The following appeared in a memorandum from the human resources department of Diversified Manufacturing:
“Managers at our central office report that their employees tend to be most productive in the days immediately preceding a vacation. To help counteract our declining market share, we could increase the productivity of our professional staff members, who currently receive four weeks paid vacation a year, by limiting them to a maximum of one week’s continuous vacation time. They will thus take more vacation breaks during a year and give us more days of maximum productivity.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
Considering the fact that employees at Diversified Manufacturing Corp. (DMC) tend to be most productive in the days immediately preceding a vacation, the corporation can encourage this productivity by reducing the vacation breaks given to its employees by half. This move, according to the company’s human resource department, would help the company increase its profits by reducing the number of unproductive days spent by its staff
The first problem with this argument is the lack of justification for the assertion that employees at the corporation tend to work more productively in the days immediately preceding a vacation. Certainly, some employees may have worked more diligently in anticipation of their vacation break, but in general, most employees take their vacation time without checking their e-mail or voicemail, and if they do check in, they do not respond to messages. This alone would make the days immediately prior to a vacation unproductive. Furthermore, employees usually do not spend the days prior to their vacation sitting in their cubicles twiddling their thumbs, but more likely they either rest or spend time with family and friends. It seems far more likely that the day of departure is the most unproductive day for employees, and that the day of return is the most productive. If this is true, then limiting the number of vacation days given to the employees would not result in increased productivity
If the human resources department had provided quantifiable data to support the assertion that employees tend to be more productive in the days just prior to vacation, then their argument might have more credibility. Unfortunately, however, there is no clear evidence to support such a claim. For instance, the memorandum does not state the number of vacation days employees at DMC receive, or how many there are in a given year. Had the memorandum mentioned these figures, then the reader would have been able to judge how valid the assertion that employees tend to be most productive in the days immediately preceding a vacation was
Without this information, it is impossible to read between the lines of the memorandum and determine just how effective the human resources department’s suggestion truly would be. The memorandum simply states that employees tend to be more productive in the days immediately before a vacation. It does not provide data that can be used to refute or support this claim. The memorandum also does not set out the productivity levels of employees prior to the vacation, nor does it provide data to indicate that productivity levels suffer when employees take vacation
Therefore, based on the information provided, it would be unwise to conclude that limiting the number of vacation days given to employees at DMC would result in increased productivity. Instead, it would be wise for the human resources department to conduct further research, perhaps by interviewing current and former employees at the corporation, to determine exactly what productivity levels look like in the days immediately prior to and after a paid vacation. If it turns out that employees are more, rather than less, productive in the days just prior to a vacation, then the human resources department’s suggestion could be implemented, but if this is not the case, then the employee productivity levels would not be improved.