Facebook消滅不了上班偷懶 How Zuckerberg can limit office skiving

With 1.5bn active members, Facebook is on the way to achieving its aim of connecting everyone in the world, all 7.3bn of us, from mewling babes to muddled centenarians. But the social networking giant faces obstacles. One is China, wooed by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg with a speech in Beijing last weekend, which he delivered in Mandarin in the hope of charming the country into lifting its ban on his .

擁有15億活躍用戶的Facebook正在朝實現這個目標目標邁進：把世界上73億人中的每一個人，從啼哭的嬰兒到糊塗的百歲老人，全都連接起來。但這家社交媒體巨頭面臨着一些障礙。一個是中國，Facebook首席執行官馬克丠克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)正努力向中國示好，不久前他來到北京，用普通話發表講話，希望藉此取悅中國，讓其解除對Facebook的禁令。

The other challenge to crack is the global workforce of 3bn people, many based in offices where employers have done a China and blocked the site. The tech firm’s response has been to launch Facebook at Work, a business-friendly twin to the personal service. It has received a boost with the news this week that Royal bank of Scotland will adopt it for its 100,000 staff by the end of 2016.

另一個需要解決的挑戰與全球30億勞動者有關，其中許多人在辦公室工作，他們的僱主效仿中國屏蔽了Facebook。這家科技公司的應對之道是推出了適用於企業、與個人版相對應的工作版Facebook——Facebook at Work。新聞報道稱，蘇格蘭皇家銀行(RBS)將在2016年底前爲旗下10萬名員工配備Facebook at Work，這個消息爲Facebook帶來提振。

The work version looks like the personal site; users can join groups, share files and swap messages. The difference is that no one outside their company can see any of it. The app has screenshots of idealised examples, like a young woman messaging her colleagues with the inspiring sentiment: “Can’t believe I’ve been at Acme for two years! I couldn’t ask for a better workplace.”

工作版看起來和個人版很像：用戶可以加入小組、分享文件、交換消息。二者的區別在於，在工作版中，公司以外的人無法看到任何內容。這款應用提供了一些理想場景的截屏，比如一名年輕女性熱情洋溢地給她的同事發消息：“不敢相信我已經在Acme工作了兩年了！這真是一份再好不過的工作。”

It sounds Orwellian, a coercive scheme that China’s politburo would be happy to “like” were it on Facebook. But the truth is more nuanced. What we are actually witnessing is a pragmatic acceptance of skiving.

這聽起來有點極權主義色彩，如果中國的中央政治局也用Facebook，他們一定很樂於給這樣的高壓制度點“贊”。但真相更加微妙。我們看到的實際上是抱着一種務實的態度接受上班摸魚。

Every working day has moments when we are not technically working. One example is the famous water-cooler moment beloved of entertainment executives, when staff mill around filling flimsy paper cones while discussing the new Star Wars film. Smoking breaks are another. Cigarettes may take years off your life but they also steal about 20 minutes daily from your employer.

在工作的每一天，我們都有一些時間並沒有真正在工作。一個例子是爲娛樂業高管們所鍾愛、著名的“飲水機時刻”：員工們一邊討論最新的《星球大戰》(Star Wars)電影，一邊走來走去用薄薄的紙杯接水。吸菸休息時間則是另一個例子。香菸可能會讓你少活數年，但它們同樣能讓你每天上班偷懶大約20分鐘。

The internet has transformed the many pauses that punctuate office work. With so much time spent at a computer, the screen has taken over as the place for truancy. In the old days, we might have gazed out the window or made a furtive phone call. Now we can send personal emails or check the weather forecast while pretending to work.

互聯網改變了曾經許多上班偷懶的方式。人們在電腦上花如此多的時間，屏幕變成了我們翹班的地方。過去，我們可能會凝視着窗外，或者偷偷摸摸地打個電話。現在我們一邊假裝工作，一邊發送個人郵件，或者查看天氣預報。

Every working day has moments when we are not technically working. One example is the famous water-cooler moment The world wide web is capacious enough to be both an aid to productivity and the most powerful tool for skiving ever invented. Businesses can keep tabs on its misuse with monitoring programmes. But, like smoking or tea breaks, a small amount of personal time is usually tolerated — and many employees expect it. When a risqué link is sent with the message “not safe for work”, the warning implies there is some content that is safe for work, the sort of thing that should not lead to disciplinary action — clips of kittens being tickled, say, or toddlers singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

互聯網無所不包，既能幫助人們提高工作效率，同時也是有史以來最適合工作摸魚的發明。企業可以通過監控程序來對濫用互聯網進行監視。但是，就像抽菸休息和茶歇一樣，短時間的偷懶往往是可以通融的——而且很多員工也是這麼認爲的。人們發送含有下流內容的鏈接會附帶一條訊息，“不適宜工作時間觀看”，這樣的警告暗示，有些內容是適宜工作時間觀看的，也就是應該不會導致處罰的東西——比如胳肢小貓的視頻、或者小寶寶唱美國國歌的視頻。

Sharing banal YouTube videos is no different from idle chat, a lubricant in the social life of the workplace. A 2012 analysis of 600,000 internal emails between Enron staff — among the largest publicly available caches following the company’s bankruptcy — discovered that almost 15 per cent was devoted to gossip. The Georgia Tech researchers who conducted the survey judged the proportion to be typical.

在YouTube上分享一些無聊的視頻和閒聊沒什麼區別，都是辦公室社交生活的潤滑劑。安然公司(Enron)倒閉後，其最大的公開存儲數據包括60萬封前安然員工的內部郵件，2012年有研究者對這些郵件進行了分析，發現其中近15%的郵件內容是八卦。進行這項研究的佐治亞理工學院研究所(Georgia Tech Research Institute)研究者認爲這一比例很具有代表性。

Private life seeps into work life. Technology is criticised for colonising free time with an always-on-call culture, but the opposite also holds true. The internet has transformed our expectations of what we can get away with at work.

私生活滲入到了工作之中。人們批評科技用一種隨時待命的狀態控制了他們的空閒時間，但是反過來說也是正確的。互聯網已經改變了我們心目中可以在上班摸魚時做的事情。

If RBS’s 100,000 employees are not allowed to swap chatter and jokes on Facebook at Work — if they are expected only to ping each other messages like “OK, sent you the new revision!” — then they will spend as little time on it as possible. But their bosses surely know that. What we see here is not an attack on digital skiving but a test-case in setting its limits. Enlightened corporations of the 21st century, take note.

如果蘇格蘭皇家銀行不允許其10萬名員工在Facebook at Work上閒聊和互相發笑話，期望員工只發送諸如“好，發給你最新修改版”這樣的信息——那麼員工們會盡量少用這款軟件。不過，他們的老闆們肯定知道這一點。我們看到的不是要消滅上班摸魚，而是一次對其設定限度的嘗試。注意了，21世紀的開明公司們。