搶椅子游戲 辦公室座位安排學問多大綱

Office workers are being treated to a new game: musical chairs.
如今，辦公室職員正被安排玩一個新遊戲：搶椅子游戲。

By shifting employees from desk to desk every few months, scattering those who do the same types of jobs and rethinking which departments to place side by side, companies say they can increase productivity and collaboration.
公司方面表示，通過讓員工每幾個月調換一次座位、將從事同類工作的員工分散開來以及重新考慮讓哪些部門坐在一起等方式，他們能夠提高生產率並促進合作。

Proponents say such experiments not only come with a low price tag, but they can help a company's bottom line, even if they leave a few disgruntled workers in their wake.
支持者稱，這類實驗不僅成本低，而且有助於提高公司利潤，雖然它們會引起一些員工的不滿。

In recent years, many companies have moved toward open floor plans and unassigned seating, ushering managers out of their offices and clustering workers at communal tables. But some companies -- especially small startups and technology businesses -- are taking the trend a step further, micromanaging who sits next to whom in an attempt to get more from their employees.
近年來，許多公司轉向開放空間格局，不指定固定座位，引導管理者走出辦公室，並將員工聚在公用辦公桌旁。但一些公司（尤其是小型初創公司和科技公司）將這種趨勢又向前推進了一步，它們對座位安排進行微觀管理，以提高員工的生產率。

'If I change the [organizational] chart and you stay in the same seat, it doesn't have very much of an effect,' says Ben Waber, chief executive of Sociometric Solutions, a Boston company that uses sensors to analyze communication patterns in the workplace. 'If I keep the org chart the same but change where you sit, it is going to massively change everything.'
Sociometric Solutions首席執行長本・瓦貝爾(Ben Waber)稱：“如果我改變（組織系統）圖，但你的座位保持不變，是不會產生很大效果的。如果我保持組織系統圖不變，但調整你的座位，則會讓一切產生巨大變化。”Sociometric Solutions是一家波士頓公司，該公司用傳感器來分析工作場所的溝通模式。

Mr. Waber says a worker's immediate neighbors account for 40% to 60% of every interaction that worker has during the workday, from face-to-face chats to email messages. There is only a 5% to 10% chance employees are interacting with someone two rows away, according to his data, which is culled from companies in the retail, pharmaceutical and finance industries, among others.
瓦貝爾說，一名員工在工作日中的每一種互動都有40%到60%是與鄰座展開的，從面對面交談到電郵信息都是如此。他的數據顯示，員工與相隔兩排的同事進行互動的機率僅爲5%到10%。該數據採自零售、製藥和金融等行業的公司。

Companies should think carefully about whom they put where, according to experts who study office design and workplace psychology. Grouping workers by department can foster focus and efficiency, says Christian Catalini, an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, but mixing them up can lead to experimentation and the potential for breakthrough ideas.
研究辦公室設計和工作場所心理學的專家們表示，公司應該認真考慮把什麼人安排在什麼位置就座。麻省理工學院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)斯隆管理學院(Sloan School of Management)的助理教授克里斯蒂安・卡塔利尼(Christian Catalini)表示，讓員工按部門就座有助於提高專注程度和工作效率，但讓不同部門的員工混坐能鼓勵員工大膽嘗試，還能激發可產生突破性創意的潛力。

MODCo Media, a New York advertising agency, has tested three different seating arrangements over the past few years. For about six months, the company intermingled its accountants and media buyers, hoping they would begin to absorb each others' skills through 'osmosis' and 'overhearing phone calls.'
紐約廣告公司MODCo Media在過去幾年裏試用了三種不同的座位安排。該公司讓會計和媒介採購員混坐了約六個月，希望他們能通過“耳濡目染”和“偷聽電話”來相互借鑑。The experiment ended up saving MODCo 'a couple hundred thousand dollars a year,' says CEO Erik Dochtermann, but it turned out badly for the accountants. The media buyers began to understand the financial side of the business so well that MODCo no longer needed a full accounting department. Now, the media buyers 'do the accountancy on the fly' and the company's chief financial officer checks their work, says Mr. Dochtermann.
該公司首席執行長埃裏克・多克特曼(Erik Dochtermann)表示，這項實驗最終讓公司“一年節省了幾十萬美元”，但對會計來說卻成了壞事。媒介採購員能夠很好地理解業務的財務面，好到MODCo不再需要財務部的全班人馬了。多克特曼稱，媒介採購員現在會“就手做做會計工作”，公司的首席財務長會檢查他們的工作。

Other seating configurations have helped inspire new products and expedited the training of new employees, he says.
他說，其他一些座位安排有助於促進新產品研發，並加快新員工培訓速度。

At travel website , co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Paul English has joked about developing an algorithm to capture all that goes into devising his seating plan for the engineering team.
旅遊網站聯合創始人兼首席技術長保羅・英格利希(Paul English)戲稱，要開發一種算法來捕捉決定工程師團隊座位設計方案的所有因素。

