《经济学人》双语：员工忠诚是傻吗？

原文标题：
Bartleby
Is employee loyalty silly?
Many a fickle makes a muckle
巴托比专栏
员工忠诚是傻吗？
积少成多，聚沙成塔

Why employee loyalty can be overrated
为什么员工的忠诚度会被高估

[Paragraph 1]
JOB INTERVIEWS are an opportunity to see allegiances shift in real time.
求职面试是一个实时了解忠诚度变化的机会。

A candidate will usually refer to a prospective employer as “you” at the start of an interview (“What do you want to see from someone in this position?”).
在面试开始时，候选人通常会称呼未来的雇主为 "您"（“您希望从这个职位的人身上看到什么？”）。

But occasionally the pronoun changes (“We should be thinking more about our approach to below-the-line marketing. Sorry, I mean ‘you’ should be”).
但偶尔也会改变称呼（"我们应该更多地考虑我们的线下营销方法。抱歉，我是说'您'应该这样做"）。

That “we” is a tiny, time-travelling glimpse of someone imagining themselves as the employee of a new company, of a fresh identity being forged and of loyalties being transferred.这个 "我们 "是微小的、穿越时空的一瞥，是想象自己作为新公司的一员，代表新身份的形成和忠诚的转移。

[Paragraph 2]
Loyalty is seen as a virtue in most situations: among friends, family and football fans. Employee loyalty, however, is more complex.
在大多数情况下，忠诚被视为朋友、家人和球迷之间的一种美德。然而，员工忠诚度则更为复杂。

It is more transactional. Friends don’t give each other performance reviews or fire each other for cost reasons.
它的交易性质更高。朋友之间不会因为成本原因而互相进行业绩评估或解雇对方。

It is less reciprocal. A worker can feel attachment to a company and a company can feel precisely nothing.
它的互惠性质更低。员工会对公司产生依恋感，而公司对员工却没感觉。

 (Which is why people often feel more loyal to team members and individual bosses than to their organisations.)
(这解释了员工对团队成员和个别上司的忠诚度，高于对公司的忠诚度的原因。）

And too much of it can impose high costs.
而且，忠诚度更高意味着代价更高。

[Paragraph 3]
Wage bumps and careers are built on people changing jobs.
工资上涨和职业生涯建立在跳槽换工作的基础上。

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which tracks wage growth in America, in April job switchers were being paid 7.6% more than a year earlier; job stickers were being paid only 5.6% more.
根据美国亚特兰大联邦储备银行的数据，该机构追踪美国的工资增长情况，4月份，跳槽者的工资比一年前多了7.6%；而留职者的工资只多了5.6%。

A little promiscuity on the part of other people can help those who choose to stay where they are.
跳槽者的跳槽举动对留职者有利。

A paper by Nathan Deutscher, a Treasury official in Australia, found that higher rates of job-hopping in local Australian labour markets were associated with faster wage growth both for workers who switched jobs and for those who did not.
澳大利亚财政部官员内森.多伊切尔的一篇论文发现，在澳大利亚本地劳动力市场上，高跳槽率与高工资增长率有关，无论是对跳槽者还是留职者都是如此。

Loyalty is nice; so is bargaining power.
忠诚度很重要；议价能力也很重要。

[Paragraph 4]
Too much loyalty can harm workers in other ways.
过高的忠诚度会以其他方式伤害员工。

A piece of research published earlier this year by Matthew Stanley of Duke University and his co-authors tested how bosses felt about loyal workers.
今年早些时候，杜克大学的马修.斯坦利和他的合著者发表了一项研究，研究测试了老板们对忠诚员工的看法。

The researchers asked managers how willing they were to ask a fictional employee named John to work overtime for no pay.
研究人员询问老板们，他们是否愿意让一位化名为“约翰”的员工无偿加班。

If John was described as loyal, then bosses were happier to dump more work on him.
如果约翰被打上“忠诚”的标签，那么老板们更乐意把更多工作交给他。

The reverse also applied: workers who did more work for no reward were more likely to be described by managers as loyal.
反之亦然：无偿加班次数更多的员工更有可能被老板们打上“忠诚”的标签。

Dogs are known for their loyalty, remember, but not for their brains.
请记住，狗以“忠诚”著称，而不是以“聪明”著称。

[Paragraph 5]
Employers tend to be clear-eyed about what generates loyalty.
雇主往往对产生忠诚度的因素有清醒的认识。

Retention bonuses are an admission that the best employees might need a little nudge to stay.
留任奖金意味着承认最优秀的员工需要一点推力才愿意留下来。

Actual loyalty tends to get nugatory rewards: a week’s extra holiday for 25 years of service?
真正的忠诚往往只能得到微不足道的回报：工作25年的员工可以额外获得一周假期？

Netflix encourages its employees to speak to recruiters so that they know their worth in the open market and so that it can respond with counter-offers (an approach that makes more sense when you are prepared to pay top dollar and less so if you are in the non-profit sector).
网飞公司鼓励其员工与招聘人员交谈，以便他们了解自己在公开市场上的价值，这样员工可以跟公司还价（如果你确实能拿到高薪，这种方法就有意义，如果你是在非营利部门，则意义不大）。

