In the given memorandum, the director of human resources department concluded that the employee satisfactory was surely improved after HR department’s effort on enhancing communication between management team and the staff. To support his idea, he alleged that such communication was ranked top in a previous survey so that this issue must be the cared most by employees. At first glance, this conclusion seems to some extent convincing. However, with close examination, we can find at least 3 logic flaws. I would like to discuss in the following paragraphs to disclose how groundless the allegation is.
First, the director’s conclusion is based on a doubtful survey. As the director introduced, the methodology of this survey is to have employees rank the issues according to the importance. To find out whether the survey results are reliable, we need to ask several questions: How many employees are included in this survey? Are they representative to the total staff? Does the questionnaire included all the issues cared by the employees? Is there any possibility that the staff are unwilling to disclose their true thoughts since the survey might require them to sign their names on the questionnaire? Without answers to the questions above, the director can not responsibly conclude that the survey result is reliable enough for the management to draw a decision.
Second, given the survey result is representative and reliable, the communication issue constantly ranked top only suggests that it’s considered important, rather than that management need to improve. Very possibly, the management communication is already well carried out in company X, while some other issues ranked second or third, which are still important, are poorly noticed, and are the real cause of dissatisfaction
