自由的工作環境反而讓人效率低？

In the modern workplace, autonomy is now king.
如今，在現代職場中，自由為王。

Research has shown that personal autonomy at work increases job satisfaction, which leads to higher engagement, and correlates with lower employee turnover.
研究表明，個人在工作中的自主性可以增加工作滿意度，帶來更高的參與度，並且與降低人員流動率有關。

Given the choice, many employees prefer working remotely and having some control over their schedules.
在選擇上，許多職員更喜歡遠端工作，希望對自己的日程有一定的控制權。

In some professions, like programming, more are working from home than ever before; some are even beginning to demand it.
在一些職業領域，如程式設計，與過去相比，更多人在家裡辦公；甚至有一些人開始要求在家辦公。

The idea has gained so much traction that even Japan’s highly traditional workplaces are adopting it.
這種觀念特別受歡迎，甚至在日本推崇傳統的工作場所也在採用。

But all that autonomy might come at a cost. A new working paper shows that when workers deviate from an organization’s prescribed schedule of when they should complete their tasks, there is a drop in productivity.
然而，所有的自主權可能都是有代價的。一份關於工作的新論文指出，當職員偏離了一個組織規定的應何時完成工作的日程的時候，他們的工作效率就會下降。

The study from Harvard Business School shows autonomy might hurt productivity. This decline in productivity correlated with experience—the more experienced the workers were, the less their productivity was impacted to do tasks. However, the productivity decline still remained significant for even the most experienced workers.
哈佛商學院的研究表明，自主性也許會影響工作效率。而工作效率的下降與經驗有關，越有經驗的職員，他們的工作效率受到的影響就越小。然而，即使是最有經驗的職員，工作效率依然會明顯下降。

While the study did not determine exactly why this was happening, researchers suggest that one possible reason could be the time taken to make the decision of what to do next, in order to improve the speed of work, actually hampers productivity.
雖然這項研究並未完全確定為什麼會發生這種情況，但研究人員指出，其中一個原因可能在於為了提高工作效率而決定下一步要做什麼所需的時間，實際上卻阻礙了工作效率。

While taking the decision-making out of daily work might improve productivity for employees performing routine tasks, the evidence suggests that creative people’s brains work differently and the results might look different for companies whose employees perform more creative tasks.
不過，對於做常規工作的職員來說，在日常工作中不進行決策可能會提高工作效率。有證據指出，創新性人才的頭腦的工作方式是不同的，對於員工從事更多有創意性的工作的公司而言，實驗結果看上去可能會有所不同。