He uses new hires as an excuse to alter the existing layout and thinks carefully about each worker's immediate neighbors. He takes into account everything from his employees' personalities to their political views to their propensity for arriving at work early -- or, more important, their propensity for judging colleagues who arrive late.
他以新聘員工爲理由對現有的佈局進行調整，並仔細斟酌每一位員工的鄰座。他將員工性格、政見、提前上班的傾向（還有更重要的一點是評價同事遲到行爲的傾向）等種種因素納入考慮範圍。

'If I put someone next to you that's annoying or there's a total style clash, I'm going to make your job depressing,' he says.
他說：“如果我把一個討厭的人或者與你風格完全不合的人放在你旁邊，那麼我會讓你的工作變得很鬱悶。”

Young Chun, a product designer at Kayak, is one of Mr. English's ambassadors in his pursuit of an office with 'a balance of energy.' A self-professed member of the 'loud' contingent of Kayak employees, she was recently dispatched to the mobile group, where she estimated 90% of the workers were quiet, to get them to be more vocal.
Kayak的產品設計師永川(Young Chun)是英格利希的辦公室“能量平衡”行動大使之一。永川自詡爲Kayak員工中“愛說話”小分隊成員，最近她被派遣到移動業務組（她估計這裏90%的員工都很安靜），任務是讓他們多說點話。

'The first week that I was down there I was like, 'Oh my god, I could hear a pin drop here,'' she says.
她說：“到那裏第一週我的感覺是：‘天哪，我能聽得見大頭針落地的聲音。’”

It took a few weeks, but Ms. Chun says she was able to get the group to open up and start chatting. Her mission accomplished, she was soon switched to another section of the office.
永川花了好幾周時間，但她說，在她的努力下，移動業務組開始無拘無束地聊天了。她的任務完成了，然後很快被調到了辦公室的另一處區域。

Aspects of a worker's disposition can, in fact, be contagious, according to Sigal Barsade, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. 'People literally catch emotions from one another like a virus,' she says. Her research has found that the least-contagious emotional state is one marked by low-energy and sluggishness. The most contagious is a calm, relaxed state -- which she nicknamed 'the California condition.'
賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)沃頓商學院(Wharton School )管理學教授西加爾・巴薩德(Sigal Barsade)稱，員工的性格特徵其實是有感染力的。她表示：“不誇張地說，情緒就像病毒一樣讓人交叉感染。”她的研究發現，感染性最弱的是以低能量和慵懶爲特徵的情緒狀態。感染性最強的是冷靜、放鬆的狀態――她將其暱稱爲“加州狀態”。

People with similar emotional temperaments work best together, Ms. Barsade says. But if a manager is trying to get a stressed-out worker to brighten up, the best strategy is to surround her with lots of cheerful, energetic people.
巴薩德說，性情相似的人最適合在一起工作。但如果管理者試圖讓壓力很大的員工放鬆一些，最好的策略是讓許多快樂、充滿活力的人坐在這位員工周圍。

Constantly shuffling people around has its consequences, however. Ms. Barsade says that moving from desk to desk can make workers feel like they have little control over their environment. And some seating experiments can cause a backlash.
然而，不斷調整座位也會產生問題。巴薩德稱，讓員工從一張辦公桌搬到另一張辦公桌會讓他們感覺無力控制環境。一些調換座位的實驗還會遭到激烈反對。

For about four years, employees at HubSpot Inc., a marketing-software company based in Cambridge, Mass., switched seats randomly every three months. The seating strategy was meant to reflect the lack of hierarchy at the company, which it says was especially helpful in recruiting Millennials. Eventually, the company added some structure to the arrangement, splitting workers into loud and quiet groups.
總部位於馬薩諸塞州劍橋(Cambridge)的HubSpot Inc.是一家營銷軟件開發公司，該公司在四年左右的時間裏每三個月隨機調整一次座位。採用這種排座策略的用意是反映公司沒有等級之分，該公司稱，這對招聘千禧世代特別有幫助。該公司最終在安排中加入了一些系統性因素，將員工分成愛說話羣體和不愛說話羣體。

But when HubSpot decided to group its executives in one part of the office, the employee feedback was negative. The executives felt more efficient and liked being able to chat without having to arrange formal meetings, but the employees felt the higher-ups were too far removed. The setup was reversed after six months.
但當HubSpot決定讓高管集中坐到辦公室的一處區域時，員工給出的反饋卻是負面的。高管們感覺這樣坐效率更高，他們還喜歡無須安排正式會議就能隨意聊天，但員工們覺得上司們高高在上。該公司在六個月後取消了該安排。

Employees have the moving process 'down to a science,' says HubSpot Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Dharmesh Shah, unplugging their phones and rolling file cabinets to their new spots swiftly.
HubSpot首席技術長兼聯合創始人達爾梅什・沙阿(Dharmesh Shah)稱，員工們對換座位這件事已經駕輕就熟了，他們會迅速拔下電話，將文件櫃推到新的座位上。

But having grown to more than 600 workers, the company is facing a new problem: no one can remember who sits where.
但該公司的員工如今已經超過了600人，目前他們正面臨着一個新問題：沒人能記得住誰坐在什麼地方。