Instructions

Read the following scenario and answer the THREE questions that follow.

Selvam Tutorials offers exclusive face-to-face evening classes from Monday to Friday for students who are preparing for various entrance exams. Selvam Dindigul, the owner, operates from his ancestral house, situated in the middle of the city. There are several instructors, but each teaches only one of the following courses: quantitative ability, verbal ability and decision making. Selvam usually recruits fresh graduates, or those instructors who are working with other tutorials and seeking a job change.

As Selvam Tutorials has been expanding aggressively over the past few years, managing it alone becomes challenging for Selvam. Hence, he recruits Kanmani Gunaa, his niece, who has an online MBA with specializations in Accountancy and HR, as a manager. He asks Kanmani to introduce modern HR practices at Selvam Tutorials while managing cost effectively.

Question 49

Kanmani meets Selvam and requests his permission to recruit three extra instructors, who would be on the regular payroll. They will only chip in whenever the regular instructors go on leave. Selvam, having been running the tutorial for quite some time, believes that this would not be the right way to solve the problem of managing classes when instructors go on leave. He shares the following data with Kanmani to help her understand that this problem cannot be solved by recruiting more people:

a) The number of days that instructors go on leave of absence is usually two days a month on average.
b) Each instructor has a unique style of teaching that cannot be replicated by part-timers.
c) Classes are held for 5 days a week, allowing enough rest for the instructors.
d) Selvam tried with part-time instructors as back-ups previously but they were often unavailable when needed.
e) The extra instructors must be paid a monthly salary, even when they might not be teaching the entire month.

Which of the following combinations of data will BEST convince Kanmani not to recruit extra instructors on the regular payroll?

Solution

Selvam needs to convince Kanmani that hiring three additional instructors on the regular payroll is not a suitable solution. Option C (b, d, e) is the best combination. Statement (b) explains that the regular instructors have unique teaching styles that part-time substitutes cannot replicate. Statement (d) shows that Selvam’s previous experience with backup instructors was unsuccessful because they were often unavailable when needed. Statement (e) highlights the financial drawback: the extra instructors would receive monthly salaries even when they were not teaching. Together, these statements directly address the effectiveness and cost of recruiting additional instructors.

Statement (a) gives the average number of days instructors take leave but does not establish whether hiring additional instructors is worthwhile. Statement (c) mentions the five-day teaching schedule and the instructors’ rest, but it does not directly demonstrate why recruiting extra instructors would be ineffective or expensive. Therefore, Option C (b, d, e) is the strongest combination.

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