西方人不贊成辦公室戀情,而在印度,外包公司的員工更有可能把職場當(dāng)作檢驗(yàn)長期關(guān)系的好地方。
“Office hours sometimes get very hectic,” says 25-year-old D. Karthik as he waits with his colleague and fiancée, K. Tejaswania, at the juice bar of their employer, Mphasis. “If we are still able to adjust to it with our partners, that shows we are best for each other.”
“上班時間有時會十分忙碌,如果我們能夠與戀人共同適應(yīng)這種狀況,就說明我們是最適合彼此的,”今年25歲的D.卡蒂克(D. Karthik)表示,他與他的同事兼未婚妻K.泰賈斯瓦尼婭(K. Tejaswania)正在他們就職的公司Mphasis的果汁吧等候著。
In a country in which young people used to outsource the business of finding a spouse to their parents, workers in India's growing outsourcing sector often look for partners themselves among their nearest colleagues.
在印度,過去年輕人的婚姻往往由父母包辦,但在不斷發(fā)展的外包行業(yè),職員們經(jīng)常在最接近的同事中尋找自己的伴侶。
Far from discouraging such relationships, their employers are happy to play matchmaker, according to a new study by the Indian School of Business, the country's prestigious MBA college in Hyderabad.
根據(jù)印度商學(xué)院(Indian School of Business)最新調(diào)查,對于辦公室戀情,公司方面非但不加以阻止,還樂于撮合。印度商學(xué)院是該國知名MBA學(xué)院,位于海德拉巴。
One of India's most important industries with export revenue of more than $40bn a year, the outsourcing sector has been at the forefront of economic, social and cultural change since its emergence in the 1990s.
外包行業(yè)是印度最重要行業(yè)之一,每年出口收入超過400億美元,崛起于上世紀(jì)90年代,此后一直處于經(jīng)濟(jì)、社會和文化變革的前沿。
The ISB cites a survey by Monsterindia.com, part of the global recruitment site Monster Worldwide, that found nearly 58 per cent of 12,191 respondents admitted to either having indulged in, or being open to, office romance. “There is a perception that a lot of companies are encouraging this trend because this accrues benefits to the organisation,” the ISB study by students Anshumita Sen and Naina Bhattacharya says.
印度商學(xué)院援引了國際招聘公司Monster Worldwide旗下Monsterindia.com所作的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查,該調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn),在接受調(diào)查的12191人中,近58%的人承認(rèn)有過辦公室戀情或?qū)χ珠_放態(tài)度。“人們感覺到,很多公司都鼓勵這種趨勢,因?yàn)閷M織有利,”調(diào)查報告表示。實(shí)施該調(diào)查的是兩名學(xué)生安蘇米塔·森(Anshumita Sen)和奈納•巴塔查里亞(Naina Bhattacharya)。
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These perceived benefits include “reduced attrition, higher employee engagement, satisfied and happy employees, greater feelings of citizenship towards the organisation and greater productivity through longer working hours at the workplace”.
人們眼中的好處包括“減少員工流失、提高員工敬業(yè)度、使員工感到滿意和愉快、增強(qiáng)普通人對公司的好感,以及因上班工作時間延長而提高生產(chǎn)率”。
Some companies have gone as far as welcoming spouses under “referral programmes” in which staff can recommend friends to their human resources departments for recruitment, the study finds. The outsourcing industry says it does not “encourage or discourage” office romances but tolerates them when they develop.
調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn),一些公司甚至歡迎員工的配偶通過“推薦計(jì)劃”加入公司。根據(jù)此類計(jì)劃,員工可向人力資源部推薦自己的朋友。外包行業(yè)表示,“不鼓勵也不阻止”辦公室戀情,但一旦發(fā)生辦公室戀情,會采取容忍的態(tài)度。
Francisco D'Souza, chief executive officer at US-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions, says the company draws the line only when relationships occur between people in a direct “reporting line”. “We have plenty of husbands and wives working for us and that's good.”
