• There is loss of productivity when an employee calls in sick and does not come to the office.
• Corporation X wanted to minimize the absenteeism caused by employees calling in sick, since, the more the number of employees calling in sick, the more the loss of productivity
• So, the employees were asked to attend office if they were not very sick (they would be considered too sick to come to office only if they had to visit the doctor).
• A year after the implementation of the plan, the productivity loss caused by employees calling in sick, had increased.

If more employees were asked to attend office if they were not too sick, then the productivity loss should have decreased with a decrease in absenteeism due to sickness. But the productivity loss increased.

This is the paradox in the passage that we have to resolve.

It seems to be a case or policy having turned counter-productive.

Firstly, it is possible that the “slightly sick” people who attended the office could have infected the other employees who perhaps owing to a weaker immune system, fell seriously sick and were absent for many days causing greater loss in productivity than would have taken place if only those employees had not attended office when they were “slightly sick”

Secondly, it is possible that because of the policy, people felt they had to attend office in spite of being very sick. They could have landed up infecting other employees who also fell sick and that would explain the increased loss in productivity.

Thirdly, it is possible that some kind of epidemic broke out in the city an unusually high number of employees fell very sick leading to the increased productivity loss.

Answer Choice Analysis

A
This option is about the number of times an employee visited the doctor. The option does not tell us that more employees felt sick enough to visit the doctor which would have explained the increased absenteeism

Thus, this is not the correct answer choice.

B
This provides support for the implementation of the policy. But it fails to explain what happened a year after the implementation of the policy. In fact, after the policy was implemented, the number of employees who were lying to stay away from work should have decreased and subsequently, productivity losses should have decreased too.

Thus, this is not the correct answer choice.

C
This is in line with our pre-thinking.

Thus, this is the correct answer choice.

D
This in fact should have decreased productivity losses to a great extent. If very few employees became genuinely sick, then as per the policy they should have come to the office. In any case, this option does not really tell us what these employees finally did – whether they opted to stay away from work or attended office.

Thus, this is not the correct answer choice.

E
It may very well be so. But the passage specifically talks about increased productivity losses caused by absenteeism due to sickness. Therefore, this has no impact on the paradox. It stays unresolved.

Thus, this is not the correct answer choice.

To reduce productivity losses from employees calling in sick. Corporation X implemented a new policy requiring employees to come into work unless they were so sick that they had to go to a doctor. But a year after the policy was implemented, a study found that Corporation X's overall productivity losses due to reported employee illnesses had increased.

Premise : Corp X implemented a policy that employees need to come to work unless they are so sick that they have to go to the doctor.
Intended result : The employee who are mildly sick will be able to contribute to the work and productivity wouldn't get affected much.
Actual Result : The productivity decreased.

Which of the following, if true, world best explain why the policy produced the reverse of its intended effect?

A) After the policy was implemented. employees more frequently went to the doctor when they felt sick
This option doesn't explain how the actual result is observed. This option is as per the intended result as when the employee are very sick they have to go to doctor.

B) Before the policy was implemented, employees who were not sick at all often called in sick
This policy doesn't explain the actual result as per this option the intended result should happen as the corporation make the employee work till they have to go to the doctor and the productivity should remain same as much as possible.

C) Employees coming into work when sick often infect many of their coworkers
This is the option which explains that actual result as employee who are mildly sick often infect the other employee and in turn the infection spreads and carrier and last infected would have to go to the doctor effecting the productivity of the corporation - Hence Correct

D) Unusually few employees became genuinely sick during the year after the policy was implemented
This should result into intended result.

E) There are many other factors besides employee illness that can adversely affect productivity
This is out of scope as this option is not talking about explaining the actual result.

why is option A incorrect? if we employ prethinking, we can consider a scenario wherein employees deliberately go to doctor even if they are not that sick, thereby leveraging the policy that u can avoid work if u visit the doctor?..this could be the case and A exactly says that, employees went to doctor more often therby resulting in decrease productivity....

After the policy was implemented. employees more frequently went to the doctor when they felt sick
raj44 The option A says that the employees have started visiting the doctor more frequently.

This simply implies that the people have started going to the doctor more frequently. (Not more number of people are going to the doctor)
Before the policy, they might have taken the leave without going to the doctor, but now in order to take the leave they go to the doctor.
This does not direct us towards an increase in the number of people going to the doctor.

The premise says that the productivity has decreased. This means more people have started going to the doctor and s/he has found new patients
This is visible in the option C.

Hence option C is the best option here.

Hope this helps!

This one is a bit confusing.

