[2021-10-05]远程办公是否真的尽如人意？办公室的未来是什么？

Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli is the author of the new book, The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face. Cappelli, who has for decades studied the forces shaping and changing the workplace, says the choices employees and employers must make about the future of work could be among the most important they face.

沃顿商学院管理学教授彼得·卡佩利最近出版了一本新书《办公室的未来：在家工作、远程工作和我们的艰难选择》。卡佩利数十年来一直在研究影响和改变工作场所的力量，他说，雇员和雇主都必须对未来的工作模式做出选择，这可能是他们面临的最重要的选择之一。

Brett LoGiurato, senior editor at Wharton School Press, sat down with Cappelli to talk about his new book. They discussed work during the COVID-19 pandemic, the complications with return-to-office hybrid models, and how employees and employers can make the best choices about what to do.

沃顿商学院出版社的高级编辑布雷特·罗古拉托与卡佩利一起讨论了他的新书、新冠疫情期间的工作、重返办公室的混合办公模式的复杂性，以及员工和雇主如何做出最佳选择。

An edited transcr1ipt of the conversation follows.

下面是经过编辑的谈话记录。

Brett LoGiurato: Could you share your overall message about what you believe is at stake for the future of the office?

罗古拉托：你能分享一下对办公室未来有重要关系的整体信息吗？

Peter Cappelli: I don’t think it’s going to surprise many people to get the sense of how big an issue this is, about whether we go back to the office or not. If you think about the value of commercial real estate, what happens if we don’t need offices and all the supporting services and the little businesses and restaurants that support offices? And commuting? All those sorts of things matter. In addition to whether this might be better for employees, one of the things we know is that not everybody agrees that they want to work from home. There is the issue of whether it’s actually going to work for the employers, and that’s not completely clear.

卡佩利：我不认为很多人会感到惊讶，这是一个恨大的问题，关于我们是否回到办公室。想想商业地产的价值，如果我们不需要办公室和所有的配套服务，不需要支持办公室的小企业和餐馆，会发生什么？通勤呢？除了这是否对员工更有利之外，我们目前了解到，并不是每个人都想在家工作。还有一个问题是，这种远程办公模式对于雇主是否有利，还不完全清楚。

Part of the message of the book is that we don’t know how well things worked during the pandemic’s work-from-home phase. A lot of organizations said that things were fine. A lot of employees said they got their own work done. But closer examination is suggesting that maybe it wasn’t quite so great and things didn’t work quite as well, and more to the point, there were a lot of things that were unique about the pandemic that are not going to carry over afterward.

这本书传达的部分信息是，我们不知道疫情期间在家工作情况如何。很多企业说一切很好。很多员工说他们完成了工作。但更仔细的研究表明，也许这个阶段并不是很好，更重要的是，这场疫情有很多独特的元素，而这种元素以后不会延续下去。

For example, most people felt a special effort to pull together and try to get things done [because] we were keeping businesses together and keeping our jobs together. Is that going to continue afterward? Post-pandemic is unlikely to look much like what happened during the pandemic. We know a fair bit about that situation because we’ve studied it. We’ve studied telework for quite a while. That is regular businesses operating more or less as they did, with some people working at home and some people working in the office. The results there were not as nice as you might expect. People working remotely don’t do as well, and their careers don’t do as well, either.

例如，在疫情期间，大家都会感到需要一种特殊的努力，他们齐心协力，努力把事情办好，因为我们要把生意继续，把工作做好。但是这种心态在疫情之后还会继续吗？大流行之后的情况不太可能与大流行期间发生的情况一样。我们对这种情况有所了解，因为我们已经研究过了。我们研究远程工作模式已经有一段时间了。这是正常的商业运作方式，有些人在家工作，有些人在办公室工作。但这种模式的结果并没有你想象的那么好。远程工作的人做得并不好，他们的职业发展也没有那么好。

Understanding what we’re getting ourselves into matters a lot. There are so many options in terms of working from home: if you do it, how much you do, and how it’s carried out. It’s important to get the ones that we pick right, to make sure we understand that decision. And it’s important to prepare for it because the way we choose has lots of implications for how businesses need to be managed and how the careers of people unfold.

