外刊双语：老板该如何与员工感同身受？

原文标题：
Bartleby
Walking in employees’ shoes
It is hard for bosses to understand what life is like for staff. But not impossible
巴特比
站在员工的立场看问题
老板很难理解员工的处境…但并非不可能

[Paragraph 1]
ANY MANAGER worth their salt knows the value of spending time “walking in their customers’ shoes”.
任何称职的管理者都知道“设身处地为客户着想”的重要性。

There are many ways to do it. You can observe customers in their natural habitat.
有很多方法，例如你可以在顾客的活动范围内观察他们。

Pernod Ricard’s boss recently told Bloomberg, a news service, about his habit of bar-hopping in order to see what people want to drink.
保乐力加的老板最近告诉资讯服务商彭博社，他泡吧的时候会去了解人们的喝酒偏好。

Such research is a lot less fun if your company makes soap dispensers for public toilets but the same principle applies.
如果你的公司生产公共厕所里的肥皂分配器，那么这种研究方式就不适用了，但原理一样。

[Paragraph 2]
You can be a customer yourself, buying your company’s products, ringing your own helplines and enduring the same teeth-grinding muzak. Or you can hear from your customers directly.
你可以当一回自己公司的客户，购买自己公司的产品，拨打自己公司的服务热线，忍受同样无趣的音乐。又或者你可以直接询问你客户的感受。

Jeremy Hunt, who has just been appointed Britain’s finance minister but was once its longest-serving health secretary, started each day in that job by reading a letter of complaint from a patient or their family, and writing back to each correspondent personally.
杰里米·亨特曾是英国任职时间最长的卫生部长，刚刚被任命为英国财政部长。他任卫生部长时每天都会阅读患者或患者家属的投诉信，而且亲自一一回信。

If you cancel one internal meeting a week and use that time to hear from customers instead, you will come out ahead on the trade.
如果你每周取消一次内部会议，利用这个时间听取客户的意见，你将在交易中获益。

[Paragraph 3]
This idea does not apply only to customers. It can also be useful inside the organisation.
这个想法不仅适用于客户，也适用于组织内部。

Walking in employees’ shoes is a way for bosses to understand what impedes productivity, what saps morale and what makes workers feel valued.
站在员工的立场思考问题是老板们了解什么阻碍了生产力，什么削弱了士气，什么让员工感到有价值的一种方式。

A sense of affinity can come from living in the same community as other members of staff.
老板与其他员工生活在同一个社区，会产生亲近感。

Recent research found that CEOs in Denmark who lived within 5km of their offices seemed to foster better work environments than those who lived farther away.
最近的研究发现，相比于居住在离办公室5公里以外的丹麦CEO们，居住在5公里以内的CEO们会创造了更好的工作环境。

But short of moving house, how else can managers get inside workers’ heads?
但除了搬家之外，管理者们还有什么其他的方式可以设身处地为员工着想？

[Paragraph 4]
Even if a boss genuinely wants to hear the unvarnished truth, employees may not be comfortable delivering it.
即使老板真的想听到朴实无华的事实，但员工也可能不愿意说出真相。

Anonymous surveys can help encourage honesty, as can exit interviews, but even in these settings, workers may temper their views.
匿名调查和离职面谈有助于听到诚实的声音，但即使在这种情况下，员工也可能会隐藏自己的观点。

Reviews on sites like Glassdoor can be brutal, but the motives of the people posting them are not always transparent.
Glassdoor这类网站上的评论可能会很直白，但发布评论的人的动机可能并不单纯。

Corporate-messaging apps like Slack can provide a partial window into how some teams are getting on, but surveillance is not a form of empathy.
Slack这类企业消息APP可以为老板了解团队的进展提供部分窗口，但监控并不是一种同理心。

And none of this is the same as knowing what it is actually like to be an employee.
以上所有的方式都无法令老板了解员工的真实感受。

[Paragraph 5]
It is very hard for managers to replicate the experiences of normal employees.
管理者很难有普通员工的一模一样的经历。

Rooms will magically become available if the boss asks for one; everyone else has to roam around the building like wildebeest that have become separated from the herd.
如果老板要房间，房间就会神奇地空出来；如果其他人要房间，就得像脱离了牛群的牛羚一样在大楼里四处游荡（找不到空房间）。

Managers do not have to remind people of their names.
管理们不必担心员工会忘了他们的名字。

They are less likely to suffer some of the common feelings that undermine workers’ enthusiasm for their jobs: rare is the boss who feels overlooked or underappreciated.
他们不太可能跟员工有共同的感受，一些感受会影响员工的工作热情，但很少有老板会有被忽视或被低估的感受。

And they are also much less likely than employees to encounter incivility from colleagues.
员工们会遭遇同事的无礼行为，而老板们遇到的可能性小。

