Melissa: We must become more flexible if we are to meet our personnel needs and maximize efficiency. In the past, we simply hired as many full-time employees as we thought we needed. But, this focus has caused us to lose many valuable employees. We should offer flextime and job sharing options to help us keep and attract talented employees.
Jennifer: Alternatives to traditional job design approaches can lead to significant cost savings. We are expected to have 500 more employees than our current facility allows next year, but my analysis reveals 600 of our employees could telecommute. Therefore, we can avoid costly actions such as moving our offices or building extensions if these workers became telecommuters. Job sharing can also reduce facility costs as well as payroll costs.
Which of the following, if true, would strengthen Melissa's argument?
A. Flextime arrangements are more common in service industries than in other industries.
B. The number of employees interested in flextime is higher than the number of employees interested in job sharing.
C. Employees tend to believe that employees in nontraditional job arrangements are the most vulnerable to layoffs.
D. Most of the jobs at the organization do not require the employee to be physically present.
E. A large number of people with desirable job skills cannot commit to taking full-time positions.