In a study of factors affecting employee satisfaction , investigators polled staff at eight companies with over $100 million in revenues and benefits including flexible schedules and on-site daycare. The investigators found that overall satisfaction levels at the companies were high, that the companies enjoyed profit margins averaging over 20% over the last five years, and that the rates of employee departures at these companies had varied between 1% and 5% over this period.

Which of the following conclusions may be drawn from the information above?

(A) Flexible schedules and daycare are important benefits for raising overall levels of employee satisfaction.
(B) High profitability levels for companies with revenues over $100 million are most likely the result of high employee satisfaction levels.
(C) Companies without daycare and flexible-schedule benefits have higher rates of employee departures than do those with these benefits.
(D) At least 95% of employees will stay for at least one year at some companies with daycare benefits.
(E) More companies have recently begun offering daycare and flexible schedule benefits to attract potential employees who are also parents.

The option D which is OA talks about only those companies who have day-care as benefits,and assumes the same statistics as that for companies that have day care as well as flexible timings.How come then D be proved beyond reasonable doubt to be the conclusion.A on the other hand, says that flexible timings and day care are "important" from the employee satisfaction point of view which can be concluded because the stimulus talks only about these two things with respect to employee satisfaction in the companies.
Hence I feel that the OA should be A.

A is totally out, because you cannot conclude that something is important based simply on the facts in this argument. As for proving D, there ARE companies with daycare benefits where over 95% of the employees stuck around. This is very clear from the argument. Just because these companies had other benefits in addition to daycare does not mean they didn’t have daycare..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor