根据科学研究，为什么远程工作很糟糕

根据科学研究，为什么远程工作很糟糕

Like a decent chunk of the American workforce, Planet Money is now working remotely. Every morning, we have an all-staff video conference on GoToMeeting. We use Slack for conversations. We use Dropbox to transfer the files. We're making the best of it — we're happy to have the work — but no one really loves it.

就像美国劳动力中相当一部分人一样，Planet Money现在也在远程工作。每天早上，我们有一个全体员工通过GoToMeeting进行视频会议。我们用Slack聊天。我们用Dropbox来传输文件。我们尽力做到最好，我们很高兴得到这份工作，但没有人真正喜欢它。

Since the birth of the personal computer, futurists have been predicting the death of the office. If we can chat over video and instantly exchange messages and files, they figured, why would we endure stressful commutes in fossil-fuel-burning vehicles just to sit side by side in brick-and-mortar buildings? I mean, we're mostly staring at screens there anyway.

自从个人电脑诞生以来，未来学家就一直在预测办公室的消亡。他们想，如果我们可以通过视频聊天，即时交换信息和文件，那我们为什么要忍受在燃烧化石燃料的汽车里的紧张通勤，只是为了在实体建筑里肩并肩地坐着?我的意思是，我们大部分时间都盯着屏幕。

But the office has proven more stubbornly useful than we had imagined. Between 2005 and 2015. despite the spread of high-speed Internet and apps like Zoom, Slack and Dropbox, the percentage of people regularly working remotely increased only between 2 and 3 percentage points.

但事实证明，这个办公室比我们想象的要有用得多。从2005年到2015年，尽管高速互联网和诸如Zoom、Slack和Dropbox等应用的普及，但经常远程工作的人的比例只增长了2到3个百分点。

Now, with COVID-19. about a third of the workforce is working remotely, and this transition hasn't been easy. At Planet Money, we're facing issues like how to maintain team comradery through cameras on our computers. We're not alone.

现在，有了COVID-19.大约三分之一的员工在远程工作，这种转变并不容易。在Planet Money公司，我们面临的问题包括如何通过电脑上的摄像头保持团队的友好关系。我们不是一个人。

According to a recent survey by the Society of Human Resource Management, over 70 percent of employers report struggles with shifting to remote work.

根据人力资源管理协会最近的一项调查，超过70%的雇主报告说，他们很难转向远程工作。

Another survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers finds that about half of companies believe they are witnessing a dip in productivity with this shift.

普华永道的另一项调查发现，约有一半的公司认为，这种转变正在导致生产率下降。

The Stanford psychologist Jeremy Bailenson has spent two decades studying virtual communication between humans, and he's cataloged the ways existing technology fails us. We talked with him, naturally, through Zoom. The technology is kinda awkward. And that's a big part of the problem.

斯坦福大学心理学家杰里米·贝伦森花了20年时间研究人类之间的虚拟交流，他列举了现有技术令我们失望的地方。我们通过Zoom自然地和他交谈。技术有点笨拙。这是一个很大的问题。

"When we're actually face to face, we don't stare at each other's eyes for that long," Bailneson says. "But a lot of these videoconference technologies let everybody's staring at you right in the face." It's exhausting and superweird to have disembodied heads just staring at you for hours.

“当我们面对面时，我们不会长时间盯着对方的眼睛看，”贝伦森说。“但很多视频会议技术让每个人都能直视你的脸。”让非实体的脑袋盯着你看几个小时，既让人筋疲力尽，又超级怪异。

"People have very dedicated personal norms about the proper space one should leave between themselves and others," he says. But when you're on a video call, your personal space is defined by how close the camera is to your face. In real life, this view of someone would be crazy.

他说:“人们对自己和他人之间应该留出的适当空间有着非常严格的个人规范。”但当你在视频通话时，你的个人空间是由摄像头离你的脸有多近决定的。在现实生活中，这种观点是很疯狂的。

If you were regularly this close to a colleague's face in a physical office, you'd probably have serious problems with the HR department. "We very rarely get that close to someone unless we're in a fight or an intimate situation," he says.

如果你经常在办公室里和同事的脸这么近，你可能会和人力资源部门有严重的问题。他说:“除非我们在打架或亲密的情况下，否则我们很少会那么接近某人。”

It's not all bad. In a series of experiments, Bailenson found that the gaze of a teacher in a video call made students pay closer attention, causing a short-term spike in their productivity.

也不全是坏事。在一系列的实验中，贝伦森发现，教师在视频电话中的凝视会让学生更加集中注意力，从而在短期内提高他们的学习效率。

So we have a long way to go on that front. Until then, good luck with your Zoom calls.

所以我们在这方面还有很长的路要走。在那之前，祝你Zoom来电好运。