放弃办公桌 到陌生人家里办公
It’s 13:30 and 28-year-old Mårten Pella’s smartphone starts pinging, a signal that it’s time for us to stop working around his living room table and instead start our workout routine together.
下午1点半,28岁的马腾·配拉(Mårten Pella)的智能手机响了起来,这表示我们不能继续围坐在他家客厅的桌子旁工作了,该锻炼身体了。
He flicks to a seven-minute exercise video on his laptop. A cartoon character wearing bright red shorts begins instructing us to do star-jumps, squats and sit-ups around his suburban 1950’s apartment, as we carefully avoid the hammock, vintage record player and giant pot plants.
他在自己的笔记本电脑上点开了一段7分钟的健身视频。于是,一个穿着亮红色短裤的卡通人物开始带领我们在这套建于1950年的郊区公寓里做跳跃运动、深蹲、仰卧起坐等各种动作。我们整个过程中都要小心翼翼,免得碰到房间里的吊床、古老唱片和巨型盆栽。
瑞典早期的Hoffice活动之一
Pella, a research assistant at Stockholm University, is part of the Hoffice movement, which invites workers — freelancers, entrepreneurs, or full-time employees who can do their jobs remotely — to work at each other’s homes to boost productivity and tackle social isolation.
配拉是斯德哥尔摩大学的一名研究助理,他也是Hoffice运动的一份子。这个运动邀请工作者——自由职业者、创业者或者可以远程办公的全职员工——到彼此家中办公,以便提升工作效率,避免与社会隔绝。
Those attending pop-up Hoffice events advertised on Facebook are typically asked to work silently in 45 minute blocks, before being encouraged to take short breaks together to exercise, meditate or simply chat over a coffee. In addition, each participant shares daily objectives with the rest of the group upon arrival, and is invited to report back on whether or not they have achieved them at the end of the day. The events are free.
这些新兴的Hoffice活动都会在Facebook上宣传,想要参与其中,通常需要安静地工作45分钟,然后简短地休息一下,期间可以一起锻炼身体,也可以喝杯咖啡、聊聊天。另外,每位参与者都要在开始工作前与其他人分享自己每天的目标,然后在一天的工作结束时汇报自己是否实现了目标。所有活动都不收取费用。
“Often when I am alone, I can work focused for a couple of hours but then [I am] very easily distracted. The help of others makes me so much more disciplined,” says Pella, who attends Hoffice events as both a guest and a host. Lunches mean networking and connecting with new contacts, he says. “People are coming from really different areas and have different professions so there can be really interesting discussions.”
"通常而言,当我独自一人时,可以集中精力工作两个小时,但之后就很容易分心。他人的帮助可以帮助我更加严守纪律。"配拉说,他分别以主人和客人的身份参加过Hoffice的活动。午饭时间可以建立人脉,认识新朋友。"大家来自不同的地区,有着不同的职业,所以可以展开有趣的讨论。"
How it began
如何开始
The Hoffice movement has grown quickly since it was founded in 2014 by Swedish psychologist Christofer Franzen, now 37. He had been giving lectures on the benefits of collective intelligence, but realised he was spending most of his own time working solo at his kitchen table or in coffee shops. He wanted to test more structured home co-working with friends in similar situations. At first the experiment operated simply by word of mouth.
自从2014年由现年37岁瑞典心理学家克里斯多夫·弗兰增(Christofer Franzen)发起以来,Hoffice运动已经实现了快速增长。他一直在讲授集体智慧的好处,但却发现自己多数时候都在自己家的餐桌或咖啡厅里独自办公。他希望与境况相同的朋友尝试更加结构化的居家联合办公。这起初只是一项口口相传的尝试。
Franzen says that holding events in houses and apartments create a unique atmosphere, because there’s a sense of community and desire to contribute. He’s looking for ways to expand the social value of Hoffice, by matching up members with relevant skills to share and even encouraging jobseekers to join its pop-up gatherings.
弗兰增表示,在家里举行活动可以营造独特的氛围,因为这样可以形成社区意识,还能增强为他人付出的意愿。他还希望通过其他方式来扩大Hoffice的社会价值,例如,可以将会员与相关技能进行匹配,以便分享甚至鼓励求职者加入这些活动。
A matter of trust
信任问题
There are no background checks on new Hoffice attendees or organisers, but that doesn’t work everywhere.
新的Hoffice参与者或组织者不必接受背景审查,但这种模式并不适用于所有地方。
“When we introduced the concept in India, for example, that became a big issue,” he says. “People were like ‘how can I trust that someone is not going to come to my home and rob me?’ Swedish people don’t really have those kind of fears.”
"例如,当我们把这个理念引入印度时,就碰到了大问题。"他说,"那里的人们都在想:'我怎么才能相信陌生人不会跑到我家里抢劫?'瑞典人并没有这种担忧。"
Security is one of the selling points championed by a cluster of fee-paying shared dining table platforms that are emerging in parallel with Hoffice’s growth around the world.
事实上,安全问题恰恰是许多收费共享餐桌平台的卖点之一。当Hoffice在全球各地快速增长时,这些平台也如雨后春笋般涌现。
London-based Spacehop, launched in January 2016, gives freelance professionals and small teams the chance to rent spots in strangers’ properties from around $10 a day. Meanwhile OfficeRiders has been offering similar guarantees for digital nomads (known as “riders”) in France since 2014. Both companies give homeowners an insurance policy that covers theft and damage and gives users the chance to rate their temporary workspaces.
