Burr Incorporated spends approximately 20% of its budget on employee

Question

Burr Incorporated spends approximately 20% of its budget on employee benefits. In an effort to curb costs, Human Resources has decided to run a pilot program with volunteer employees, in which volunteers received a 5% raise in pay for a 25% reduction in benefits. During the first year of the pilot program, the volunteers’ productivity matched or exceeded their previous performance.

Which of the following, if true, would provide the strongest justification for Burr Inc. not to implement the pilot program company-wide?

(A) 55% of the employees who chose to take part in the pilot program were under the age of 30 and so were less worried about retirement benefits being cut.

(B) Other companies that have implemented similar programs successfully have all been much smaller than Burr Inc.

(C) The pilot program volunteers were among the employees in Burr Inc. who were least likely to take sick days.

(D) Promotions amongst those in the volunteer group were contingent upon their performance while in this group.

(E) Alternatives to cutting benefits might be able to save Burr Inc. more than 5% of what the company pays in salary and benefits.

QMG · Answer

IMO:

a) out because it states "employee benefits" in the text, not "retirement benefits"

c) out because productivity ≠ sick days.

b) & e) not relevant / out of scope.

leaves d)

Bunuel · Answer

Magoosh Official Explanation:

Burr Inc. hopes to save money and increase productivity with this new program. They thus modeled the program on a small group of their employees; in this pilot study, the program achieved both of these goals. To determine what might prevent the company from implementing the program, we need to consider factors that might make this study not applicable to the entire company: in other words, what might make it an inappropriate model.

(D) is the credited answer because under normal circumstances, the average company employee would not feel this same pressure and would not necessarily be similarly motivated; making promotions contingent on performance while in this pilot changes the motivation of these employees. While the company would still save money, productivity would probably not be as high as it was during the pilot study.

On the other hand, the percentage of employees concerned or unconcerned about a particular benefit, as in (A), would not affect the appropriateness of a program that would cut that benefit for the entire company. The terms of this argument are not concerned with employees’ opinions of it.

The size of other companies that have implemented similar programs, and their success, are not necessarily reflective of the circumstances at Burr Inc. (B) does not describe a reason that the pilot study would not mirror the program’s application to the larger company as a whole.

While the productivity of the pilot program’s employees may have been affected by their avoiding sick days, as in (C), note that these employees were simply AMONG those who took the least sick days. This group’s prevalence in the pilot group could have been proportional to their prevalence in the company as a whole; we don’t have enough information to know.

(E) may also seem tempting, but remember that we have to evaluate this program in terms of the company’s TWO goals: not only saving money, but also increasing productivity. While (E) might provide a good alternative to the pilot program on the first count, it fails to provide a good alternative for the second.

kakakakaak · Answer

can someone please elobaorate more on this question as i didnt understood why option d is correct and why option a is wrong ...... please tell what is wrong in option a ...

Pratyaksh1907 · Answer

As we can see that there is no specific conclusion in the argument. But, the Q stem clearly states that which of the following can most strongly weaken the fact that the pilot program success will be replicated when implemented company wide. In these type of questions, I make a conclusion equivalent, i.e., in this case, the pilot test worked out in saving the cost in employee benefit while keeping the productivity level of employees same or increased, therefore, this will work for whole as well. Now, try to weaken this conclusion while keeping all the premises true. We can't go against the premise in falsification. What if, implementing the plan company wide might backfire in dec. productivity or eventually costing more than it saved. What if, Cost Saved in Employee benefit < Cost of salary increment We can move to Answer choice analysis with this Pre-thinking. (A) 55% of the employees who chose to take part in the pilot program were under the age of 30 and so were less worried about retirement benefits being cut. This choice may seem to cast doubt in the result of the pilot program. But, if we look at premise then there is no information given about the age of employees company wide. This choice can go either way, if majority of Company wide employees are under 30 then we can doubt the plan partially, if majority of company wide employees are over 30 then this choice is irrelevant. Hence, the point is that, we cannot assume that company wide employees are same as the ones given in this choice. REJECT (D) Promotions amongst those in the volunteer group were contingent upon their performance while in this group. This choice implies that the employees in pilot program had alter motivation to perform well, in terms of productivity. That alter motivation was Promotion. So, the stats of performance is not because of pay raise or decrease in employee benefit. Hence, we can safely conclude that the results were specific to this pilot program and cannot be replicated in company wide scenario. Therefore, D is the strongest contender . HOPE THIS HELPS

arushi118 · Answer

Option D: The promotions were around the corner, and employees worked as much or even harder than they did before the pilot program - for getting the promotion and not due to the Pilot Program. 
Hence, D is correct.

shloka30 · Answer

The question only mentions that the programme has been implemented to curb costs - there is no mention that there is also an intention to improve productivity - how can we just eliminate choice E- since it directly weakens

miag · Answer

Hi, 
Actually, if we read the last sentence carefully..what we can take away from this is that in order for the program not to be implemented company wide there would need to be some strong negative factor. This option isnt the strongest weakener because like  Bunuel  's response above mentions - we need it to weaken on both counts: cost (which it does), and productivity (because we dont know if just because more cost can be saved, it would translate into better productivity too). D) is the clear answer here because it shows that the incentive of promotion is what drove the performance, not necessarily the pilot program, which undermines the whole reasoning.

Hope this helps!

deepshikhasuvi · Answer

I was also heavily inclining towards D but then i re-read the statement and it said "Promotions amongst those in the volunteer group were contingent upon their performance while in this group". "Promotion amongst those" could mean like 2 people out of a group of like 500 people who were in line for a promotion. Would that be enough to change the performance/productivity levels of the entire group?

miag · Answer

Hi,

Even if only some were directly up for promotion, the whole group knew that performance in the pilot was tied to advancement, which can lift effort broadly. The key point isn't the number of employees promoted - it's that the pilot environment wasn't neutral, so productivity data is distorted..

Hope this helps!

deepshikhasuvi · Answer

hey, that helps a lot actually, thank you so much!

CR sometimes gets our minds so caught up in unnecessary details that we gaslight ourselves out of the right answer :/

Burr Incorporated spends approximately 20% of its budget on employee

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Burr Incorporated spends approximately 20% of its budget on employee

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards