I'm not a grader, but I happen to have practiced the same Issue, and I'm looking for suggestions or a score, too (I practiced within the time limit, and typos are reserved for grading considerations):
Quote:
There has been a long-lasting debate on whether companies should hire outside consultants for opinions on company operation. Some think employees is a better source of opinions and is already enough, while others believe consultants have their value. In my opinion, while company employees do have their valuable opinions on company operation, those are not enough to substitute experts' stances from outside the company.
First of all, consultants have more expertise in company operation. To become an expertised consultant, they have to spend time learning theories about the market and the comapny operation. They also investigate the situation in the current market into depth. All these information are different from what company employees have. Employees usually have various expertise areas and have to spend time on their daily work rather than the broader but less relevant information outside there in the market. Even people in a company's marketing department usually have different focuses than a general non-employee consultant.
At the mean time, consultants have different interest stances than company employees and thus can provide viewpoints from different perspectives. It is human nature to be selfish, so for company employees, they often hope company policies can benefit themselves, especially when nowadays changing employers is quite normal, people don't necessarily provide suggestions merely based on the company's benefits. Of course, there is a lot of overlaps between a comapny's and its employees' benefits, but taking suggestions only from employees really could be partial. Outside consultants are not 100% reliable, either, but combining opinions from both sides is a viable way to reduce biases of their oppinions, and is what a wise leader would consider.
So, it's already obvious in the last paragraph, but I'd like to emphasize it again, that by suggesting taking opinions from consultants, I'm not denying the necessity of learning employees' viewpoints. The latter is not a complete picture of what company leaders might want to know about their operations, but also worth consideration.
In general, I believe taking opinions from outside consultants is not a waste of money and time, although it's definitely a better way to take opinions from both consultants and employees, with opinions from each of both sides compensating those from the other.
28 Jun 2019, 03:45 
