The following is a memo from the president of Cyberell Computer Company.

“All of our customer-service employees recently attended a two-day retreat during which they received retraining in effective customer service. Subsequently, Cyberell’s employee-performance study showed that the retreat benefited new employees – those who have worked with Cyberell for less than two years – far more than it did experienced employees. According to the study, after the retreat new employees were able to handle an average of ten percent more calls per hour, and the total number of customer complaints about new employees decreased, but experienced employees showed little improvement in these areas. Therefore, Cyberell should send only new employees to future retreats and should use the resulting savings to double the length of the retreats so that the retreats will be more likely to yield optimum employee performance.”

The above article appeared as a memo from the president of Cyberell Computer Company. The arguer in the above article wants to make the recommendation of sending only new employees for future retreats as the resulting savings would be used to double the length of the retreats so that optimum performance from employees can be obtained. The arguer gives various reasons to support his recommendation. The first argument that the arguer presents to support his stand is the improved performance of the new employees. The second argument of the arguer is that because of the improved performance the new employees were able to handle more calls per hour and complaints about them also decreased. The arguer further mentions that very little improvement has been there in the work of experienced employees. The various arguments presented by the arguer are vague and without any relevant explanation.

The first argument presented by the arguer is that amongst the customer-service employees who attended the retreat the newly employed were more benefited. The arguer also mentions the improvement in their work and less complaints from customers. The arguer fails to mention how the performance of the new employees before the retreat was. It is also very much possible that retreat brought improvement in the work of new employees but the experienced employees were already performing better than them. The arguer has also not mentioned whether any such retreat was practiced earlier or not and if not then whether the experienced employees were performing already better without attending any retreat. If the performance of new employees was improved because of retreat then it means that such retreat would be needed in future also whereas existing employees were performing better without such retreat. The arguer mentions that after the retreat less number of complaints was registered against new employees but the arguer fails to mention what the percentage of complaints registered about old employees was.

The arguer in his second argument states that after the retreat new employees are able to handle more calls. The new employees were able to handle ten percent more calls but the percentage of old employees attending calls per hour is not given. It is very much possible that experienced employees were attending more calls than new employees were.

The arguer mentions that very little improvement was seen in the performance of old employees but it is quite possible that there was very little scope of improvement. Being old employees they were more experienced and chances of improvement and committing mistakes also decreases with time.

The arguer has not been able to convince us about the good performance of the new employees and flaws about the performance of experienced employees. The arguer needs to present us with more authenticated and relevant facts about the performance of new employees. Experienced employees are the asset of an organization and without any substantial proof it would not be wise on the part of Cyberell Computer Company to take such a decision.