好英语网幸福的员工都能带来哪些好处
In 2012, John de Koning’s company did something surprising: they decided their number one priority would be the happiness of their staff.
2012年，约翰·德康宁（John de Koning）的公司干了一件出人意料的事情：他们决定把取悦员工当做头等大事。
His employer, IT firm Incentro, based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, once operated as a traditional online services provider, with a top-down hierarchy of bosses and employees. But after a market downturn between 2002 and 2005, the management rebooted to become less flashy but more fun; a place where talented, ambitious young professionals would want to work.
他的雇主是总部位于荷兰乌特勒支（Utrecht）的 IT 公司 Incentro，这家公司曾经是一家传统的网络服务提供商，采用自上而下的等级结构。但经历了2002至2005年的市场低迷后，管理层调整了方向，少了些华而不实，多了些幸福快乐，并因此吸引了大批才华横溢、野心勃勃的年轻专业人士为之效力。
Now, all staff are equal and all information about the business is shared. Instead of the usual pyramid structure, people work in independently functioning ‘cells’ – groups of 60 or fewer. As well as organising their own work, they take part in company-wide decisions and even set their own salary. Rather than senior management dictating pay rises, each ‘cell’ or team decides whether they are happy to share salary information. If so, they make a collective decision on what they should earn – based on everyone knowing the full financial picture of the company.
现在，所有员工都是平等的，所有信息都是共享的。他们放弃了常见的金字塔结构，而是设计了许多独立发挥功能的"细胞"（cell）——也就是由60人或更少的人组成的一个个团队。除了负责自己的工作外，他们还会参与公司层面的决策，甚至决定自己的工资。加薪与否不再由高管决定，而是每个"细胞"或团队来决定他们是否乐于分享薪酬信息。倘若愿意分享，他们便可共同决定自己应得的薪酬——原因是所有人都知道公司的整体财务状况。
“We decided to introduce just one key performance indicator, and that’s employee happiness,” says de Koning, managing director of Incentro Marketing Technology. By doing so, staff numbers have grown from 40 in 2008 to more than 300 today across four countries, he says.
"我们决定只使用一项关键绩效指标，那就是员工幸福感。"身为Incentro营销科技公司总经理的德康宁说。他表示，通过这种方式，该公司的员工人数从2008年的40人增加到如今的300人，而且遍布4个国家。
While structural and organisational changes may not get the pulse racing compared to gourmet lunches or gaming consoles, Incentro’s approach to fostering staff contentment is shared by a growing number of companies – so much so that there’s a burgeoning new niche of happiness-at-work consultants offering to inject joy into the workplace with similar advice.
虽然结构和组织层面的变化或许不像美味的午餐或游戏机那么激动人心，但Incentro这种提升员工满意度的做法却得到越来越多的公司认同——甚至因此出现了一批小众职场幸福顾问，专门通过类似的建议帮助企业为职场注入幸福。
So is there an outbreak of idealism in the boardroom? Not quite. Research suggests that smiling faces in the office are also good for the company’s bottom line.
会议室里是否会因此而爆发理想主义思潮？未必。研究表明，办公室里的快乐氛围也有利于公司的盈利。
Objective benefits
客观利益
There are many benefits to putting happiness at the centre of business and policy decisions, says economist Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a professor at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School. He points to a 2014 study, which suggests that raising people’s happiness makes them more productive by between 7% and 12%.
牛津大学赛德商学院（Said Business School）教授简-伊曼纽尔·德内夫（Jan-Emmanuel De Neve）表示，把员工幸福置于商业和政策决策的核心位置，的确有很多好处。他指出，2014年的一份研究表明，提升员工的幸福感可以把他们的生产力提升7%到12%。
In a separate study, researchers took Fortune’s annual list of ‘Best Companies to Work For’ and compared it over time with how peer companies performed on the stock market. They found that the top best-to-work-for firms outperformed the others, and also that investors undervalued the intangibles of employee well-being.
在另外一份研究中，研究人员对《财富》（Fortune）杂志一年一度的"最佳雇主"榜单进行研究，将这些公司与同类企业的长期股市表现进行对比。他们发现，最佳雇主的股价表现好于其他企业，而投资者也低估了员工幸福这种无形资产的价值。
It’s an important piece of research, says De Neve, because it shows that the potential cost of raising well-being is more than matched by productivity and increased performance. Consultancies offering to perk up the mood in the workplace are targeting a potentially large market. In his work for the United Nations’ latest World Happiness Report De Neve found that fewer than 20% of people worldwide were actively engaged with their job and 20% were actively disengaged.
德内夫表示，这是一项重要研究，因为这表明，提升幸福感的潜在成本完全可用生产力和绩效的提升来覆盖，甚至绰绰有余。号称能够改善职场情绪的咨询师都瞄准了这个可能拥有巨大潜力的市场。最近，德内夫为联合国编制最新版《全球幸福报告》（World Happiness Report）时发现，全世界只有不到20%的人积极融入自己的工作，还有20%的人积极脱离工作。
Active engagement is more than mere satisfaction in a job, or at having a job in the first place, he explains – it is “being positively absorbed by the work you’re doing, identifying with and promoting the mission of the company you’re working for.”
他解释道，积极融入不仅仅是对工作满意，或者对拥有一份工作感到满足——而是"被你所从事的工作深深吸引，并且认同和发扬公司的使命。"
One 2016 UK study tracked tens of thousands of people who recorded their sense of well-being at different times of day on a smartphone app, ranking 39 activities in terms of happiness levels. Of the 39, paid work ranked second from bottom – just above being sick in bed.
