好英语网所谓的弹性工作根本不存在
We didn’t get the flying cars or the self-lacing shoes. But we did get the work world of the future – you know, the one where the internet allows us to work anytime, anywhere, resulting in the death of the 9-to-5 life.
我们没有飞行汽车，也没有自动系带鞋，但却可以享受未来世界的工作氛围——众所周知，只要有互联网，便可随时随地工作，而不必再遵守朝九晚五的无聊节奏。
Oh, wait. As more and more companies promise flexibility, the reality, it turns out, is pretty far from the culture we dreamed of.
别着急下结论。尽管越来越多公司承诺弹性工作制，但实际上，这距离我们梦寐以求的那种职场文化还是相去甚远。
For almost all of us, flexible work really means working a few hours each side of the core workday of 09:00 and 17:00. And, if you think about it, that makes sense, because many businesses still run within those core hours when markets are open, banks process deposits and payments and daylight makes it easier for tradespeople to do their jobs, for example.
几乎对所有人来说，弹性工作的真实含义是：每个工作日都要在朝九晚五之间安排几个小时的工作。简单思考便可明白其中的道理，毕竟很多企业仍然要在这段时间内上班，例如，市场在此时开放、银行在此时处理存款和支付业务，而白天的日照也可以方便商人们开展各种工作。
But while digital technology has enabled a very small degree of flexibility around the regular working day for some, there have been unseen and sometimes unsettling repercussions for employees and employers. For instance, experts say that always emailing your staff and colleagues, even though they sit a metre from you, has had a hidden, but very real impact on morale and trust.
然而，虽然数字科技使得一部分人得以在常规的工作时段内享受到一定程度的弹性，但无论是雇主还是雇员，都有可能面临隐形甚至令人不安的负面影响。例如，尽管同事就坐在距离你一米远的地方，你可能也总是喜欢通过电子邮件与之沟通。专家表示，这类行为会对员工士气和彼此之间的信任产生实质性影响。
That, in turn, has made truly flexible work nearly impossible for most of us.“There can be a dark side of innovation, and unintended consequences of some organisational innovations,” says Almudena Cañibano, lecturer in human resource management at ESCP Europe, a business school in Madrid, Spain.
这导致多数人几乎都不可能享受真正的弹性工作。“这会对创新产生负面影响，并对一些组织的创新产生意料之外的影响。”阿尔穆德纳·卡尼巴诺(Almudena Cañibano)说，他在西班牙马德里的ESCP Europe商学院担任人力资源管理讲师。
Our ability to trust each other has not advanced in parallel with the technology we have created. And therein lies one of the real reasons flexible work is little more than a catch phrase. No matter how much a work rock star you might be, your manager does not trust you. Your colleagues do not trust your manager. And, truth be told, you probably don’t trust most of your colleagues or your boss, either.
我们对彼此的信任能力与我们所创造的科技并没有实现共同进步。这也是弹性工作只能流于口号的重要原因之一。无论你工作多么努力，你的老板都不信任你。你的同事也不信任你的老板。而且说实话，你恐怕也不信任你的多数同事和你的老板。
Trust and the digital age
相互信任与数字时代
For Rachel Botsman, a visiting economics lecturer at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, it’s simple: “Institutional trust isn’t designed for the digital age.”
在牛津大学赛德商学院的经济学访问讲师蕾切尔·波兹曼(Botsman)看来，背后的原因非常简单：“制度信任并不是为数字时代设计的。”
That’s also the case for the trust people have towards colleagues, within organisations. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, we’re also less able to understand or make room to consider each person as, well, a person.
同一组织内的同事在建立信任的过程中也会面临这种问题。我们越来越难以相互理解，甚至难以将对方当做人来看待——这一点似乎并不奇怪。
"The digital age… has resulted in an ‘assault on empathy’, that makes us less able to appreciate the situation of another person,” writes Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“数字时代……‘冲击了同理心’，导致我们难以感受他人所处的环境。”麻省理工学院科技和自我项目主任谢里·特克(Sherry Turkle)说。
In other words, the propensity for email, texting and quick-type apps has led us to forget some of our people skills, including distinguishing the nuances of language and meaning, fostering of a feeling of belonging among groups of people, and knowing our bosses and colleagues well enough to have confidence that others will pull their weight. That, in turn, has diminished implicit and earned trust among the people we work with.
换句话说，由于偏爱电子邮件、短信和快速输入应用，导致我们忘记了一些为人处世的能力，包括：区分语言沟通中的细微差别；设身处地为他人着想；充分了解老板和同事，相信他们能够认真负责地完成工作。这甚至破坏了我们与同事之间已经建立起来的信任。
That lack of trust brings about fear, which goes a long way to explaining why we put in face time, even when we probably don’t need to in order to do our work well. It also can explains why we feel we’ve got to have our “butt in the seat” even if our work could truly be done from the corner café or the back garden.
缺乏信任会产生恐惧，这可以解释我们为什么在不必见面沟通也可以把工作做好的情况下，依然要面对面地交谈。这同样可以解释我们为什么明明可以在咖啡厅或公园里完成工作，却依然要坐在工位上。
Mother, may I?