I am having trouble with A and C :

(A) After the policy was implemented, employees more frequently went to the doctor when they felt sick.
(C) Employees coming into work when sick often infect many of their coworkers.

The hypothesis is that 'To reduce productivity losses from employees calling in sick (and hence staying at home)' ---> Company requires them to come to work unless they have to go to a doctor.

So, if employees trick the company by going to the doctor more frequently, the productivity will not be improved. On the other hand, even if employees infect others we can't conclude that productivity will be lost, since there is no stated relation between the extent of infection and the productivity of the employee. For all I care, the employees will come to work and it doesn't affect the overall productivity. So, I chose A.

Can someone explain?

Hello Pillarsofcreation

I think we shouldn't think about some employees' tricks.
Before implenting policy people get easy cold and stayed home. New policy banned this possibility and now people can stay home only after they feel really bad and visit a doctor.
So teoretically we should receive increase in productivity because now people with easy illnesses work and not stay home.
But this new policy miss the moment that these people can infect other healthy workers and ultimately this new police cause decrease in productivity.

Hi GMATNinjaTwo GMATNinja VeritasPrepKarishma

Would (A) be the OA if it said:
After the policy was implemented, MORE employees made visits to doctor when they fell sick.

GMATNinja I am scratching my head over this question and CR overall. Please let me know where my analysis is going wrong.While I could safely eliminate BDE, I was tuck over A&C


We need to find the reason for reversal in effect -
Could be that employees tricked by going to the doctor more frequently or the proportion of illness has increased.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain why the policy produced the reverse of its intended effect?

(A) After the policy was implemented, employees more frequently went to the doctor when they felt sick

Now we can say that the same pool of employees or increased pool visited the doctors frequently. But lets say the same number of employees simply tricked by visiting doctors more frequently than earlier,Wouldn't it still mean productivity loss?

(C) Employees coming into work when sick often infect many of their coworkers

how we can assume that spread of infection among other workers would lead to productivity loss?

• The problem is that we don't know how many people were calling in sick without actually being sick before and after the policy was implemented. After the policy was implemented, the number of doctor visits may have increased... but what if the number of sick days actually decreased (because the policy made it harder to fake sick)?
• If that were the case, productivity might have INCREASED even though doctor visits INCREASED (because the number of sick days might have decreased). So (A) doesn't do a great job explaining why the policy produced the reverse of its intended effect.

• After the policy was implemented, employees could only miss work if they were "so sick that they had to go to a doctor". So we likely have some population of sick employees who WOULD have stayed home if they didn't have to go to the doctor... but, in light of the new policy, they decided to go to work despite feeling a bit sick (either because they didn't want to go to the doctor or because they weren't sick enough to go to the doctor).
• The common cold would be a good example. Most people don't go to the doctor when they get a cold, but that illness can still negatively affect your productivity. Employees with colds might have stayed home before the policy was implemented. But after the policy was implemented, many employees with colds might end up going to work, infecting their coworkers, and thus reducing their COWORKERS' productivity as well.
• Do we KNOW that this happens? No. Is it possible that (C) has no bearing on the productivity loss... sure. But (C) gives us a very strong reason why the policy would backfire: it tells us why the policy might increase the number of SICK DAYS and thus decrease productivity.

Choice (A) only tells us about the number of DOCTOR VISITS. But an increase in doctor visits doesn't tell us anything about the number of sick days.

Is choice (C) bulletproof? No. But, again, we need the answer choice that would BEST explain why the policy produced the reverse of its intended effect. (C) is a much BETTER choice than (A).

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja

One word in the prompt perplexes my mind.

Sometimes, even a single word may give a big hint in solving the CR question. Here, in my opinion, the word "reported" is such an example. Is not it necessary for reported employee illness to be reported only by a doctor? In this case, even though employees coming into work when sick often infect many of their coworkers, their sickness will not be justified/reported unless they see a doctor. Consequently, I selected A instead of C since, according to my inference, in any case, employees would more frequently go to the doctor when they felt sick.

Do I think too broadly?

The passage doesn't tell us that the report has to come from the doctor. We're told the new policy requires employees to come into work unless they were so sick that they had to go to a doctor. But it doesn't tell us that the doctor has to report this sickness for it to be recognized as a "real" sickness.

The word reported is far more likely to be referring to the company's internal reports -- this reporting could be taking place in something like the company's annual report.

When you combine this with what's been said here, then (C) is a better choice than (A).

I hope that helps!

i am still confused as given in choice A, let's suppose the staff is sick but go to work under the old policy, then the staff go to doctor more frequently and stay at home when the new policy implemented. Does the productivity decrease in this case?