了解我们自己的处境非常重要。在家工作有很多附带问题：如果你这样做，你做了多少工作，以及如何进行。重要的是让我们选择的模式得以正确运行，并确保我们理解这个决定的意义。为此作好准备是很重要的，因为我们选择的办公模式对企业如何管理以及人们的职业生涯有很多影响。

LoGiurato: You’ve been researching the workplace for decades, and in the book, one of the points you highlight is how this change is so much different than others. Can you explain that?

罗古拉托：几十年来，你一直在研究工作场所这个主题。在本书中你强调的一点是，这种变化趋势非常不同。你能解释一下吗？

Cappelli: Anybody who’s interested in the workplace knows that there has been a flavor-of-the-month feel to a lot of the press over the last couple of decades. A lot of the things that are presented as the future, the “new normal,” never happened. Like the coming labor shortage in the early 2000s, which never happened. The big issues around millennials — it turns out that there’s no evidence any of that is even true. We’re going to have driverless trucks. Three years ago we were preparing for the elimination of all trucking jobs, things that may at some point happen, but in the meantime, they’re no big deal.

卡佩利：任何对职场感兴趣的人都知道，在过去的几十年里，很多媒体都有一种短暂时髦的感觉。然而，许多被称为未来的“新常态”从未发生过。就像21世纪初有人声称我们将面临劳动力短缺，却并没有发生。千禧一代员工将有一些重大问题——却没有任何证据表明这是真的。我们将会有无人驾驶的卡车。三年前，我们正准备取消所有的卡车运输工作，这些事情在未来某个时候可能会发生，但在此之前，它们并不是什么大问题。

This pandemic is going to lift at some point. It’s dragging on longer than we all thought, but at some point, we’ll have the opportunity to go back to work, and employers have to choose. You have to either be in the office or let people stay home or find something different. This one is right on top of us, and it’s going to matter in ways that are completely obvious. That’s why it’s a big deal and, in this case, we haven’t paid enough attention to it. We’ve spent way more time on all these previous topics, and then this one is staring us right in the face, and we haven’t thought about what it means very carefully and how to choose what to do.

这场疫情总有一天会好转。虽然疫情延续的时间比我们想象的要长，但总有一天，我们会有机会回去工作，而雇主必须做出选择。你必须要么呆在办公室里，要么让人们呆在家里，或者找到一些不同的办法。这个问题的影响是显而易见的。这就是为什么它是一个大问题，在这种情况下，我们没有给予足够的重视。我们在之前的话题上花费了更多的时间，而这个话题就摆在我们面前，我们还没有非常仔细地思考它的意义，以及如何选择做什么。

LoGiurato: What’s your best advice for those employees who dread a return to an in-person workplace?

罗古拉托：对于那些害怕回到工作场所的员工，你有什么最好的建议？

Cappelli: I think the variation in people’s experience in working from home is quite remarkable. There are some people who liked it; there are some people who didn’t. A lot of that depends on your life circumstances. Even those who were grateful to be able to do it weren’t necessarily having fun. There’s evidence that stress levels are up and hours of work were up for people working from home.

卡佩利：我认为人们在家工作的经历差异很大。有一些人喜欢它；有些人却讨厌在家工作。这在很大程度上取决于你的生活环境。即使是那些感激能在家工作的人，也不一定会感到很有乐趣。有证据表明，在家工作的人的压力水平提高了，工作时间也增加了。

The people who are grateful for the opportunity to keep working from home are thinking about the alternative, which was no job or trying to work in the office without child care or with sick parents we have to take care of, and all those things. To some extent, I don’t think we’re quite making the right comparison. What we’re thinking about now is something that happened about two years or so before, when we think about what normal used to be. For most people, it wasn’t so bad, and it wasn’t like imagining working in the office during the pandemic.