[Paragraph 6]
One option is to appear on “Undercover Boss”, an entertaining reality-TV show in which executives put on preposterous disguises, work in their own organisations and discover what life is really like for their workers.
一个方法是参加娱乐性真人秀节目《卧底老板》，在节目中，高管们穿上古怪的伪装，在自己的公司里工作，体验员工们的生活。

If you go down this route you will learn a lot, but you will have to admit to an audience of millions that you have absolutely no idea what is going on in your own organisation.
如果你沿着这条路走下去，你会明白很多东西，但你必须向数百万观众承认，你完全不知道自己公司的情况。

(A less involved option is not to bother with the cameras and to wear your own home-made disguise in the office, though there is a risk your moustache will fall off at a pivotal moment.)
（一个简单的办法是不使用摄像机，而是在办公室里穿上自己自制的伪装，尽管在关键时刻你的胡子可能会掉下来。）

[Paragraph 7]
Even without disguises it is good for managers to spend time doing the same work as their underlings. (It is also good for them to stop referring to people as underlings.)
即使没有伪装，管理者们也可以花时间做下属们的工作。（老板最好不要把员工称为“下属”。）

Airlines and retailers have run schemes that involve executives working in front-line roles in airports and on shopfloors.
航空公司和零售商已经实施了一些计划，即高管在机场和商店从事一线工作。

DoorDash, a delivery app, has a programme called WeDash that requires salaried employees to make regular drop-offs.
配送应用DoorDash有一个名为WeDash的程序，要求全职员工定期送货。

And bosses can do things for themselves that people without assistants must navigate alone.
老板们要做一些无需助理必须独自完成的事情。

Filling out expense forms is a chore: everyone should have to do their own, at least occasionally.
填写费用表是一项繁琐的工作：每个人都应该自己做，至少偶尔要做一两次。

By default bosses should fly in the same airline class as their colleagues do. And so on.
无特殊情况时，老板应该和同事们乘坐同一级机舱。等等。

[Paragraph 8]
If managers can learn a few things by walking in employees’ shoes, there is also value in workers thinking about what life is like as a boss.
如果管理者能够从员工的角度学习一些东西，那么员工从老板的角度思考也能学习一些东西。

It is not all business-class travel and people agreeing with you.
并不是每次出差都是商务舱，也不是每个人都同意你的观点。

Imagine getting in a lift and conversation around you always dying.
想象一下这样的情景，你走进电梯，你周围的人停止了谈话。

Imagine being grumbled about all the time, or knowing that your absence causes a general lightening of the mood.
想象一下这样的情景，员工们一直在吐槽你，又或者你不在场时大家的心情轻松愉悦。

Imagine not being able to kick a difficult decision upstairs.
想象一下你是老板，你不能把困难的皮球踢给上级。

The boss wears much nicer shoes but they can still pinch.
老板的处境要好很多，但他们也有苦衷。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量787左右）
原文出自：2022年10月22日《TE》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）
离职面谈Exit interview是指在员工离开公司前与其进行的面谈。从雇主的角度来说，离职面谈的最主要目的是了解员工离职的具体原因，以促进公司不断改进。离职面谈应该选择气氛轻松的地点。面谈前应准备与员工相关的资料，比如员工个人的的基本资料、绩效回顾、参加的培训，经历的关键事件等。员工会觉得自己受到了重视，对公司不满者或许可以由此改变其对公司的消极看法。

Glassdoor 是美国的一家做企业点评与职位搜索的职场社区。在Glassdoor上可匿名点评公司，包括其工资待遇，职场环境，面试问题等信息。有助于让那些正在求职的人提前了解他们未来可能会入职的公司的更多真实的一手信息。

Slack 是聊天群组 + 大规模工具集成 + 文件整合 + 统一搜索，可以把各种碎片化的企业沟通和协作集中到一起。。

Undercover Boss《卧底老板》，一位首席执行官在自己公司卧底两周，伪装成一名办公室职员，在10个不同地点轮班工作。他亲耳听到了员工们的真实想法。这是一次具有启发性的体验。

 
【重点句子】（3 个）
If you cancel one internal meeting a week and use that time to hear from customers instead, you will come out ahead on the trade.
如果你每周取消一次内部会议，利用这个时间听取客户的意见，你将在交易中获益。

Walking in employees’ shoes is a way for bosses to understand what impedes productivity, what saps morale and what makes workers feel valued.
站在员工的立场看问题是老板们了解什么阻碍了生产力，什么削弱了士气，什么让员工感到有价值的一种方式。


If managers can learn a few things by walking in employees’ shoes, there is also value in workers thinking about what life is like as a boss.
如果管理者能够从员工的角度学习一些东西，那么员工从老板的角度思考也能学习一些东西。