Argument92 [Jet小组] 第十七次作业 随机

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题目：ARGUMENT92 - The following is a recommendation from the human resources department at Techforce Computer Company.

"Many working parents report that problems related to their childcare arrangements are a major reason for absenteeism from their jobs. Bridgewell Corporation, a tele-communications company, implemented an on-site childcare program and after one year, the company reported that unscheduled absences had declined by 25 percent. Since Techforce has had an increase in unscheduled employee absences over the past year, we should therefore implement our own on-site childcare program. The program will undoubtedly reduce our unscheduled employee absences, resulting in significantly increased productivity."

This argument suggests that Techforce Computer Company should implement its own on-site childcare program in order to reduce their unscheduled employee absences. Judged from both logical and common sense, this argument contains several facets that are open to question.

First of all, we cannot conclude that absenteeism has certain relationship with the on-site childcare program with information given in this argument. The author only said that childcare arrangements are a major reason for absenteeism for many working parents, which doesn't tell us that whether it is the main reason for absence for employees at Bridgewell Corporation. We even not sure how many workers at Bridgewell Corporation have children or even their children are young enough to need more childcare, thus we cannot jump to the conclusion that the reduce of absenteeism has to do with the on-site childcare program.

Secondly, though the unscheduled absence had declined by 25 percent one year after Bridgewell Corporation implemented the on-site childcare program; there is still no certain cause-and-effect relationship between the two. Since employees may have various reasons for absenteeism, whether they are excuses or not, childcare arrangement is only one reason of the all. It is possible that most of the employees suffered from colds one year ago before the childcare program, when the weather was terribly cold, and the following year it has been much warmer that few has ever been ill and thus few absence of work. Besides, even the decline of absenteeism has to do with workers who used to spend much time on childcare, it doesn't mean that now they join the on-site childcare program since situations among families are various. For example, the children are old enough to take most of their issues themselves or some employees hired nannies to care the children.

Furthermore, the author of this argument made a false analogy between these two companies. Bridgewell Corporation is a tele-communications company that its employees may be able to take care of their children at work while Techforce Computer Company may work mainly at computer programming or maintenance of their customers’ personal computers, which may need to work off-office a lot, thus on-site childcare program may not work as efficiently as the Bridgewell Corporation.

Last but not least, on-site childcare program may turn out to be a bad idea that it may reduce the working efficiency of Techforce Computer Company aside from absenteeism. Since computer work often require great attention, being distract from children at work time may affect employees work that though low absenteeism may cause even lower working efficiency and thus decreased productivity.

To sum up, a more acceptable way to decrease the unscheduled employee absence at Techforce Computer Company, the author should provide more information on why employees was absent last year and whether they think a on-site childcare program will be helpful. As for increasing productivity, the author should also consider other factors such as management, employee welfare, working conditions and so forth.