好英语网在家工作对职业发展有哪些坏处？
When Ian Wright started working from his home in London last November, he thought he had the ideal setup.
当伊恩·怀特（Ian Wright）去年11月开始在伦敦的家里办公时，他以为自己找到了理想的模式。
He could spend time with his two-month-old baby while he worked for his brand-new company, British Business Energy, which helps companies compare rates for electric and gas suppliers. From a two-bedroom home in the borough of Greenwich, he set up at his dining room table with big plans to master being an at-home dad and business owner.
这样一来，他既能陪在两个月的孩子身旁，还可以为新成立的British Business Energy公司工作，那是一家专门帮助企业客户对比电力和煤气供应商费用的公司。他在格林尼治区有一套两居室的房子，他在里面设置了一张餐桌，于是就开始设想把奶爸和老板两个角色集于一身的美好生活。
None of it worked. “There was a moment right at the start where hopes and dreams end and reality sets in,” Wright says. “I quickly came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t working.”
但实际上，他最终一个角色都没能扮演好。"刚一开始，我就发现梦想破碎，必须面对现实。"怀特说，"我很快明白，这种方法根本行不通。"
Two months later he tried putting the baby in full-time childcare. He returned to the dining room table, certain this time it would work. House repairs, chores, the postman, all of it, just seemed to get in the way. “Those little things would just break up my flow,” Wright says. “You get to the end of the day, and you scratch your head and wonder, where did all the time go?”
两个月后，他试着把孩子送到全天制的托儿所，而他本人则重新回到餐桌旁工作，以为这样就万事大吉了。然而，房子维修、日常琐事和快递信件却总会不期而至，分散他的精力。"这些琐事总会干扰我的工作。"怀特说，"等到一天过完时，我会抓耳挠腮地问自己：时间都去哪儿了？"
居家办公失败的一大原因在于：会有太多的事情分散你的精力
A month later, Wright realised he just couldn’t be productive working from home. He rented a desk at a co-working space near the London Bridge, and finally, he was cranking away.
一个月后，怀特明白他无法在家里获得足够的生产力。于是，他在伦敦桥附近的联合办公场所里租了一张桌子。这一次，他终于回到正轨。
Working from home has its benefits, with research showing that it generally increases happiness and productivity. But a new study also shows that you ought to be careful before making the break with your office.
居家办公的确有好处，研究显示，这种模式普遍能够提升幸福感和生产力。但一项最新研究也表明，人们在离开办公室，回到家里工作之前，应该三思而行。
First, the training
首先接受培训
Flexible schedules are likely to become far more commonplace in the coming years; already some companies have adopted “hot-desking” providing fewer desks than there are employees in an effort to save money and encourage remote work days. Laws in the UK allow many workers to ask for more flex time, and companies across the globe are using work-at-home policies as a way to recruit.
灵活工作制可能会在未来几年越发普遍。已经有一些公司采用了"办公桌轮用制"（hot-desking），通过提供少于员工总数的办公桌来节省资金，同时鼓励员工远程办公。英国的法律允许很多职场人士向雇主要求更灵活的工作安排，而世界各地的企业也在把居家办公政策作为一种招聘手段。
But the problems with working from home begin right from the start. That’s because we think everybody can do all aspects of their job away from the office.
但居家办公的问题从一开始就会暴露出来。这是因为我们想当然地认为所有人都可以在远离办公室的地方处理所有的工作。
That’s what Esther Canonico found in a recently published study of 514 workers. Canonico, a fellow with the London School of Economics Department of Management, says the at-home workers in her study didn’t receive any training or guidance in how to pull off the transition. It added up since nearly half of the 514 people she studied either worked from home full-time or had some flexibility in their schedules.
埃斯达·卡诺尼考（Esther Canonico）最近对514名职场人士展开的研究就得出了这样的结论。来自伦敦经济学院管理系的卡诺尼考在她的研究中表示，在家里工作的人并没有接受任何培训和指导来帮助他们适应这种转变。总体来看，在她研究的514名职场人士中，有将近一半要么全职在家办公，要么享受一定的工作弹性。
If you’ve done it yourself, you know that working from home is not as simple as opening your laptop and getting down to business. Training—something some of us loathe and others of us can’t get enough of—can make the difference between failure and success away from the office.