在美國上市的Cognizant Technology Solutions的首席執(zhí)行官弗朗西斯科·德蘇佐(Francisco D'Souza)表示,公司唯一不能容忍的是上下級之間的戀情。“我們有很多員工是夫妻,這很好。”
Office romances are to be expected in such a youthful industry. “If you work with a workforce so young – 80 per cent of our population is under 25 – that's something that's in the air,” says Pratik Kumar, executive vice-president of human resources at Wipro, India's third biggest software outsourcing company.
在這個年輕人集中的行業(yè),辦公室戀情是可以預(yù)期的。“如果一起工作的人都這么年輕——我們80%的人不到25歲——這種事就會很普遍。”印度第三大軟件外包公司W(wǎng)ipro的人力資源執(zhí)行副總裁帕拉提•庫瑪爾(Pratik Kumar)表示。
Many employees in the industry hail from small, conservative communities in India's vast hinterlands and feel liberated when they come to big cities such as Bangalore or Mumbai.
該行業(yè)的許多職員來自印度廣大內(nèi)陸地區(qū)保守的小地方,來到班加羅爾或孟買這樣的大城市,讓他們感覺像是得到了解放。
Wipro even has an internal matrimonial site where would-be suitors can seek partners among the workforce of 96,965. Wipro's gender balance roughly matches the sector average of 65 per cent male.
Wipro甚至設(shè)有一個提供婚介服務(wù)的內(nèi)部網(wǎng)站,想找對象的人可以通過這個部門在本公司的96965人中尋找伴侶。該公司的性別比例大致保持行業(yè)平均水平,即男性占65%。
One risk from such openness, of course, is emotional drama between employees. Mr Kumar says Wipro has an “ombudsman's process” for sorting out staff disputes that sometimes has to resolve romantic tussles.
當(dāng)然,這種開明做法存在一個風(fēng)險,即員工之間可能上演情感劇。庫瑪爾表示,Wipro有一個處理員工糾紛的“調(diào)查程序”,有時不得不解決情感糾紛。
“Do we get issues? Yes, we do. Sometimes these issues can appear very silly,” he says.
“我們遇到問題了嗎?是的。有時問題還十分愚蠢,”他表示。
The ISB study also cautions that Indian companies need to be mindful of potential problems such as sexual harassment – one issue that has given inter-office romance a bad name in the west.
印度商學(xué)院的調(diào)查還指出,印度公司需警惕一些潛在問題,如性騷擾——在西方,這個問題已給辦公室戀情招來壞名聲。
Indian legal guidelines on harassment require companies to maintain a “complaint cell” for women to report abuses. But the ISB finds that nearly a third of employees surveyed thought their company did not have such a cell or had not heard of one.
印度性騷擾法規(guī)要求企業(yè)成立“騷擾投訴處”,接待女性員工的投訴。但印度商學(xué)院發(fā)現(xiàn),近三分之一的受訪者認(rèn)為,自己所在的公司并沒有這種設(shè)置,或者自己從未聽說過。
Such dangers aside, Indian parents probably do not need to be alarmed. When it comes to tying the knot, it seems traditional concerns such as caste quickly return to the fore.
拋開這些隱患不談,印度的父母們或許無需擔(dān)憂。當(dāng)發(fā)展到談婚論嫁時,種姓等方面的傳統(tǒng)顧慮似乎很快又占了上風(fēng)。
Ms Tejaswani says: “I used to bore my mother talking about him [Mr Karthik]. So when the time came, it wasn't difficult at all convincing them. And since caste also was not an issue, his parents, too, agreed.”
泰賈斯瓦尼婭表示:“我過去常在我母親耳邊嘮叨卡蒂克的事情。因此當(dāng)時機(jī)成熟時,說服他們就一點(diǎn)都不難了。而既然種姓方面也不存在問題,他的父母也就同意了。”