2016年在英国进行的一项调查，通过一款智能手机应用对数万人全天不同时段的幸福感受进行了追踪，并对39种活动的幸福程度进行了排名。在这39种活动中，有偿工作排名倒数第二——仅高于卧病在床。
So what’s making people so melancholy? Listening to would-be career-switchers, and looking at other studies, it’s about a lack of purpose and meaning in work and a sense that it’s impinging too much on other aspects of life.
人们为何如此抑郁？听听那些想要换工作的人怎么说，再看看其他的研究，就会发现，原因在于工作中缺乏目标和意义，而且感觉工作与生活的其他方面存在过大的冲突。
When work is a grind
当工作成为一种折磨
More than 1,000 discontented people have spent £2,000 ($2,570) each to join 12-week courses run by Escape the City, a training and recruitment consultancy based in London and New York. “The courses are designed to help people get unstuck or to start a business,” says co-founder Dominic Jackman.
有1,000多个心怀不满的人每人花了2,000英镑（2,570美元），加入了由Escape the City开设的为期12周的课程。这是一家在伦敦和纽约都设有分支机构的培训和招聘咨询公司。"这些课程是为了帮助人们摆脱泥潭，或者创办公司。"该公司联合创始人多米尼克·杰克曼（Dominic Jackman）说。
Typically, participants are aged 27 to 35, the majority are female and employed in corporate roles where they feel their role lacks purpose, says Jackman. Many joined large corporates through grad schemes.
杰克曼表示，参与者的年龄普遍在27至35岁之间，以女性为主，她们在公司担任的职位令其感觉没有目标。很多人都是通过研究生计划进入大公司的。
“You work very, very hard. You get paid well. But the notion of a job that makes you feel alive takes a backseat,” he says. Increased life expectancy and higher retirement age mean people’s attitude to work is changing. “You’re going to be working for a long time so let’s enjoy our time at work and make an impact,” says Jackman.
"你工作很努力，收入也很高。但如果你认为自己是为了工作而活着，那就会适得其反。"他说。预期寿命的延长和退休年龄的推迟意味着人们对工作的态度正在发生变化。"你需要工作很长时间，所以应该好好享受工作时间，做出成绩。"杰克曼说。
Portfolio freelance careers, remote working as a digital nomad, creating your own start-up and an “impact career” with a purpose-before-profit company are the four most sought-after new paths for his clients, he says. “It’s about making a difference to society, having a purpose and making it more sustainable. People want to work for a company that’s making things better for the world.”
他表示，组合式的自由职业、以数字移民的身份远程工作、创办自己的公司、借助"先目标，后盈利"的公司创造一份"有影响的职业"，是他的客户最渴望的4种新路径。"关键是对社会产生影响，做事有目标，还要提升可持续性。人们都想效力于一家能够造福世界的公司。"
But if changing career tracks isn’t an option, what do people think would brighten their daily grind?
但如果改变职业轨迹不是个好选择，还有什么方法让人们认为可以让自己每天的辛苦劳作变得更加快乐？
Positivity pioneers
开创性想法
Wages are far less important to happiness at work than issues related to work-life balance and having colleagues’ support and social capital in the workplace, according to De Neve’s analysis of European data. Having variety in the job, learning on the job and having a sense of autonomy and control over what you are doing were also valued, he says.
德内夫对欧洲的数据进行分析后发现，工资对职场幸福的影响程度，远低于工作与生活之间的平衡、同事的支持、职场社会资本等因素。他表示，人们也很重视工作的多样性、在工作中学习的知识以及自由掌控自己工作的感受。
So what do consultancies propose? For Netherlands-based consultancy Corporate Rebels, which helped Incentro fine-tune their ideas, the approach stems from co-founders Pim de Moree and Joost Minnaar stepping out of corporate life to travel the world collecting pioneering ideas on how to foster a happy workplace.
咨询师都有哪些建议？荷兰咨询公司Corporate Rebels帮助Incentro改变了想法，他们之所以能够形成自己的方法，是因为其联合创始人皮姆·得莫利（Pim de Moree）和乔斯特·米纳尔（Joost Minnaar）辞职后，前往世界各地收集如何营造幸福职场的开创性想法。
De Moree tells his clients the key to happiness “involves moving from profit to purpose, from hierarchy to a network of teams, from leaders who tell people what to do, to leaders who ask how they can best support [their team], from rules to freedom, from secrecy to transparency.”
得莫利告诉他的客户，幸福的关键是"从赚钱转向目标，从等级制度转向团队网络，从发号施令的领导者变成主动为团队提供最佳支持的领导者，从规则转向自由，从保密转向透明。"
From what they have learned from business leaders and entrepreneurs who have put employee happiness centre stage, Corporate Rebels suggest open-book management – where everyone knows the financial and operational details of where they work. Another is results-based working, where it doesn’t matter how many hours you work, as long as you get the right result.
通过针对那些把员工幸福放在核心位置的企业领导和创业者展开的研究，Corporate Rebels 建议采取开放式管理模式——让所有人都能了解公司的财务和运营细节。此外还可以采用结果导向的工作模式：只要能够完成任务，具体花费多长时间都无所谓。
Their stories underpin the data referred to by De Neve about a clear link between staff well-being and financial results.
他们的故事也支撑了德内夫提到的一组数据：这组数据显示，员工的幸福感和公司的财务业绩之间存在明确的联系。
“The level of well-being of employees ought to be measured systematically and put on page one of the annual shareholders’ report,” he says. “It would send a strong signal about how a company is doing, and how it will be doing in the future.
"应该系统地评估员工幸福感，然后放在年度股东报告的第一页。"他说，"这会释放出一个强烈的信号，展示公司正在怎么做，今后将会怎么做。"
“There’s a philosophical argument about how looking after staff well-being is the right thing to do, but there are also huge objective benefits.”
"有一种哲学论证认为，关注员工幸福是正确的事情，但这其中也蕴含着巨大的客观利益。"