ARGUMENT186 =August Rush=小组 by KevinSpacey

KevinSpaceyUID：2645771

TOPIC: ARGUMENT186 - The following is a recommendation from the director of personnel to the president of Professional Printing Company.

"In a recent telephone survey of automobile factory workers, older employees were less likely to report that having a supervisor present increases their productivity. Among workers aged 18 to 29, 27 percent said that they are more productive in the presence of their immediate supervisor, compared to 12 percent for those aged 30 or over, and only 8 percent for those aged 50 or over. Clearly, if our printing company hires mainly older employees, we will increase productivity and save money because of the reduced need for supervisors."

KevinSpaceyUID：2645771

WORDS: 445          TIME: 01:04:54          DATE: 2009/8/9 0:20:25

By providing a result of a telephone survey of automobile factory workers that older employees were less likely to report having a supervisor present increases their productivity, the director of personnel recommend that the printing company should hire mainly older employees. The recommendation seems at first glance to be an obvious conclusion. After all, older employees are more experienced than young. However, it may mask other causes of the result of the survey and may not achieve the goal that saving money.

First of all, it is only mentioned in the recommendation that the survey carried out through telephone. The director does not provide more details of the survey. The readers do not know the quantity of the sample, like how many people participate in the interview. We do not know if the interviewees are forthright to answer every question. What about the proportion of different group of people among all the interviewees? It is entirely possible that only ten people are picked up for each group. If it is true, the result will not reflect the objective situation because it is not representative of all the employees. Perhaps the survey is not anonymous, thus the older workers are more likely to hide their real thought. Without enough information about the survey, the result of the survey is unconvincing and skeptical.

Secondly, the director fails to consider if the printing industry and automobile industry are comparable. One is heavy industry and the other is light industry. The work habit of employees of these two industries may be totally different from each other. Thus, the result of survey of automobile factory workers should not be generalized to the printing company without more research.

Finally, even assuming the result of survey is representative of both automobile industry and printing industry, there is no evidence to guarantee that hiring more older employees will save money. It is true that older employees have high productivity and will make more revenue for company than the younger ones, the profit of company, however, may still decrease. The company would have to pay more salary to the older employees because of their experienced skill. The company may also pay excess fees for older workers' pension and medical expense. Given that both the revenue and cost of the company will increase, the profit is likely to decrease.

In sum, the reasoning behind the survey are need to be made clearly by the director. To make the recommendation more convincing, the director needs to find out if the two industries are comparable. Before any final decisions are made about the employee hiring, the director also need to evaluate both the cost and the revenue.