2023年经济学人 居家办公的效率还是不如坐班(1)

 

 

    Finance & economics

    财经版块

    Don’t be workshy

    不要怕去上班

    Whoops¹, working from home is detrimental² to productivity after all.

    唉，居家办公总归还是不利于提高工作效率。

    A gradual reverse migration³ is under way, from Zoom⁴ to the conference room.

    从视频会议到公司会议室的反向迁移正在逐步进行中。

    Wall Street firms have been among the most forceful in summoning workers to their offices, but in recent months even many tech titans—Apple, Google, Meta and more—have demanded staff show up to the office at least three days a week.

    在把员工召集到办公室方面，华尔街的公司一直是态度最强硬的，但最近几个月，就连许多科技巨头--苹果、谷歌、Meta等--也要求员工每周至少有三天在办公室坐班。

    For work-from-home believers, it looks like the revenge of corporate⁵ curmudgeons⁶.

    对于居家办公的信徒来说，这种举动看起来像是公司里的暴躁老头的报复。

    Didn’t a spate⁷ of studies during the covid-19 pandemic demonstrate that remote work was often more productive than toiling⁸ in the office?

    新冠肺炎大流行期间的大量研究不都表明，远程办公往往比在办公室里辛苦工作更有效率吗？

    Unfortunately for the believers, new research mostly runs counter to this, showing that offices, for all their flaws, remain essential.

    但对居家办公信徒来说，不幸的是，新的研究大多与此相反，表明办公室虽然存在许多缺陷，但仍然必不可少。

    A good starting point is a working paper that received much attention when it was published in 2020 by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, then both doctoral students at Harvard University.

    可以先从一篇论文初稿看起，这篇论文在2020年发表时受到了极大的关注，作者是当时在哈佛大学读博士的娜塔莉亚·伊曼纽尔和艾玛·哈林顿。

    They found an 8% increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer⁹ that had shifted from offices to homes.

    她们发现，一家在线零售商的员工从办公室坐班变为居家办公后，他们每小时处理的电话数量增加了8%。

    Far less noticed was a revised version of their paper, published in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    受关注较少的是她们这篇论文的修订版，由纽约联邦储备银行在5月份发表。

    The boost to efficiency had instead become a 4% decline.

    在修订版中，效率提高反而变成了效率下降4%。

    The researchers had not made a mistake.

    研究人员没有弄错。

    Rather, they received more precise data, including detailed¹⁰ work schedules.

    相反，他们收到了更准确的数据，包括详细的工作时间表。

    Not only did employees answer fewer calls when remote, the quality of their interactions suffered.

    员工在远程办公时不仅接听的电话更少，而且他们的沟通质量也更差。

    They put customers on hold for longer.

    他们让客户等待的时间更长。

    More also phoned back, an indication of unresolved problems.

    再次回拨电话的次数也更多，表明还有问题尚未解决。

    The revision comes hot on the tails of other studies that have reached similar conclusions.

    修订版紧随已得出类似结论的其他研究而出现。

    David Atkin and Antoinette Schoar, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Sumit Shinde of the University of California, Los Angeles, randomly¹¹ assigned data-entry workers in India to labour either from home or the office.

    麻省理工学院的大卫·阿特金和安托瓦内特·肖尔以及加州大学洛杉矶分校的苏米特·辛德随机分配一些印度的数据录入人员在家或在办公室工作。

    Those working at home were 18% less productive than their peers in the office.

    那些在家工作的人的工作效率比在办公室里工作的人低18%。

    Michael Gibbs of the University of Chicago and Friederike Mengel and Christoph Siemroth, both of the University of Essex, found a productivity shortfall, relative to prior in-office performance, of as much as 19% for the remote employees of a large Asian IT firm.

    芝加哥大学的迈克尔·吉布斯和埃塞克斯大学的弗雷德里克·孟格尔和克里斯托弗·西姆罗斯发现，一家大型亚洲IT公司的员工，与之前在办公室里的工作表现相比，他们远程办公的效率下降了19%。

    Another study determined¹² that even chess professionals play less well in online matches than face-to-face tilts¹³.

    另一项研究发现，即使是国际象棋专业棋手在网络比赛中的表现也不如面对面的比赛。

    Yet another used a laboratory experiment to show that video conferences inhibit¹⁴ creative thinking.

    还有人用实验室实验证明，视频会议抑制创造性思维。

    The reasons for the findings will probably not surprise anyone who has spent much of the past few years working from a dining-room table.

    那些过去几年里大部分时间都在餐厅饭桌上工作的人，可能对这些研究发现的原因并不感到惊讶。

    It is harder for people to collaborate¹⁵ from home.

    人们在家里更难进行协同工作。

    Workers in the Fed study spoke¹⁶ of missing their “neighbours to turn to for assistance”.

