Argument127 电子监控vs员工生产效率 【近期高频！互拍！】

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Argument 127  电子监控vs员工生产效率
虽然总频数一般21次，但是在7月份4次，8月份5次，是近期的高频题
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TOPIC: ARGUMENT127 - The vice president for human resources at Climpson Industries sent the following recommendation to the company's president.

"In an effort to improve our employees' productivity, we should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use from their workstations. Employees who use the Internet from their workstations need to be identified and punished if we are to reduce the number of work hours spent on personal or recreational activities, such as shopping or playing games. By installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers, we can prevent employees from wasting time, foster a better work ethic at Climpson, and improve our overall profits."
WORDS: 508          TIME: 0:32:12          DATE: 2006-8-16

大致提纲：
1.        计划的可行性，安装软件是否会造成安全隐患从而影响员工的工作热情
2.        即使员工同意安装，可能在上班时间还是会分心想其它事，更加无法建立良好工作环境
3.        攻击增加利润的论断
4.        对于那些本来就需要经常上网的人可能由于软件的不完善带来工作效率的降低

In this argument, the vice president recommends to implement electronic monitoring of employee's internet use from their workstations in an effort to improve the employees' productivity. To support his view, the author giving some detailed suggestions and some assumptions based on them. However, the argument suffers from a series of poor assumptions and cause-effect fallacies, which render it worthy unpersuasive as it stands.

To begin with, the recommendation is greatly weakened by the feasibility of the detection method. However, to install software on employees' computer may be left huge work for the computer engineers and which might probably offence employees' privacy. The author did not show any evidence that the software is safe enough to detect nothing but the use of internet. Perhaps there is a backdoor of the software which can steal employees' personal account and passport through monitoring their computers. Hence the installation of detection software may causes discontentment of employees.

To say the least, even if all the employees' agree to install the software or under the pressure of the company rules, to what degree can this software prevent employees from absent-minded at work? It is possible that after this software is installed, employees' morals and spirit will be greatly affected. Maybe those who just want to see a webpage of shopping information for only several minutes will use most of their working time thinking about things they want to buy. So, is it worthy to do so? And if this really happens, can the author still call this is a "better work ethic"?

Moreover, the author subjectively asserts that the company would improve overall profits while giving no convincible evidence to calculate the cost and income by doing this. Purchasing the internet detection software, installing it on employees' computer and hiring engineers to maintain it will cost a large amount of money. And from above, we can see that the company can not improve its income after the installation of the software--let alone about that some employees would lose their enthusiasm and loyalty to the company since they believe the company does not even trust them.

Finally, many employees in Climpson Industies may have the need the access the internet frequently to finish their task. There is no evidence to show that the software will not lower the efficiency of those workers. Perhaps after the software is installed, their normally working need will be banned if the software cannot clearly distinguish those shopping pages and some other pages. Then, their working efficiency and productivity will be greatly reduced instead of improved.

In sum, the recommendation is not well supported. To strengthen the argument, the author must provide clear evidence between employees' productivity and their use of internet from their workspace. The author must also give convincible evidence--maybe through a survey or something else, to illustrate that employees' working enthusiasm and productivity would not be reduced if such software is installed. Finally, to better evaluate the argument, I would need to know the detailed measurement of the company's benefit from both income and cost.