Countering the tyranny of the clock

对抗时钟的专横

词汇

Tyranny/ 暴政；专横

How flexible working is changing workers’ relationship with time

弹性工作制如何改变了员工与时间的关系

Oct 17th 2020 | 

TWO HUNDRED years ago, a device began to dominate the world of work. No, not the steam engine—the gadget was the clock. With the arrival of the factory, people were paid on the basis of how many hours they worked, rather than their material output.

两百年前，一种设备开始主宰世界的工作。不，不是蒸汽机，而是时钟这件小玩意。随着工厂的到来，工人们的工资是根据他们工作的小时数而不是他们的物质产出来支付的。

词汇

Gadget/.小玩意；小器具

In the “putting out” system that prevailed before the factory era, merchants would deliver cloth to be woven, spun, stitched or cut to a worker’s home. Each worker would then be paid for the items they produced. That gave the weavers and spinners freedom to work when it was convenient. At the factory, in contrast, workers were required by the owner to turn up for a set shift.

在工厂时代之前盛行的“散工制”制度中，商人将布送到工人家中进行织、纺、缝制或裁剪。每个工人生产的产品都会得到报酬。这给了织布工和纺纱工在方便的时候自由地工作。相比之下，在工厂里，老板要求工人按规定轮班。

词汇

putting-out system/ 散工制

Woven/ 编织

Spun/纺制的

Stitched/缝纫

The tyranny of time was marked by a number of innovations. As few workers owned watches or clocks in the 19th century, people known as “knocker-uppers” would roam the streets rapping on doors and windows to wake workers at the right time. Later, factories would use hooters and whistles to signal the start and end of shifts, and employees would punch in and out using a time clock. Eventually, as workers moved farther away from their place of employment, the power of the clock led to daily rush hours, as millions headed to and from work. Often they paid a penalty in terms of time wasted in traffic jams or awaiting delayed trains.

时间的专横表现在一系列的革新上。在19世纪，很少有工人拥有钟表，所以那些被称为“敲门者”的人会在大街上晃悠，到点了就敲着门窗叫醒工人。后来，工厂会用鸣笛和哨声来表示轮班的开始和结束，员工也会用时钟打卡上下班。最终，随着工人们搬离工作地点越来越远，时钟的力量导致了每天上下班的高峰时间，数百万人上下班。他们通常会因为交通堵塞或等待火车晚点而付出代价。

词汇

tyranny /暴政；专横

Hooter/汽笛，警笛

The clock’s authoritarian rule may at last be weakening. Flexible working existed well before the pandemic. But it only offered employees the ability to choose when in the day they worked their allotted hours. Remote working has brought a greater degree of freedom. A survey of 4,700 home-workers across six countries commissioned by Slack, a corporate-messaging firm, found that flexible working was viewed very positively, improving both people’s work-life balance and productivity. Flexible workers even scored more highly on a sense of “belonging” to their organisation than those on a nine-to-five schedule.

时钟下的独裁统治可能最终会弱化。但灵活工作制度早在疫情之前就存在了。但它只向员工提供了选择一天中工作时间的权利。远程工作带来了更大程度的自由。企业通信公司Slack委托对来自六个国家的4700名在家办公的员工进行了一项调查。调查发现，弹性工作制被人们视为非常积极的做法，因为它能平衡工作与生活，提高工作效率。弹性工作制的员工甚至比朝九晚五的员工在对公司的“归属感”上得分更高。

It is hardly surprising that workers prefer flexibility. Working a rigid eight-hour schedule is incredibly restricting. Those are also the hours when most shops are open, when doctors and dentists will take appointments, and when repairmen are willing to visit. Parents on a conventional routine may be able to take their children to school in the morning but are unlikely to be able to pick them up in the afternoon. Many families find themselves constantly juggling schedules and giving up precious holiday time to deal with domestic emergencies.

工人们更喜欢灵活性，这并不奇怪。严格的八小时工作时间是难以置信的限制。这段时间也是大多数商店开门的时间，也是医生和牙医预约的时间，也是修理工愿意光顾的时间。按常规生活的父母也许能在早上把孩子送到学校，但下午就不太可能去接他们了。许多家庭发现他们经常忙于安排日程，放弃宝贵的假期时间来处理家庭紧急事件。

On reflection, it is also not too shocking that home-workers feel they are more productive. After all, few people have the ability to concentrate solidly for eight hours at a stretch. There are points in the day where people are tempted to stare out of the window or go for a walk; these may be moments when they find inspiration or recharge themselves for the next task. When they do this in an office, they risk the boss’s disapproval; at home, they can work when they are most motivated.

仔细想想，在家工作的人觉得自己的工作效率更高，这一点也不太令人震惊。毕竟，很少有人能连续8小时全神贯注。一天中总有那么几个时候，人们忍不住想往窗外看，或者出去散散步;这些可能是他们为下一个任务找到灵感或充电的时刻。当他们在办公室这么做时，他们冒着令老板不快活的风险;在家里，他们可以在最有动力的时候工作。

Remote working is not possible for everyone, of course. There is a long list of industries, from emergency services to hospitality and retail, where people need to turn up to their place of work. But for many office workers, remote working is perfectly sensible. They may maintain some fixed points in the week (staff meetings, for example) but perform many of their tasks at any time of the day—or night. Office workers can now be paid for the tasks they complete rather than the time they spend (which firms would have to monitor by spying on people at home).

当然，远程工作不可能对每个人都适用。有一长串行业，从紧急服务到酒店和零售，人们需要到他们的工作地点。但对于许多上班族来说，远程办公是完全明智的。他们可能在一周中保持一些固定的时间点(例如员工会议)，但在白天或晚上的任何时间执行他们的许多任务。办公室职员现在可以根据他们完成的任务而不是“工作”的时间来获得报酬(公司将不得不通过监视在家的人来监视他们)。

What is striking about Slack’s study is the widespread nature of support for home-working. Overall, just 12% of the workers surveyed wanted to return to a normal office schedule. In America black, Asian and Hispanic employees were even more enthusiastic than their white colleagues. Women with children were generally keen, reporting an improvement in their work-life balance—though a gap exists between discontented American women and those in other countries, who are much happier (the availability of state-subsidised child care helps explain the difference).

Slack的研究中引人注目的一点是，人们普遍支持在家工作。总体而言，只有12%的受访者希望恢复正常的办公时间安排。在美国，黑人、亚裔和西班牙裔员工甚至比他们的白人同事更热情。一般来说，有孩子的女性都很期望如此，她们的工作与生活平衡有所改善——尽管不满的美国女性和其他国家的女性之间存在差距，后者要快乐得多(国家补贴的托儿服务能够解释这种差异)。

Of course, the new schedule carries dangers: people may lose all separation between work and home life, and succumb to stress. To inject some human contact, companies may embrace a hybrid model in which workers go into the office for part of the week. But overall office-workers’ freedom from time’s yoke is to be welcomed. The clock was a cruel master and many people will be happy to escape its dominion.

当然，新的时间表也带来了危险:人们可能会失去工作和家庭生活之间的所有分离，屈服于压力。为了注入一些人际关系，公司可能会采用一种混合模式，即员工每周有一部分时间到办公室工作。但是总的来说，办公室职员摆脱时间枷锁的自由是受欢迎的。时钟是一个残忍的主人，许多人会很高兴摆脱它的统治。

词汇

Yoke/轭；束缚