    美联储研究论文中的工作者谈到，他们失去了“可以求助的工作上的邻居”。

    Other researchers who looked at the communication records of nearly 62,000 employees at Microsoft observed that professional networks within the company become more static and isolated¹⁷.

    其他研究人员观察了微软近6.2万名员工的交流记录，发现公司内部的职业关系网变得更加静态和孤立。

    Teleconferencing is a pale imitation of in-the-flesh meetings: researchers at Harvard Business School, for example, concluded that “virtual water coolers”—rolled out by many companies during the pandemic—often encroached on crowded schedules with limited benefits.

    远程会议要远逊于面对面会议：例如，哈佛商学院的研究人员得出结论，许多公司在疫情期间推出的“虚拟饮水机谈话”经常会侵占忙碌的工作时间，带来的好处也并不多。

    To use the terminology¹⁸ of Ronald Coase, an economist¹⁹ who focused on the structure of companies, all these problems represent an increase in co-ordination costs, making collective enterprise more unwieldy.

    用专注研究公司结构的经济学家罗纳德·科斯的话来说，所有这些问题都表明协调成本在增加，从而使整个企业变得更加不灵活。

1 whoops   

int.呼喊声

参考例句：

• Whoops! Careful, you almost spilt coffee everywhere. 哎哟！小心点，你差点把咖啡洒得到处都是。
• We were awakened by the whoops of the sick baby. 生病婴儿的喘息声把我们弄醒了。

2 detrimental   

adj.损害的，造成伤害的

参考例句：

• We know that heat treatment is detrimental to milk.我们知道加热对牛奶是不利的。
• He wouldn't accept that smoking was detrimental to health.他不相信吸烟有害健康。

3 migration   

n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙

参考例句：

• Swallows begin their migration south in autumn.燕子在秋季开始向南方迁移。
• He described the vernal migration of birds in detail.他详细地描述了鸟的春季移居。

4 zoom   

n.急速上升；v.突然扩大，急速上升

参考例句：

• The airplane's zoom carried it above the clouds.飞机的陡直上升使它飞到云层之上。
• I live near an airport and the zoom of passing planes can be heard night and day.我住在一个飞机场附近，昼夜都能听到飞机飞过的嗡嗡声。

5 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

6 curmudgeons   

n.坏脾气的人，吝啬鬼，守财奴( curmudgeon的名词复数 )

参考例句：

7 spate   

n.泛滥，洪水，突然的一阵

参考例句：

• Police are investigating a spate of burglaries in the area.警察正在调查这一地区发生的大量盗窃案。
• Refugees crossed the border in full spate.难民大量地越过了边境。

8 toiling   

长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉

参考例句：

• The fiery orator contrasted the idle rich with the toiling working classes. 这位激昂的演说家把无所事事的富人同终日辛劳的工人阶级进行了对比。
• She felt like a beetle toiling in the dust. She was filled with repulsion. 她觉得自己像只甲虫在地里挣扎，心中涌满愤恨。

9 retailer   

n.零售商(人)

参考例句：

• What are the retailer requirements?零售商会有哪些要求呢？
• The retailer has assembled a team in Shanghai to examine the question.这家零售商在上海组建了一支团队研究这个问题。

10 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

11 randomly   

adv.随便地，未加计划地

参考例句：

• Within the hot gas chamber, molecules are moving randomly in all directions. 在灼热的气体燃烧室内，分子在各个方向上作无规运动。 来自辞典例句
• Transformed cells are loosely attached, rounded and randomly oriented. 转化细胞则不大贴壁、圆缩并呈杂乱分布。 来自辞典例句

12 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

13 tilts   

（意欲赢得某物或战胜某人的）企图，尝试( tilt的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• As the kitten touches it, it tilts at the floor. 它随着击碰倾侧，头不动，眼不动，还呆呆地注视着地上。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译
• The two writers had a number of tilts in print. 这两位作家写过一些文章互相攻击。

14 inhibit   

vt.阻止，妨碍，抑制

参考例句：

• Don't let ego and greed inhibit clear thinking and hard work.不要让自我和贪婪妨碍清晰的思维和刻苦的工作。
• They passed a law to inhibit people from parking in the street.他们通过一项法令以阻止人们在街上停车。

15 collaborate   

vi.协作，合作；协调

参考例句：

• The work gets done more quickly when we collaborate.我们一旦合作，工作做起来就更快了。
• I would ask you to collaborate with us in this work.我们愿意请你们在这项工作中和我们合作。

16 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

17 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

18 terminology   

n.术语；专有名词

参考例句：

• He particularly criticized the terminology in the document.他特别批评了文件中使用的术语。
• The article uses rather specialized musical terminology.这篇文章用了相当专业的音乐术语。

19 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。