妈妈，我可以吗？
Phyllis Moen, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota in the US, calls this the ‘mother, may I’ problem. It’s when we feel fearful of asking our managers if we can work from home or work altered hours if, say, we need to help a relative or attend a series of medical appointments or simply want to work during hours we’re feeling more productive or efficient.
美国明尼苏达大学社会学教授菲利斯·摩恩(Phyllis Moen)将此称作“‘妈妈，我可以吗’问题。例如，当我们需要在家里为亲人提供帮助，或者去医院看病，甚至仅仅希望在自己效率更高的时候工作时，却很害怕询问老板，我们是否可以在家里工作，或者改变工作时间。”
Some workplace psychologists take it a step further, saying that modern technology is a way for employers to constantly keep surveillance over their staff. In turn, people are increasingly suffering from the impacts of feeling watched, even when they are allowed to work remotely. The Future Work Centre in London released findings earlier this year that showed the emotional reactions we have to constantly being connected to our work causes “a toxic source of stress.”
一些职场心理学家甚至认为，现代科技可以帮助雇主随时监视员工。导致人们因为感觉被老板监视而压力增大，即便是在获准远程工作时也不例外。伦敦未来工作中心(Future Work Centre)今年早些时候发布的一项研究显示，由于人们不得不随时与工作建立联系，导致他们产生了一些情绪反应，进而形成了 “有害的压力源”。
As a result, we often start thinking up more ‘creative’ ways of excusing ourselves to create flexibility.
因此，我们经常会考虑通过更有“创意”的方式来给自己找借口，以便创造弹性。
What next
日后发展
There’s also the worry that flexible work options may actually get more limited as automation and advances in information technology now threaten many traditional white-collar jobs, such as accounting and law. And that’s led to a feeling of insecurity that keeps people in their seats, playing out face time for the boss, and avoiding flexible options when they are available.
还有人担心弹性工作将变得越来越少，因为自动化和信息技术的进步已经对会计和法律等很多传统白领工作形成了威胁。这会引发不安全感，导致人们坐在座位上不愿离开，尽可能与老板见面，甚至在明明可以享受弹性工作时主动放弃。
One report from the World Economic Forum examines how, just as technology made manufacturing largely automated, now white-collar jobs will be automated (for example, when selling a house, the seller will fill in all the required information for an 'online solicitor').
在科技大幅提升制造业自动化水平的当下，世界经济论坛的一项报告对白领职位的自动化程度展开了研究。(例如，当有人要出售房产时，卖家可以向“在线律师”提交各种信息。)
As a result of job insecurity, even when flexible work options are offered in a workplace, employees do not always take them up. Being present it seems in the workplace, seems the most secure option for most.
由于没有职业安全感，即便可以在职场中享受弹性工作，员工也未必都会充分加以利用。对多数人来说，来到办公室工作似乎是最安全的选择。
But, that could be counterproductive for employers. The more control that we have over our time – of when and where we work – the more job satisfaction increases, says Moen. The University of Warwick in the UK found that being happy at work makes people, on average, 12% more productive. In the paper, the researchers found that happier workers use the time they have more effectively, increasing the pace at which people work without sacrificing quality.
但对雇主而言，这却有可能适得其反。摩恩表示，对自己的工作时间和工作地点的掌控力越强，工作满意度就越高。英国华威大学发现，平均而言，在工作中感到快乐可以将效率提升12%。该论文的研究人员发现，幸福感较强的员工在时间利用方面的效率也更高，从而在不牺牲质量的情况下加快工作进度。
In reality, for some of us, the flexibility of a few hours outside of core hours actually turns out to be enough to improve quality of life.
事实上，对我们中的一些人来说，能在核心工作时段之外获得几小时的弹性工作时间，甚至足以改善我们的生活质量。
In Spain, Iberdrola, one of the country’s largest utilities companies, decided a few years ago to allow its employees to choose working 08:00 to 15:00 with no lunch break – a major change in a country where most people work 09:00 to 19:00 with a two-hour lunch break. The company reported employee satisfaction levels increased as a result and lower turnover (90% of the workforce has been with the company for more than five years).
作为西班牙最大的公用事业公司之一，Iberdrola几年前就允许员工从8:00一直工作到15:00，中间没有午餐休息时间——这与该国的普遍情况差异很大，那里的多数人都从09:00工作到19:00，中间有2个小时的午餐休息时间。但Iberdrola发现，该公司的员工满意度因此有所提升，离职率也有所下降(超过90%的员工在该公司的任职时间都超过5年)。
“It’s said that to understand something you should try to change it. We are trying to redesign working conditions, giving employees greater flexibility and control over their time with more supportive supervisors,” says Moen.
“有一种说法认为，想要理解某件事情，就应该尝试改变它。我们正在尝试重新设计工作环境，为员工提供更大的弹性，让他们能够在获得主管更多支持的情况下掌控自己的时间。”摩恩说。
But, maybe like flying cars in the film Back to the Future, truly flexible work wasn’t ever really going to happen.
但或许就像电影《回到未来》中的飞行汽车一样，真正的弹性工作制永远都无法实现。