如果你有过这种经历，你肯定知道居家办公并不是简单地打开笔记本就可以开始工作了。虽然褒贬不一，但培训在其中发挥了至关重要的作用，甚至会影响居家办公的成败。
“There is simply not enough active managing of the procedure of working from home,” Canonico said. “What happens when you don’t actively manage the practice, is that it gets out of hand.”
"在家工作时，根本没有对流程展开积极主动的管理。"卡诺尼考说，"如果你没有主动进行管理，事情就会失去控制。"
So what, exactly, would that sort of management look like in our lives? Well, for starters, we’d likely be told we need a dedicated office or workspace, with boundaries for our families and other interruptions. That’s easer said than done. (Just ask professor Robert E Kelly, the “BBC dad,” who became an Internet meme after his young children burst into the room during a live TV interview.)
那么，究竟应该如何管理呢？首先，有人可能会说，需要一间专用的办公室或一片专用的办公空间，以便与家人和其他干扰因素隔绝开来。但说起来容易，做起来难。（问问"BBC老爸"罗伯特·凯利（Robert E Kelly）教授就知道了，他的孩子最近在他接受电视直播采访时闯进房间，导致他在网上火了起来。）
Then there are the everyday pitfalls that can lead to serious career damage or stagnation, Canonico said. For instance, if you aren’t in the office and your presence isn’t felt, you’re likely to miss out on new projects and opportunites as they’re doled out to someone the boss sees every day.
卡诺尼考表示，此外还有很多日常陷阱可能对你的职业构成严重破坏，或者导致你的职业停滞不前。例如，如果你不在办公室，而且没有人感到你的存在，那么当出现新项目或新机会时，你就有可能被忽略，因为这往往会分配给那些每天都能被老板看见的人。
In fact, new research from the University of Arizona shows 40% of employees who were working from home feel disconnected from the company’s strategic direction and one-third feel like they don’t get support from bosses, according to Joe Carella, assistant dean of executive education at University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management.
事实上，亚利桑那大学埃勒管理学院经理人教育学院副院长乔·卡雷拉（Joe Carella）表示，该校最近的一项研究显示，40%的居家办公者都感觉与公司的战略方向脱节，三分之一的受访者认为自己没有获得老板的支持。
“People working from home become professionally and personally isolated,” Canonico says. “They say ‘out of sight, out of mind’.”
"无论从职业还是个人角度来看，在家办公的人都会产生疏离感。"卡诺尼考说，"他们说，'看不见就想不到。'"
Small steps toward flex
逐步适应
But, you might be thinking, working from home is the holy grail of office life—no required face time, performance judged by results not presence in the office, and no two-hour-a-day commute.
但你或许会想，在家办公是办公室生活中的圣杯——不用花时间跟人见面，也没有绩效考核，更不用每天在上下班路上浪费两个小时。
Mitigating the downsides that come with remote work is key. That’s what Tim Campbell has learned as both a part-time at-home employee of Alexander Mann Solutions, a global outsourcing and consultancy firm.
如何减轻远程办公的缺陷是关键所在。这正是蒂姆·坎贝尔（Tim Campbell）在国际外包和咨询公司Alexander Mann Solutions从事居家兼职工作时学到的技能。
Campbell, who was the 2005 winner of the BBC One show The Apprentice in the UK, has helped advise other businesses during a transition into flexible schedules and was part of his own company’s move two years ago to allow at-home workers. Now, 10% of the firm’s 3,500 employees work from home. It doesn’t always go smoothly.
作为BBC One电视节目《飞黄腾达》（The Apprentice）2005年的冠军，坎贝尔已经为很多准备采取弹性工作制的公司提供了帮助，而且在两年前参与了自己公司的居家办公转型。现在，该公司的3,500名员工约有10%都在家里工作。但过程并非总是一帆风顺。
“We talk about how much more productive workers can be, but we ignore the steps it takes to get there,” Campbell says.
