Task: The vice president of 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."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
Answer:
In the prompt, the vice president of human resources at Climpson Industries has recommended the company’s president to implement electronic monitoring of employees’ internet use in order to improve the productivity of their employees and if they are successful in this case, then their overall profit will increase. However, the vice president relies on the three unwarranted assumptions that, if not substantiated, dramatically reduced the persuasiveness of its recommendation.
To begin with, the recommender has assumed that the employees are mostly wasting their time on the internet. So, in order to improve their productivity, the company should punish them by reducing the number of hours they spend on the internet. However, the employees may not use the internet for their personal and recreational activities. Maybe they spend their time on theirs think, like gossiping or using their personal phones. Also, they can use their personal phone for shopping and playing games. If that is the case, then installing software on their laptop will not show any Internet use and the company cannot, in reality, improve the employees’ productivity that can improve their profit.
Secondly, the vice president has assumed that the productivity of the employees is less because they are spending more time on the internet. But it can be possible that their productivity is not proportional to their internet use; they may rarely use the internet for personal activities. Maybe the employees are not that skilled and proficient workers; maybe they are incompetent to their task and because of this, they are less productive. If there is any truth to it, then the vice president’s recommendation does not hold water.
Thirdly, the recommender has assumed that punishing the employees for wasting time on the internet can improve productivity and can foster better work ethics. However, doing this may create conflict between employees and the company. It can be possible that the most efficient and skilled employees have done their work properly and they have spent some time on recreational activities. Therefore, punishing them for wasting time can make them discouraged and unhappy about the policy. So, if there is any possibility, then the work ethic may not be better for punishing the person who is working efficiently for the entire time.
In conclusion, the recommendation, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the vice president can provide three pieces of evidence stated above and perhaps conduct a systematic research study, then it can be possible to determine whether installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers can improve the overall profit.
