A requirement of traditional pension plans is that an employee work fo

please explain. I marked B as the answer. It says that the employees prefer to work for those companies who give pension plans, hence these companies are not experiencing any issues.

The answer is A.
Retention by employers, despite a reduction in the minimum no. of years for insurance, is possible only if the employees see benefit staying longer in the company over and above the insurance amount.
Option A clearly talks about that benefit which is a % increase as per the no. of years of employment.

Hi experts.

Option D states " An employee is more willing to leave an employer after gaining full rights to pension benefits than before gaining such rights."

if this were true, then the employees wouldnt leave till he/she gains fulls rights to his pension. this could help explain why companies didnt see any significant fall in the employees? How to eliminate D?

Hi Kriti

2 points to consider here:

i) The question stimulus states: "companies have not experienced any significant loss of employees". In other words, we can understand that the loss of employees has been insignificant. This is a subtle transition - we can reasonably infer from this that the loss of employees has not been as much as would be expected if only the tenure for pension ability were the criterion for employees deciding to stay or leave.

ii) There is no reason that we can see for this statement to not have been true even before the "recent regulations...substantially reduced the number of years" for the pension eligibility. Therefore the recent reduction in criterion would suddenly make a number of additional employees eligible for pension benefits. Again, if this were the only criterion for employees leaving their employers, then the companies should have observed a spike in employees leaving.

The above two together tell us that there is another factor at play here, which is satisfied by (A).

Hope this clarifies.

Hi sakshi,

There might be other companies in the market that provide pension plans in a better way than this company hence B option alone can't resolve this paradox.

The question here is "why companies are not experiencing problems in retaining employees" ?

Option B is not able to answer the question as if option B is true employee will look for better opportunities in market.

Hope it helps.

Hi kirti,

One possible reason I think this option is not sufficient.

Since paragraph mentions that recent regulation have reduced the number of years for attaining pension. Suppose an employee have currently full rights to pension, hence as per option D it is certain that employee would leave the employer.

But our question here is "why companies are not experiencing problems in retaining employees", hence this option doesn't help to retain employees.

Hope it helps.

I am curious to confirm the reason to reject C.

C is rejected because it is out of scope as our scope is limited to traditional pension plans?


GMATNinja carouselambra mcelroytutoring CrackVerbal CrackVerbalGMAT EducationAisle: please give your opinion.

thanks!

Hi,

An important thing that you need to remember henceforth is that NO answer should merely be marked incorrect owing to to reasons such as 'Out of scope' , 'Irrelevant' etc. You should be able to deduce how the option is related/unrelated to the conclusion and apply your understanding based on the premise.
Coming to the question now :

A requirement of traditional pension plans is that an employee work for a company a number of years before gaining full rights to benefits from the company’s plan on retirement. Companies used this requirement to help them retain employees, but recent regulations have substantially reduced the number of years of work a company can require.
Nevertheless, companies have not experienced any significant loss of employees.

Which of the following, if true, helps to explain why companies are not experiencing problems in retaining employees?


(C) Most (means <50 to ALL, but we do not know how many) companies that do not offer traditional pension plans offer plans in which their employees enjoy rights to retirement benefits as soon as they enter employment.
Now, answer the below questions for me and then we can take this discussion forward.

1. How is (C) related to the premise of the passage that states "A requirement of traditional pension plans" / "Companies used this requirement to help them retain employees" ?

2. Option (C) states a fact -OK. But please help me understand you linked this with the conclusion of the passage?
"but recent regulations have substantially reduced the number of years of work a company can require.
Nevertheless, companies have not experienced any significant loss of employees. "
Does option (C) assure us that just because most companies (again, we do not know how many) do NOT offer (please note that this wasn't even the subject of the premise) traditional benefit plans, employees will opt for it.


Awaiting your response. Cheers!

Thanks carouselambra for analyzing .

1. How is (C) related to the premise of the passage that states "A requirement of traditional pension plans" / "Companies used this requirement to help them retain employees" ?

2. Option (C) states a fact -OK. But please help me understand you linked this with the conclusion of the passage?
"but recent regulations have substantially reduced the number of years of work a company can require.
Nevertheless, companies have not experienced any significant loss of employees. "
Does option (C) assure us that just because most companies (again, we do not know how many) do NOT offer (please note that this wasn't even the subject of the premise) traditional benefit plans, employees will opt for it.

Here is my thought for the queries you raised for me to self analyze.
>> C talks about companies that don't use traiditonal pension plan. But argument scope is concerned with traditional pension plans.
That's why I wanted to reject as " non relevant" because C option talks about something we should not be concerned about.

Question: why companies are not experiencing problems in retaining employees?
However C highlights some new fact that more than 50% companies don't follow traditional pension plan and hence it doesn't effect them retaining of employees.

so far so good.
Undoubtedly , we can reject C on basis of non-relevance as you highlight in the post.

A is good enough answer.

Let's say A is not present.

Nevertheless, companies have not experienced any significant loss of employees.

here is another perspective on C: ( maybe weak perspective ). please check:-
With this statement , significant highlights not too much . maybe still some left the company and companies expereince some little problems in general.
It means that this small problem is due to still traditional pension plans . but since most of the companies dnt follow traiditional pension plan then in general it doesnot appear to show any problem.
( similar to : government has changed rules in sending SMS . But it doesn't affect people , why? because most of people use whatsapp, facebook , etc etc.

Do you think C has slight chance of even correct answer.
I think C could be considered in absence of A as explained with above thought.

I think what you are doing here is over analysing the passage - something which is detrimental in the approach to solve CR passages.
Why would you assume that (A) is not there merely to justify (c) - a typical case of justification bias

Not sure whether you realized but you found the solution to your problem in the explanation provided by yourself. Please see the below :

With this statement , significant highlights not too much . maybe still some left the company and companies expereince some little problems in general.
It means that this small problem is due to still traditional pension plans .
My question : HOW do we know that? Has this been mentioned anywhere?

Do you think C has slight chance of even correct answer.
My answer : Not at all, since it is not remotely related to the conclusion.

Hope its clear now. Let me know if otherwise.

Yeah ....so employees prefer to work for those companies who give pension plans . This part is fine. But in this case the employees can still switch between these companies that give the pension plans, right? The passage says that even this is not happening !!

So we need to find an answer choice that explains this. Option A does just that. It gives us a reason as to why employees in one company stick to it.

Understanding the argument -
A requirement of traditional pension plans is that an employee work for a company a number of years before gaining full rights to benefits from the company’s plan on retirement. - Fact
Companies used this requirement to help them retain employees, but recent regulations have substantially reduced the number of years of work a company can require. - Fact
Nevertheless, companies have not experienced any significant loss of employees. - Fact. Contrast. More employees would be leaving if the duration was the only criterion. But they are not leaving it to men. There are some other criteria as well.

Option Elimination - Resolve the paradox.

(A) As the number of years an employee has worked for a company increases, the rate at which the company contributes to the employee’s pension benefits increases. - Ok. Provides an alternate reason for them to stay.
(B) Potential employees prefer to work for companies that offer them pension plans rather than for those that do not. - "Potential employees" is out of scope.
(C) Most companies that do not offer traditional pension plans offer plans in which their employees enjoy rights to retirement benefits as soon as they enter employment. - "Companies that do not offer traditional pension plans" are out of scope.
(D) An employee is more willing to leave an employer after gaining full rights to pension benefits than before gaining such rights. - Worsens the paradox.
(E) Employers have always been reluctant to lose highly trained employees. - But that information doesn’t resolve the paradox. Out of scope.