"我们总是说员工可以提升多少生产力，但却忽视了达到这一目标所需经历的过程。"坎贝尔说。
Instead, we ought to think of it like any new venture, with an embedding process. Work from home for two or three days a week at first, before going full-time away from the office. Continually analyse if you’re as productive as you were previously, before the bosses make the determination for you and revoke the privilege—or, worse, write you off as lacking potential.
他认为，我们应该像一家新公司一样来思考这件事情，制定一套专门的程序。首先应该尝试每天在家工作两三天，然后再全职在家办公。应该持续分析你的生产力是否像以前一样高，然后由老板作出判断，并赋予你这种特权——但你的老板也有可能认为你缺乏在家办公的潜力。
Find ways to stay relevant in the office. At Alexander Mann, Campbell says that’s done with meetings held by video conferencing, making sure even staffers working at home have regular face time with the bosses. The company also uses a chat service called Yammer that means you’re never far from a conversation with the higher-ups. And it helps to stop by the office now and again and show up in person for the big staff meetings, rather than always be the disconnected voice on the staticky speakerphone.
还要寻找与办公室保持联系的方法。坎贝尔表示，Alexander Mann会通过视频会议来达到这一目的，确保在家工作的人也能定期与老板见面。该公司还会使用一款名为Yammer的服务，以免员工没有机会跟上级沟通。偶尔去趟办公室，或者出席全体员工会议，同样也很有帮助，而不要总是通过麦克风与他人展开语音沟通。
“The assumption for many people is that when they start working from home they’ll just morph into the same person they were at the office, just in a different environment,” Campbell said. “That can happen, but only with a lot of work to get you there.”
"很多人会想当然地认为，当他们居家工作时，自然就会变成跟在办公室里那个自己完全一样的人，只是换了一个环境而已。"坎贝尔说，"这的确可以实现，但需要采取很多措施才行。"
When it doesn’t work
正确态度
Combining home and office didn’t work for Pedro Caseiro, who tried working out of his London flat after co-founding a company called Obby last year. Looking to save money, he and his partners decided to work from home while developing an app that helps people find classes in things like pottery, cooking, and photography.
对佩德罗·卡塞洛（Pedro Caseiro）来说，把家庭和办公室融为一体似乎难以奏效，他在去年参与创办了一家名叫Obby的公司后，就试图在伦敦的家里工作。为了省钱，他和创业伙伴决定在家里开发一款帮助人们寻找陶瓷制作、烹饪和摄影课程的应用。
Caseiro quickly realised that interruptions, like a visit from the plumber or cooking lunch, added up to too many distractions.
卡塞洛很快发现，水管工或做午饭等干扰因素非常牵扯精力。
“It’s all these micro things that take time out of your day in a way that wouldn’t happen if you were in an office,” Caseiro says. In June the company committed to an office space.
"这些生活琐事都需要抽时间来处理，但在办公室里就不会发生这种事情。"卡塞洛说。于是，该公司在6月搬进了一间传统办公室。
Caseiro isn’t against working from home, though. In his line of work, Caseiro says many talented web developers expect a flexible, at-home schedule. His main developer, in fact, lives near the beach in sunny southern Portugal, and yet still nails all of his deadlines.
但卡塞洛并不抵触居家办公。卡塞洛表示，他所在的行业里，有很多有才华的网络开发者都希望获得灵活的居家办公室待遇。事实上，他的主力开发人员就住在葡萄牙南部一片阳光明媚的海滩旁，但却总能按时完成工作。
“I look at my own productivity and know I’m better off working out of a traditional office,” Caseiro says. “But I know I also have to be flexible in hiring. I try to look for whether people can do the tasks we need them to do and not think about where they’re going to do them from.”
"我研究了自己的办公效果后发现，我最好还是在传统办公室里工作。"卡塞洛说，"但我知道我在招聘时必须保持灵活。我主要看重他们能否完成我们的任务，而不在乎他们在哪里办公。"