而那些感激有机会继续在家工作的人或许考虑的是其它选择，那就是不工作，或在不需要照顾孩子的情况下去办公室工作，或者一边工作一边能照顾生病的父母，以及所有这些事情。在某种程度上，我不认为我们做了正确的比较。当我们现在想到过去的正常情况时，所想到的是大约两年前的情况。对大多数人来说，这情况并不那么糟糕，也不像想象中的大流行期间在办公室工作。

Going back to the office will probably not be so bad. I hate to say this, but it’s a little like when we were kids going back to school, which we all dreaded. As soon as you started to do it, you get back into the rhythm and it’s not such a terrible thing. But I don’t think it will be as bad as most everybody who is worried about it seems to be thinking.

回到办公室可能不会那么糟糕。我不想这么说，但这有点像我们小时候暑假结束回学校的时候，都会有点害怕。但是一旦你开始这样做，你就回到了节奏中，这不是什么可怕的事情。也不会那么糟糕。

LoGiurato: What do you believe employers have to do to make their employees feel engaged about future plans in the near term and in the longer term?

罗古拉托：你认为雇主应该做些什么才能让员工对未来计划感到投入？

Cappelli: The problem that employers have if they want to go back to the way they were operating before, which means bring everybody back to the office, is that the discussions in the broader community and in the press have given people the impression that you don’t have to do that and that you can keep working from home. [Employers] have to fight this expectation that has been created. Some of that is about communication and explaining to our employees why it is important for them to come back to work, why it is a business necessity and not something quirky that the boss happens to want to do. If you can’t come up with that story, then you’d better rethink what your policies are.

卡佩利：如果雇主想要回到以前的工作方式，也就是想让每个人都回到办公室，他们面临的问题是，更广泛的社区和媒体的讨论给人们留下了这样的印象：你不必这么做，你可以继续在家工作。雇主必须与已经产生的这种员工在家工作的期望作斗争。包括向员工沟通和解释为什么重返工作岗位很重要，为什么这是一项业务需要，而不是老板的奇思怪想。如果你不知道如何解释和沟通，那么你最好重新考虑一下你的办公政策。

“People working remotely don’t do as well, and their careers don’t do as well, either.”

“远程工作的人做得不好，他们的职业发展也不好。”

It is a bit of a change to bring people back, and this is a bit like managing organizational change. The first step is, “Why do we have to do it?” The second step is to explain to people what it’s going to mean, particularly with respect to safety. My guess is there will still be some health concerns when a lot of people are coming back.

把人们带回来是一种改变，这有点像管理组织变革。第一步是“为什么我们必须这么做？”第二步是向人们解释这意味着什么。特别是在安全方面。我猜当很多人回来的时候，仍然会有一些健康的担忧。

If we’re offering something else, we need to think about how to present that. If we’re going to have some different alternatives for working, we have to think about how to explain that in some detail. But I would say the smart thing to do is also to tell employees that this is an experiment, that we’re going to see how this works. It’s not the same as it was during the pandemic when everybody was at home and the economy was more or less stumbling along. This is a pretty different period, a different experience, so we want to try it out, see what works, and then adjust. I don’t think you want to suggest to people that whatever you’re putting in place is going to be there forever, because if you have to change it and walk anything back, that’s a tough thing for employees to swallow.

如果我们提供的是其他东西，我们需要考虑如何呈现这种需求。如果雇主有不同的工作模式选择，那么要考虑如何详细解释。但我想说，聪明的做法是告诉员工，这是一个实验，我们要看看效果如何。这与疫情期间的情况不同，当时每个人都待在家里，经济或多或少在蹒跚前进。这是一个相当不同的时期，一个不同的经历，所以我们想尝试一下，看看什么是有效的，然后再调整。我不认为你想向人们暗示，无论你实施什么，都将永远不变，因为如果你不得不改变，然后再走回头路，这对员工来说是一件很难接受的事情。

LoGiurato: Two distinct types of hybrid work that are being discussed. Which has the most potential?