The passage doesn't tell us that, before the new policy, employees would come to work when they felt sick. Sure, they didn't go to the doctor as frequently -- but maybe they'd just stay home on the couch and recover without going to see the doctor.

Under the new policy, they HAVE to go to the doctor if they want to show that they're sick enough to stay home.

So, we can't say that increased visits to the doctor explain decreased productivity -- either way, it's possible that employees stayed home when they felt sick. So (A) doesn't explain why the new policy leads to decreased productivity.

I hope that helps!

Hi Sir GMATNinja -

Could you please help me in understanding if I am understanding this A vs C battle correctly?

Choice A talked about the frequency of visits of an employee increased in general, but does not mean the number of employees taking sick leaves increased, which then would have caused a decrease in productivity.
Hence, This choice does not explain the actual paradox at hand.

Choice A has the ability to explain the paradox but we have to stretch it way toooo much to give it any credit of being the correct answer choice. Whereas in option C, the resolution comes much more naturally and one could have thought about it without struggling much. Hence option C explains the best.

Yup, you're looking for the answer choice that best explains why the policy produced the reverse of its intended effect. This means that the correct answer provides a better explanation than the other answer choices.

As discussed in this post, (A) doesn't give us a clear explanation for the unintended result of the policy, while (C) does.

I hope that helps a bit!

The objective of the policy was to reduce the size of the green circle. The policy aimed to reduce the size of the green circle to the size of the orange circle. However, after the policy was implemented, the size of the green circle increased. That's what the paradox is.

The reason option A is incorrect is that it says that the size of the orange circle increased. Even if the orange circle increases in size, there's no reason to expect that it'll go beyond the green circle. (That the orange circle goes beyond the green circle would mean that even people who were not calling in sick before the policy would start calling in sick after the policy. Option A doesn't give us any reason to expect this.) Thus, even if option A is the case, we'd still expect productivity losses due to reported employee illnesses to go down, not up. Thus, option A doesn't explain the paradox.

[quote="WillGetIt"]To reduce productivity losses from employees calling in sick, Corporation X implemented a new policy requiring employees to come into work unless they were so sick that they had to go to a doctor. But a year after the policy was implemented, a study found that Corporation X's overall productivity losses due to reported employee illnesses had increased.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain why the policy produced the reverse of its intended effect?

(A) After the policy was implemented, employees more frequently went to the doctor when they felt sick

(B) Before the policy was implemented, employees who were not sick at all often called in sick

(C) Employees coming into work when sick often infect many of their coworkers

(D) Unusually few employees became genuinely sick during the year after the policy was implemented

(E) There are many other factors besides employee illness that can adversely affect productivity

Gist of the passage: loss in productivity due to employees who reported they were sick under the new policy actually increased compared to what was expected by the company (that it should decrease). They supported their expectations by the fact that pre-policy, the productivity losses due to calling in sick were high enough to introduce such policy. One gap I recognize din this logic is that there are communicable diseases that people in office can catch from others if they are physically present in the office with other healthy people. Thus, the type of sickness, whether it can infect others or not seems to be something the company overlooked. However, After reading the stem, I prepare myself to look for an option that explains why the policy had a reverse effect (as we know this happened for sure from the stem), thus explain why in the presence of the policy, the effect was that more people started calling in sick (reducing productivity).

A) This option says the frequency of employees going to doctor when they felt sick increased. However, if they felt sick they would have gone to the doctor in any case, with or without the policy. This option gives an explanation about why the policy could be redundant but dont explain exactly why the intended effect was reversed which is what we are trying to do. It may look correct but the outcome of this option is not exactly what we are trying to tackle here.
B) This option is basically saying employees lied about their sickness before the policy. However, we still do not know from this option how employees behavior or actions changed after the policy is introduced. This is what we are trying to do here so remove this option.
C) This is in line with one of the gaps I found however, let us not fall in love with the option and read it. This option says that people who are actually sick would infect others. This means the likelihood of more people going to the doctor and calling in sick as compared to if the infected person stayed home and not infect others, has increased. Thus, a plausible reason why the policy itself could have led to an opposite intended outcome.
D) If very few employees became genuinely sick, so very few people could call in sick to go to the doctor. However, we know the productivity losses went up in the same year. The intended effect of the policy (to remove the fake sick calls and only cater to genuine serious sick calls) actually worked, so this goes against what we are trying to prove.
E) If there are many other factors then that could mean the intended effect of the policy worked the way it was supposed to but there were other factors that caused the productivity losses in the concerned year. This goes against what we are trying to prove.