The package of benefits and incentives that Ready-to-Ware offers to pr

The following appeared in a memorandum from the director of research and development at Ready-to-Ware, a software engineering firm.

"The package of benefits and incentives that Ready-to-Ware offers to professional staff is too costly. Our quarterly profits have declined since the package was introduced two years ago, at the time of our incorporation. Moreover, the package had little positive effect, as we have had only marginal success in recruiting and training high-quality professional staff. To become more profitable again, Ready-to-Ware should, therefore, offer the reduced benefits package that was in place two years ago and use the savings to fund our current research and development initiatives."

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

The argument presented by the director of research and development at Ready-to-Ware argues that the new package of benefits offered to employees should be reconsidered as it is leading to a decline in profiles and not creating a large positive impact. Additionally, the argument suggests reducing the benefits package and directing extra funds towards research and development initiatives would be better. The argument presented is clearly lacking sufficient data to draw claims, and establish a faulty causal relationship. The argument should present additional evidence to strengthen its conclusion.

Firstly, the argument claims that the quarterly profits have declined because of the new benefits package. The argument arrives at this conclusion without thoroughly examining all the variables which may impact profits of any organisation in this industry. For instance, the argument fails to account for the effect of important factors that may influence a software engineering firm’s profits: the economy, performance by competitors, cost of customer acquisition and capital invested towards developing new software. The argument should examine the impact of other important variables on the profit and only then arrive at a conclusion.

Secondly, the argument assumes that the incentives package does not have a large positive effect on the employees of the organisation and adopting the old incentive package will not lead to employee dissaftisfaction. This assumption made by the argument is not backed by any research, making it a weak and unsubstantiated claim. The argument should study the relationship between the employee perception of the current incentive package and their performance to make the argument robust. Additionally, the argument can also evaluate the effect of the incentive package by comparing the past employee performance and the current one.

Finally, the author should answer and include evidence to address the following questions: How is the incentives package of the organisation structured compared to its competitors? How does the company plan to reward employees if the incentive package is reduced? How does the company evaluate the effectiveness of the incentive package? What is the purpose of directing new funds towards research and development?. Without convincing answers to the above questions, the argument will commit a leap of faith and continue to base its conclusion on superficial assumptions.

In conclusion, the argument presented is flawed for the above mentioned reasons. The author must study further evidence and analyze it before arriving at a conclusion and recommendations.