Question

Although the new policy aims to increase efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing employee satisfaction, some employees feel that the changes are too abrupt and poorly communicated.

• A. increasing efficiency, reducing of costs, and enhancing of employee satisfaction
• B. increase efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance employee satisfaction
• C. increase the efficiency, reduce the costs and enhancing employee satisfaction
• D. increase efficiency, reducing the costs and enhanced employee satisfaction

Hint:

When you see a list of actions or items joined by "and" or "or," check that they all have the same grammatical form (e.g., all nouns, all infinitives, all "-ing" forms). This is the essence of parallel structure.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
This question tests the principle of parallel structure (or parallelism). When listing items in a series, each item should be in the same grammatical form.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The original underlined phrase is "increase efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing employee satisfaction". The introductory verb is "aims to," which should be followed by a verb in its base form (infinitive without 'to'). The list starts with "increase" (base form), but the next two items are "reducing" and "enhancing" (present participles/gerunds). This violates the rule of parallelism. To correct this, all three items in the list should be in the base form to match the first item.

Option (1) uses participles and unnecessarily adds "of".
Option (2) correctly lists all three items in their base verb form: "increase..., reduce..., and enhance...". This maintains a parallel structure.
Option (3) mixes base form ("reduce") and a participle ("enhancing").
Option (4) mixes a participle ("reducing") and a past participle ("enhanced").
The only option that maintains a consistent parallel structure is (2).
Step 3: Final Answer:
The correct phrase is "increase efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance employee satisfaction".