罗古拉托：正在讨论的两种不同类型的混合工作，哪个最有潜力？

Cappelli: We’ve all heard a lot about hybrid work, and it seems most employers are saying that that’s what they want to do. The problem with saying you’re going to have hybrid means that it’s not going to be everybody in the office, and it’s not going to be everybody at home. There’s a world of difference between those two extremes.

卡佩利：我们都听过很多关于混合工作的说法，似乎大多数雇主都说这就是他们想要做的。问题是，当你说要采用混合模式时，就意味着不是每个员工都在办公室，也不是每个员工都在家办公。这两个极端之间有着天壤之别。

There is one approach to hybrid that is quite clear, and that is that we will let some employees — not all of them — work at home permanently, that you can be out of the office on a permanent basis. And there’s another that says you can work from home occasionally. Those two choices are fundamentally different. If you are somebody who says, “I want to work remotely on a permanent basis,” you may think that’s great. “I get to live where I want.” All that is true. Your career is [also] going to suffer. You should accept that because unless organizational life changes fundamentally, the people who are going to be in the office have advantages over you. It’s easy to forget about the people who are working remotely, and the first thing that will happen is you’re going to lose your office. That’s why employers want you to work at home permanently. If you do, they can save on real estate space.

有一种方法非常明确，那就是我们将让一些员工，不是所有员工，永久在家工作，你可以永久离开办公室。还有一种说法是你可以偶尔在家工作。这两种选择根本不同。如果你是一个说“我想长期远程工作”的人，你可能会认为这很好。“我可以住在我想住的地方。”这一切都是真的。但是你的事业发展也会受到影响。你要接受这一点，因为除非组织活动发生根本性变化，否则办公室里的人比你更有优势。人们很容易忘记那些远程工作的人，还有，就是你会失去办公室。这就是为什么雇主希望你永久在家工作。如果你这样做，他们可以节省房地产空间。

“What’s going on with employers right now, which is understandable, is they don’t want to be out of sync with the market.”

“雇主目前的情况是，他们不想在市场中显得落伍，这是可以理解的。”

The second type of work-from-home hybrid model is where you keep your office, you work more or less in the office, but we allow you some flexibility as to when you might be able to work from home. That is a trickier one for employers. For employees, everybody likes the idea of having a choice. “I should be able to work from home when I want and come in when I want.” The reason this is tricky for employers is it’s not clear how it benefits them. It’s not saving real estate to do that unless we try to move to a hotel-y model, where you only share an office when you come in, which is a tricky arrangement. The complication is scheduling. Everybody gets to pick the day that they want to work from home. Well, that’s tricky to have meetings because some people won’t be here, and then we end up with this half and half, some people calling in, some people in person. It’s going to be clunky to do. If you’re trying to do real team-based work like traditional agile stuff, which are project-based things face-to-face, the problem is if everybody is picking their own day, you can’t do that very well.

第二种类型的混合模式是，您可以保留办公室，或多或少在办公室工作，但在何时在家工作具有一定的灵活性。对于雇主来说，这是一个更棘手的问题。对于员工来说，每个人都喜欢有选择的自由。“我想在家工作的时候就应该在家工作，想进公司的时候就进来。”但是不清楚这对雇主有什么好处。这样做并不能节省房地产，除非我们尝试转变成Y酒店的模式，员工共享办公室，但那样也会是一个棘手的安排。日程安排也会变得比较复杂。每个人都可以选择他们想在家工作的日子。嗯，开会会很棘手。会有一半的人在公司，一些人打电话来，一些人亲自来。这样做起来会很笨拙。如果你想做真正的基于团队的工作，比如传统的敏捷工作，也就是基于项目的面对面的工作，问题是如果每个人都在挑选自己的日子，你就无法做得很好。

Similarly, it’s a little tricky if you say, “OK, you can work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” If you do that, it doesn’t necessarily benefit employees. They want to work from home on the days that suit them. It ends up being quirky for employees. These are some of the trade-offs we have to manage.

