文章來源：《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》Mar 27th 2023 期 Business 欄目?Time?management

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The words “flexible schedule” have an attractive ring to them. They conjure up a post-pandemic workplace full of motivated workers, organising their time in the most productive and family-friendly way, and of enlightened bosses, attracting and retaining talented employees. But flexibility is in the eye of the beholder. Its appeal can vary depending on the type of job someone is in, and on whose interests are being served.

“彈性工作時(shí)間”這個(gè)詞對(duì)他們來說很有吸引力。他們想象出疫情后的工作場(chǎng)所充滿了積極的員工以及開明的老板，員工們?cè)谝宰罡挥谐尚Ш妥钣欣诩彝サ姆绞桨才潘麄兊臅r(shí)間，老板們則在吸引和留住有才華的員工。但“彈性”取決于旁觀者的看法。它的吸引力可能因某人所從事的工作類型以及為誰的利益服務(wù)而有所不同。

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If you are a blue-collar worker in an industry that operates in shifts, for example, flexibility sounds less like nirvana and more like chaos. For low-wage employees in restaurants and call centres, predictability is much more important than flexibility. Various American cities have introduced laws that, among other things, require employers to give workers a set amount of notice when setting their shift rotas.

例如，如果你是一個(gè)輪班行業(yè)的藍(lán)領(lǐng)員工，靈活性聽起來不太像天堂，更像是混亂。對(duì)于餐館和呼叫中心的低薪員工來說，可預(yù)測(cè)性比靈活性重要得多。美國(guó)許多城市都出臺(tái)了法律，其中包括要求雇主在確定員工輪班時(shí)提前給予一定的通知。

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Recent research by Kristen Harknett of the University of California, San Francisco, and her co-authors into the effect of “fair workweek” legislation in Seattle found that the requirement for two weeks’ notice of schedules improved workers’ reported sense of well-being. It can also improve performance. A study conducted by Joan Williams of the University of California College of the Law, also in San Francisco, and others concluded that introducing more stable employee schedules increased sales and productivity at The Gap, a retailer.

加州大學(xué)舊金山分校的克里斯汀·哈克尼特和她的共同作者最近對(duì)西雅圖“公平工作周”立法的影響進(jìn)行了研究，提前兩周通知工作時(shí)間的規(guī)定提高了員工幸福感。它還可以提高效率。加州大學(xué)法學(xué)院的瓊·威廉姆斯和其他人進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)研究得出結(jié)論，引入更穩(wěn)定的員工時(shí)間表可以提高零售商The Gap的銷售額和生產(chǎn)率。

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Certainty matters less for other workers. Research conducted by Donald Sull at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his co-authors found that predictable schedules had a marked effect on retention for blue-collar employees but did not affect white-collar ones. For desk-bound workers, the question is different: less whether flexible scheduling is appealing, more whose version of it prevails.

確定性對(duì)其他員工來說就沒那么重要了。麻省理工學(xué)院的唐納德?薩爾及其共同作者進(jìn)行的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，可預(yù)測(cè)的工作時(shí)間對(duì)藍(lán)領(lǐng)員工的留存有顯著影響，但對(duì)白領(lǐng)員工沒有影響。對(duì)于坐在辦公桌前工作的人來說，問題就不一樣了:靈活的時(shí)間安排是否有吸引力不那么重要，更重要的是誰的時(shí)間安排更受歡迎。

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In the minds of some bosses, flexibility means that the work week has no defined boundaries. If their day starts at 4:30am on a Peloton, so can yours (minus the Peloton). If there is a blank space in your calendar, they grab it. If they have a question on a Sunday, they send it over by email—and then text, WhatsApp and voicemail, just to make sure that the weekend is genuinely disturbed. It is a wonder they don’t turn up at the doorstep. A recent paper by Maria Ibanez of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University found that offering schedule flexibility on job adverts increases the likelihood that people will apply. But it also discovered that applications decrease markedly when adverts require workers to work at managers’ discretion.

