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One possibility is that managers are less certain of their team’s commitment and are holding more meetings to check on them. Another is that managers call so many meetings to validate their own existence when they are not in the office. However, the academics suggest the greater need for meetings is the result of the greater difficulty of co-ordinating employees when they are working remotely—another hint that the process is inefficient. When working remotely, employees also spend less time being evaluated, trained and coached.
其中一種可能原因是管理者們不放心他們團隊的投入，因此通過召開更多會議來監(jiān)督他們。另一個可能性是，不在辦公室的管理者們通過召開多次會議來證明自己的存在感。然而，學者們認為，會議需求的增加是由于遠程工作時協(xié)調(diào)員工的難度加大，這也同樣暗示了遠程辦公過程的效率低下。進行遠程工作的員工接受評估、培訓和指導的時間也更少。
This seems a raw deal for the employees. They received no more money for the overtime. Although they saved commuting time, this did not offset the extra hours spent in meetings. Not all workers behaved the same way. Those who had worked at the company the longest tended to be more productive, suggesting that they found it easier to navigate the hazards of home-working. Employees with children worked around 20 minutes a day more than those without, implying an even greater fall in their productivity, presumably because they were distracted by child-care duties.
這樣的方式對員工來說似乎并不公平。他們沒有收到加班費。雖然他們節(jié)省了通勤時間，但也并不能抵消額外的會議時間。并非所有員工的行為方式都一樣。那些在公司工齡最久的人往往更有效率，這表明他們更容易克服居家辦公的危險。相較于沒有孩子的員工，有孩子的員工每天的工作時間要多出約20分鐘，這意味著他們的工作效率下降的更多，大概是他們因為照顧孩子而分心了吧。
So does this mean companies will abandon remote working altogether, even its hybrid version? The academics point out that the staff at the firm under study are nearly all college-educated and their roles “involve significant cognitive work, developing new software or hardware applications or solutions, collaborating with teams of professionals, working with clients, and engaging in innovation and continuous improvement”. Such work may have posed a particular challenge in remote settings, compared with occupations like responding to customer calls, say, where employees may work to a scripted set of replies.
那么，這是否意味著公司將完全放棄遠程工作模式，甚至放棄遠程辦公的混合版本？學者們指出，被研究公司的員工幾乎都受過大學教育，他們的職務“包括重要的認知工作、開發(fā)新的軟件或硬件應用程序或解決方案、與專業(yè)團隊合作、聯(lián)絡客戶以及參與持續(xù)的創(chuàng)新改進工作”。與接聽客戶電話這樣員工按照給定話術進行回復的職業(yè)相比，這類工作在遠程環(huán)境中可能會帶來特殊的挑戰(zhàn)。
It is hardly surprising that there would be some teething and co-ordination problems involved with remote working. The practice was, after all, imposed suddenly. The study stopped last August and one wonders whether employees have learned to use their time more efficiently since then. And the research shows that employees were able to achieve as much output with slightly less “focus time” than they had at the office. The real source of inefficiency—surprise, surprise—was the time spent in meetings. And the answer is simple; don’t call as many, and keep them short.
遠程工作會出現(xiàn)一些初期困難和協(xié)調(diào)問題，這并不奇怪。這種做法畢竟是突然強制實行的。研究于去年8月停止，人們不禁要問，員工自那以后是否學會了更有效地利用時間。研究表明，遠程辦公的員工們的“專注時間”比在辦公室時的更短，卻能獲得同樣多的產(chǎn)出。想不到吧，效率低下的真正根源是會議時間。答案很簡單；不要召開那么多次會議，而且要簡短。
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