类似地，如果你说“好的，你可以在周二和周四在家工作”，这也有点棘手。如果你这样做，不一定会让员工受益。他们想在适合自己的日子在家工作。对于员工来说，这最终是一件怪事。这些是我们必须权衡的一些问题。

LoGiurato: A common theme is that a lot of them don’t know what they’re doing yet. Are there companies you see as leaders in the ways that workplaces are changing or not changing post-pandemic?

罗古拉托：一个共同的主题是，很多公司还不知道自己在做什么。在疫情之后，工作场所改变或不改变的方式方面，你认为有哪些公司是领导者？

Cappelli: There is a pretty clear divide. If you look at the investment banks in New York, the big banks have been very clear that they want everybody back in the office. This is the way business is going to work. The tech world has been the opposite, making lots of changes or promising employees a lot of ability to be flexible and work remotely, but there are outliers in the tech world. Amazon, for office work, is basically a tech company. And they’ve said, “No, we’re all coming back.”

卡佩利：有一个非常明显的分歧。如果你看看纽约的投资银行，大银行已经非常清楚，他们希望每个人都回到办公室。这就是商业运作的方式。而科技界的情况恰恰相反，它做出了许多改变，或允许员工灵活和远程工作。但科技界也有例外。亚马逊，对于办公室工作来说，基本上是一家科技公司，他们说，“不，我们都会回来的。”

A lot of companies are talking about some flexibility, but they’re not being very specific. What’s going on with employers right now, which is understandable, is they don’t want to be out of sync with the market. They don’t want to be the one announcing, “You can’t work from home,” and then all their competitors say you can. They’re afraid everybody will bolt and go work for their competitors. I don’t think this is true, but that’s what they’re worried about.

很多公司都在谈论一些灵活性，但它们并不是很具体。雇主现在的情况是，他们不想在市场中显得落伍，这是可以理解的。他们不想成为那个宣布“你不能在家工作”的人，然后所有的竞争对手都说你可以。他们担心每个人都会逃之夭夭，为竞争对手工作。我不认为这是真的，但这正是他们的担忧。

Virtually everybody is in this big middle, saying, “We’re going to do something,” but they’re not saying what they’re going to do yet. That’s of some concern to the employees who would like to know.

实际上，很多企业都在这个大的中间地带，说“我们要做点什么”，但他们并没有决定要做什么。这是一些想知道的员工关心的问题。

“Options and choices sound like a great thing, but they also cause a lot of problems.”

“让人们拥有选项和选择听起来不错，但也会带来很多问题。”

LoGiurato: Was there any data or research that you found particularly surprising?

罗古拉托：你有没有发现任何数据或研究结果特别令人惊讶？

Cappelli: What we had seen in the press from the experiences of employers and employees had been universally positive. Some of this may have been editorial selection. It’s much more of a “Man Bites Dog” story, at least in the beginning, to discover that you could shut offices down and everything was going fine. No public company CEO wants to tell the world that they’re struggling, so there’s a lot of selection going on.

卡佩利：我们从媒体上看到的雇主和雇员的经历是普遍积极的。当然这可能是经过选择的事实。这更像是一个“人咬狗”的故事，至少在开始的时候，你发现你可以关闭办公室，一切都很好。没有一家上市公司的CEO愿意告诉全世界他们在挣扎。所以有很多选择在进行。

What we’ve seen more recently is some evidence in different kinds of workplaces where we can quantify stuff. And what you find is that things didn’t go as nicely as you would think. Hours of work were actually higher for people. There’s some evidence that traditional boundaries, like post-dinner — particularly for people with families — are broken. There was a lot more work after the dinner hour being done by people. Stress levels appear to be higher, as well.