[Paragraph 6]
Companies can nonetheless be wedded to the idea of loyalty.
尽管如此，公司还是执着于忠诚度。

The group of employees who left Shockley Semiconductor Lab in the 1950s to found Fairchild Semiconductor was famously dubbed the “traitorous eight”.
1950 年代一群员工从肖克利半导体实验室离职，创立了飞兆半导体，他们被称为“八叛徒”。

Some of that attitude still prevails. But unless you are a member of the mafia or a cleric, joining a competitor is neither treachery nor heresy.
这种观点仍然盛行。但除非你是黑手党成员或牧师，否则加入竞争对手公司既不是背叛也不是异端。

Indeed, boomerang hires—people who leave an employer and then come back—can offer a valuable blend of known quantity and new skills.
事实上，回头员工--指离开雇主后又回来的人--是一种已知数和新技能的宝贵结合体。

[Paragraph 7]
Society can suffer if there is a surfeit of employee loyalty.
如果员工的忠诚度过高，那对社会有不利影响。

A paper on whistle-blowing, published in 2019 by James Dungan of the University of Chicago and his co-authors, found that employees were more likely to report wrongdoing if their concern was fair treatment of people outside the organisation and less likely to do so if they were more motivated by loyalty.
芝加哥大学的詹姆斯.邓根及其合著者在2019年发表的一篇关于举报的论文发现，如果员工关心的是公司外人群的公平待遇，他们更有可能举报不法行为，而如果他们是出于忠诚的动机，则不太可能举报。

Other research suggests that competitive situations can encourage loyal members of one group to cheat in order to best another.
其他研究表明，竞争环境会鼓励一个群体的忠诚成员为了打败另一个群体而作弊。

[Paragraph 8]
Employee loyalty can be great. Companies want workers who feel committed to them, who are prepared to go the extra mile and not join a rival at a moment’s notice.
员工的忠诚度很重要。公司希望员工对公司有承诺感，愿意付出额外努力，且不会迅速加入竞争对手公司。

Workers want to believe in and belong at a firm, confident that it warrants chunks of their finite time on Earth.
员工希望相信并归属于一家公司，相信这家公司值得他们在有限的人生中投入大量精力。

It is better all around, for job satisfaction and for performance, if employees stay put because they feel invested in their organisation than because they haven’t got a better offer.
对于工作满意度和绩效来说，如果员工之所以留在原公司是因为他们对组织产生了投入感，而不是因为他们没有更好的选择，那么对双方都有利。

But loyalty in the workplace is a self-interested decision, not a moral one.
但是，工作中的忠诚度是为了追求个人利益，而不是因为道德束缚。

It should be contingent on being treated well, not a habit that becomes harder to break.
工作中的忠诚度应该取决于良好待遇，而不是变成一种难以改变的旧习。

Stay where you are because you like it, not because to leave would be immoral.
留在公司是因为你喜欢它，而不是因为怕离职被打上“不道德”的标签。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量813左右）
原文出自：2023年6月10日《The Economist》Business版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文翻译整理: Irene

本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
网飞Netflix是一家总部位于美国的流媒体公司，它以提供在线视频服务而闻名。作为一家注重员工激励的公司，网飞采取了一项独特的政策，即向员工支付市场上最高的工资。根据这个政策，员工的薪水将根据他们所在职位的市场工资水平来确定，确保他们得到公平的报酬。这意味着，如果市场上类似职位的平均工资超过网飞当前支付的薪水，网飞将提高员工的薪水以达到市场水平。

然而，需要注意的是，网飞给员工支付市场最高工资的政策并不意味着员工可以轻松获得高薪。公司依然会根据员工的表现和贡献来评估他们的薪资水平，并且这个政策并不适用于所有职位。此外，忠诚度和长期服务并不直接导致更高的工资，因为网飞更注重员工的能力和绩效。

肖克利半导体实验室Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory是1956年由诺贝尔奖得主威廉·肖克利创建的一家半导体研究实验室。该实验室位于美国加利福尼亚州的山景城，是早期半导体技术研究的重要中心之一。然而，1957年发生了离职事件。威廉·肖克利的管理风格和种族主义观点引发了员工的不满和抗议，导致了一次大规模的员工离职潮。其中包括了八位被称为“八叛徒”的核心研究人员，他们认为肖克利的管理风格严重妨碍了创新和合作。这八位离职员工后来共同创办了一家名为“飞兆半导体”的公司，成为了半导体行业的重要力量。他们的离职也使得肖克利半导体实验室的声誉受损，最终导致了该实验室的关闭。这次离职事件被认为是早期硅谷历史上的重要事件之一。它显示了员工对于公平和尊重的重要性，并对后来硅谷文化的形成产生了深远的影响。

【重点句子】（3个）
Loyalty is seen as a virtue in most situations: among friends, family and football fans. Employee loyalty, however, is more complex.
在大多数情况下，忠诚被视为朋友、家人和球迷之间的一种美德。然而，员工忠诚度则更为复杂。

The reverse also applied: workers who did more work for no reward were more likely to be described by managers as loyal.
反之亦然：无偿加班次数更多的员工更有可能被老板们打上“忠诚”的标签。

But loyalty in the workplace is a self-interested decision, not a moral one.
但是，工作中的忠诚度是为了追求个人利益，而不是因为道德束缚。