伦敦的Spacehop创立于2016年1月,自由职业专业人士和小团队可以通过该公司在陌生人的房子里租用工位,每天的租金大约只有10美元左右。与此同时,Office Riders也从2014年开始在法国为数字游民提供类似的保障。这两家公司都为房主购买了保险,涵盖盗窃和财物损失,而用户也可以对这些临时办公空间打分。
“Introducing a financial incentive adds a layer of seriosity,” argues 27-year-old Joachim Wernersson, the founder of HeyWork, a newly-launched platform designed to monetise the home-based coworking concept for the first time in Sweden.
27岁的乔希姆·沃纳森(Joachim Wernersson)是HeyWork的创始人,这个新推出的平台希望率先在瑞典利用居家联合办公理念盈利。他说:"提供财务激励可以让人们更加认真地对待此事。"
“If there is a transaction involved, the hosts get a bit more serious about keeping the place clean, keeping it professional. From the guests’ perspective as well, once you've paid for something, you’re keen on making sure you're behaving properly,” says Wernersson.
"如果存在交易行为,房主就会更注重房屋整洁,也会表现得更加专业。从客人的角度看,一旦你为某个东西付费,往往也会尽可能确保自己的行为得体。"沃纳森说。
His current model charges guests a minimum of just $20 a week, in an effort to help burgeoning entrepreneurs. Office-based employees who leave their homes empty during the day are the target hosts, encouraged to consider the benefits of a side-income at a time when rents and house prices in Sweden are sky rocketing.
他目前的模式每周对客人的收费最低仅为20美元,希望能借此帮助刚刚起步的创业者。白天不在家的办公室职员成为了房东的理想人选,沃纳森会鼓励他们在瑞典房价和租金高企的当下考虑通过这种方式赚一点外快。
Rising popularity
更受欢迎
Stockholm’s Hoffice Facebook group now has almost 1,800 members, in a capital of 1 million people. Events have taken place in locations ranging from luxury waterside homes to 20-square-metre-student apartments. Smaller offshoots are also cropping up in most of the Scandinavian country’s major urban areas. Sweden, where more than half of all businesses are sole traders, is clearly a ripe location for such gatherings.
Facebook上的斯德哥尔摩Hoffice小组目前约有1,800名会员,而该市的总人口约为100万。活动地点多种多样,有湖边豪宅,也有20平方米的学生宿舍。这个斯堪的纳维亚国家的其他大城市也都涌现了一些规模较小的分支机构。瑞典有超过半数企业都是个体经营者,所以这里显然很适合进行居家联合办公。
“It’s also a matter of the low-level hierarchy that exists in Sweden and a high level of trust from managers when it comes to working flexibly,” says Lena Lid Falkman, a researcher at Stockholm School of Economics who examines how technology is shifting our work patterns.
"瑞典的等级制度不太严格,管理者在弹性工作问题上也对员工非常信任。"斯德哥尔摩经济学院研究员雷纳·里德·法尔克曼(Lena Lid Falkman)说,他对科技如何改变我们的工作状态展开了研究。
The movement has nevertheless spread to dozens of other countries, with the largest attendance elsewhere in start-up hubs Sao Paulo and Toronto.
但这项运动也扩散到其他数十个国家,其中,圣保罗和多伦多这两个创业中心吸引了最多的参与者。
While Wernersson is unwilling to share how many paying customers have so far signed up for his new Sweden-based platform HeyWork, Spacehop reports signing up 300 hosts across the UK in its first year, with over 2500 “hoppers” using the service. Office Riders now has 1,500 listed spaces on its platform, and more than 10,000 “riders”.
虽然沃纳森不愿透露目前有多少客户注册了他在瑞典新搭建的HeyWork平台,但Spacehop成立第一年就在英国吸引了300位房东,并有2,500多用户使用这项服务。Office Riders平台目前可供使用的住宅达到1,500套,用户超过1万人。
Is it effective?
效果如何?
A range of studies support Franzen’s argument that people can achieve more when they work for structured short periods, but there is currently very little concrete research on whether the home co-working movement could facilitate longer-term efficiency or financial gains for those taking part.
很多研究都支持了弗兰增的观点:把工作时间分割成一个个较短的时段可以提高效率,但关于居家联合办公运动是否能够提升参与者的长期效率或财务收入,目前只有为数不多的具体研究。
However, growing numbers of academics are keen to investigate its potential amid the global boom in the ‘gig’ and sharing economies.
然而,随着"零工"经济和共享经济在全球日益繁荣,越来越多的专业学者有意调查其背后的潜力。
“We’re trying to figure out how this affects things like leadership, creativity, productivity and well-being,” Falkman says. “But I am not surprised that we are looking for more creative and comfortable workplaces — that’s part of being entrepreneurial.”
"我们试图搞清楚这种方式如何影响领导力、创造力、生产力和幸福感。"法尔克曼说,"但人们寻找更有创意、更加舒适的工作场所并不出乎我的意料——这也是企业家精神的一部分。"