最近我们在不同的工作场所看到了一些证据，可以量化一些东西。事情并不像想象的那么顺利。实际上，人们的在家工作时间更长。有一些证据表明，传统的工作时间界限，如晚餐后时间，特别是有家人的人，已经被打破。晚餐后还有很多工作要做。压力水平似乎也更高。

In general, there’s a sense that this was not quite as wonderful as we thought. Some of this is understandable. At the very beginning of this, what’s your comparison? Your comparison is the place we shut down. Otherwise, if we can’t work from home, we don’t have a job. After a year and a half of being at it, your comparison changes. It’s no longer [not having a] job… It’s not much fun. That’s what we started to see in the data more recently. It’s not particularly surprising, but it is different than what the popular perception had been.

总的来说，远程工作并不像我们想象的那么美妙。其中一些是可以理解的。因为一开始，你的比较基准是什么？你对比的是那些不能继续营业的企业。否则，如果我们不能在家工作，我们就没有工作。经过一年半，你的对比基准发生了变化……在家工作没有多大乐趣。这是我们最近开始看到的数据。这并不特别令人惊讶，但它与人们的普遍看法不同。

LoGiurato: If there’s one lesson you want readers to take away, what would it be?

罗古拉托：如果你想让读者吸取一个教训，那会是什么？

Cappelli: The biggest single issue is that choices create problems. The opportunity to work from home sounds like a great thing. Why not give everybody opportunities? But making those choices matters a lot. If you raise your hand and say, for example, “I would like to work from home permanently,” that has big consequences for you and also for the organization. And some of the consequences for the organization have to do with supervisors. A big chunk of us have to supervise somebody, and supervising people remotely is a different experience. It’s a different kind of work to do. A hybrid model, where you have some people in the office and some people working remotely, for supervisors trying to manage, is tricky. Options and choices sound like a great thing, but they also cause a lot of problems.

卡佩利：最大一个问题是，选择会产生问题。在家工作听起来不错。为什么不给每个人机会呢？但如果你举手说，“我想永远在家工作”，这对你个人的职业发展和整个企业都有很大影响。
给企业带来的一些后果与主管有关。我们中的很大一部分人必须管理某人，而远程管理员工则是一种不同的体验。这是一种不同的工作方式。混合模式，即有些人在办公室，有些人远程工作，对于管理者而言也很棘手。选项听起来不错，但也会带来更多的问题。
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Christopher Walton
For many professionals and some white collar workers it's possible to perform a lot of their work from home. However I think that to keep some company spirit going and ensure that company policies are carried out that those who work from home will need to spend a day or two a week in the office.
Hot desking will become more normal and companies will save money by having smaller offices and paying less on rent and utilities. Cloud computing is readily available an with 5g on the horizon Internet speeds will certainly make from home easier.

对于许多专业人士和一些白领来说，在家里完成大量工作是可能的。然而，我认为，为了保持一些公司精神，并确保公司政策得到执行，那些在家工作的人将需要每个星期在办公室呆一两天。
共享工作场所将变得更加普遍，公司将通过缩小办公室、减少租金和水电费来节省开支。云计算随处可见，随着5G的到来，互联网速度肯定会使在家工作变得更容易。

Dave Thompson
I’m not sure it will be the norm, but I think it has changed the perception of home working. I thought about the company I work for. I worked from home for a while at the start of the problems before being furloughed as did many of my colleagues. If more of us from my company worked from home, there would be less need for office space which could be freed up for storage, something we desperately need, without moving premises.

我不确定这是否会成为常态，但我认为这已经改变了人们对在家工作的看法。我想到了我工作的公司。在问题刚开始的时候，我在家工作了一段时间，然后像许多同事一样待岗了。如果我们公司有更多的员工在家工作，那么我们对办公空间的需求就会减少，在不需要搬迁的情况下，这些办公空间可以腾出来用于存储，这是我们迫切需要的。