During this fiscal year, Company X has suffered a marked decrease in

Question

During this fiscal year, Company X has suffered a marked decrease in productivity. Company managers attribute this to budget decisions that allocated more money to pay freelancers than to pay part-time employees, which resulted in the elimination of numerous part-time positions. The freelance budget has gone mostly to new hires,who have less training, on average, than part-timers and it would take a substantial time to train the freelancers.

Assuming that the managers’ reasoning is sound, which of the following, if feasible, is most likely to mitigate the problem raised by the managers?

A. Increasing the work hours of the remaining part-time employees.

B. Providing performance bonuses for managers whose departments demonstrate increased productivity.

C. Reallocating part of the freelance budget to pay for efficiency consultants.

D. Rehiring former part-time workers as freelancers.

E. Eliminating departments with particularly low productivity.

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kb26 · Answer

The budget decision created a problem by hiring untrained freelancers and letting go of trained part time employees. this can be solved by rehiring trained part time employees and option D provides that.

A. increasing the work hours would put undue pressure. so, not solving

B, C and E are not related to the argument.

A. increasing the work hours would put undue pressure. so, not solving

B, C and E are not related to the argument.

dhart · Answer

Problems cause by elimination of experienced part-timers and hring of fresh freelancers , who have no idea may be solved by rehirirng experienced part-timers ...

ankyraje · Answer

D. Rehiring former part-time workers as freelancers ✅

This directly attacks the cause.

Former part-time employees:

* already know the company,
* already have relevant training,
* require little or no additional training,
* can now be paid from the freelance budget.

Vivek1707 · Answer

A. More hours from remaining part-timers may help, but there are already too few part-time positions. It doesn't address the training problem.
B. Bonuses may motivate managers, but the problem is that the freelancers are less trained.
C. Consultants don't solve the immediate shortage of trained workers.
D. Rehiring former part-time workers as freelancers brings back people who are already trained, directly addressing the managers' stated reason for the productivity decline. This works
E. Eliminating low-productivity departments doesn't address the underlying lack of trained workers.

counterclash1 · Answer

Correct Answer: D

Core Problem:
- Productivity dropped because budget shifted to freelancers
- Freelancers are mostly new hires lacking training, and training them takes too long

Goal: Mitigate the drop in productivity

Why (D) is correct:
If Company X uses its freelance budget to rehire former part-time workers as freelancers, it solves both issues at once:
1. It respects the budget shift toward freelance pay
2. It brings back workers who are already trained, immediately eliminating the training lag that dragged down productivity

Why other choices fail:
(A) Contradicts the budget reality that part-time funding was cut
(B) Manager bonuses don't give untrained workers skills
(C) Consultants don't fix worker training bottlenecks
(E) Eliminating entire departments is an extreme non-solution

Conclusion: Option D

odioquibusdam · Answer

If we hire former part-time employees, it would result in an additional expense for the company.

Bunuel · Answer

KAPLAN OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

Correct Choice: (D)

Since the change resulted in a loss of productivity,we can infer that the part-time employees were more productive than the freelancers who were hired in their place. A reasonable solution, then, is to rehire those productive part-timers as freelancers. They’ll still be the same productive employees. They’ll simply be paid differently.

Choice (A) sounds reasonable until we consider that we don’t know the number of remaining part-time employees. There may be so few compared to former numbers that increasing the hours won’t significantly affect productivity.

Choices (B) and (C) seem like good ideas, but neither option is indicated by the information in the passage. There is no evidence that the managers are not already sufficiently motivated or that the advice of efficiency experts is needed.

Choice (E) might be efficient, but having fewer total employees is certainly not likely to increase productivity.

During this fiscal year, Company X has suffered a marked decrease in

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During this fiscal year, Company X has suffered a marked decrease in