在一些老板的心目中，彈性意味著每周的工作時(shí)間沒有明確的界限。如果他們的一天是從早上4：30騎Peloton開始，那么你也可以(不騎Peloton)。如果你的日歷上有空白處，他們就會(huì)占取你的時(shí)間。如果他們?cè)谥苋沼袉栴}，他們會(huì)通過電子郵件發(fā)送，然后發(fā)短信、WhatsApp和語音郵件，只是為了確保周末真的被打擾。他們沒有出現(xiàn)在門口真是個(gè)奇跡。美國(guó)西北大學(xué)凱洛格商學(xué)院的Maria Ibanez最近的一篇論文發(fā)現(xiàn)，在招聘廣告上寫彈性時(shí)間安排可以增加人們申請(qǐng)的可能性。但研究還發(fā)現(xiàn)，當(dāng)招聘廣告要求員工按照管理者的意愿工作時(shí)，申請(qǐng)人數(shù)會(huì)顯著減少。

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If workers balk at the boss’s version of flexible scheduling, managers have a different worry: that giving employees too much control over their hours can backfire. Asynchronous working, which involves individuals contributing to a project in their own time, is all very well. But if teams are to function effectively then they sometimes have to work as a group. Managers can have perfectly legitimate reasons to contact employees at odd hours and to expect an immediate response. Compressing work weeks into four days might well give workers more time to pursue their love of kayaking but be less brilliant for customers.

如果員工們對(duì)老板的彈性工作時(shí)間猶豫不決，管理者們就會(huì)有不同的擔(dān)心:讓員工對(duì)自己的工作時(shí)間有太多的控制權(quán)可能會(huì)適得其反。異步工作，即讓個(gè)人在自己的時(shí)間內(nèi)為一個(gè)項(xiàng)目做出貢獻(xiàn)，這非常好。但如果團(tuán)隊(duì)要有效運(yùn)作，有時(shí)就必須作為一個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)工作。管理者們可以有完全正當(dāng)?shù)睦碛稍谙掳鄷r(shí)間聯(lián)系員工，并期待他們立即回復(fù)。把一周的工作時(shí)間壓縮到四天可能會(huì)讓員工有更多的時(shí)間去追求他們熱愛的皮劃艇，但對(duì)客戶來說就不那么明智了。

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Just as a blend of home and office is a sensible answer to demands for flexibility in location, a mixed approach is the right way to think about flexible schedules. Brian Elliott runs research into the future of work for Slack, a messaging firm. He specifies “core collaboration hours” for his own team, which is when most meetings and group activities happen. The company has instituted “focus Fridays”, a day when there are no internal meetings and employees get on with their own tasks. If Mr Elliott does need to contact people outside working hours, he does so by text so they are not logged in all the time.

就像家庭和辦公室的混合是對(duì)地點(diǎn)靈活性需求的明智答案一樣，混合的方法是考慮靈活的工作時(shí)間的正確方法。布萊恩?埃利奧特在即時(shí)通訊公司Slack負(fù)責(zé)對(duì)未來工作的研究。他為自己的團(tuán)隊(duì)指定了“核心協(xié)作時(shí)間”，也就是大多數(shù)會(huì)議和小組活動(dòng)發(fā)生的時(shí)間。該公司設(shè)立了“專注周五”，在這一天沒有內(nèi)部會(huì)議，員工們只管自己的工作。如果埃利奧特確實(shí)需要在工作時(shí)間之外聯(lián)系別人，他會(huì)通過短信聯(lián)系，這樣他們就不用一直登錄。

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Boundaries of this sort will upset the absolutists. Managers have to think harder about interrupting people. Workers cannot pick and choose their hours at will. But a bit of thought can stop people from being their own worst enemies. For bosses, getting a swift answer to an unimportant question causes more trouble than it is worth. For employees, the flexibility to work outside standard hours is double-edged: Laura Giurge of London School of Economics and Kaitlin Woolley of Cornell University have found that choosing to work at a weekend or on a bank holiday reduces motivation precisely because these days are associated in their minds with non-work activities. For flexibility to be genuinely useful, it requires a firm skeleton.

這種界限會(huì)讓絕對(duì)主義者感到不安。管理者們必須更加認(rèn)真地考慮如何打斷員工。員工們不能隨意選擇工作時(shí)間。但是一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)的思考可以阻止人們成為自己最大的敵人。對(duì)于老板來說，迅速回答一個(gè)不重要的問題相比其價(jià)值而言，帶來的是更多的麻煩。對(duì)于員工來說，在標(biāo)準(zhǔn)工作時(shí)間之外工作的靈活性是一把雙刃劍: 倫敦經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)院的勞拉·吉厄奇和康奈爾大學(xué)的凱特琳·伍利發(fā)現(xiàn)，選擇在周末或銀行假日工作會(huì)降低積極性，因?yàn)樵谒麄兊念^腦中，這些日子與非工作活動(dòng)有關(guān)。要讓靈活性真正發(fā)揮作用，它需要一個(gè)堅(jiān)實(shí)的框架。