時尚雙語:印度人撮合辦公室戀情
西方人不贊成辦公室戀情，而在印度，外包公司的員工更有可能把職場當作檢驗長期關係的好地方。
“Office hours sometimes get very hectic,” says 25-year-old D. Karthik as he waits with his colleague and fiancée, K. Tejaswania, at the juice bar of their employer, Mphasis. “If we are still able to adjust to it with our partners, that shows we are best for each other.”
“上班時間有時會十分忙碌，如果我們能夠與戀人共同適應這種狀況，就說明我們是最適合彼此的，”今年25歲的D.卡蒂克(D. Karthik)表示，他與他的同事兼未婚妻K.泰賈斯瓦尼婭(K. Tejaswania)正在他們就職的公司Mphasis的果汁吧等候着。
在印度，過去年輕人的婚姻往往由父母包辦，但在不斷髮展的外包行業，職員們經常在最接近的同事中尋找自己的伴侶。
Far from discouraging such relationships, their employers are happy to play matchmaker, according to a new study by the Indian School of Business, the country's prestigious MBA college in Hyderabad.
根據印度商學院(Indian School of Business)最新調查，對於辦公室戀情，公司方面非但不加以阻止，還樂於撮合。印度商學院是該國知名MBA學院，位於海德拉巴。
One of India's most important industries with export revenue of more than $40bn a year, the outsourcing sector has been at the forefront of economic, social and cultural change since its emergence in the 1990s.
外包行業是印度最重要行業之一，每年出口收入超過400億美元，崛起於上世紀90年代，此後一直處於經濟、社會和文化變革的前沿。
The ISB cites a survey by , part of the global recruitment site Monster Worldwide, that found nearly 58 per cent of 12,191 respondents admitted to either having indulged in, or being open to, office romance. “There is a perception that a lot of companies are encouraging this trend because this accrues benefits to the organisation,” the ISB study by students Anshumita Sen and Naina Bhattacharya says.
印度商學院援引了國際招聘公司Monster Worldwide旗下所作的一項調查，該調查發現，在接受調查的12191人中，近58%的人承認有過辦公室戀情或對之持開放態度。“人們感覺到，很多公司都鼓勵這種趨勢，因爲對組織有利，”調查報告表示。實施該調查的是兩名學生安蘇米塔·森(Anshumita Sen)和奈納•巴塔查里亞(Naina Bhattacharya)。
[Nextpage]
These perceived benefits include “reduced attrition, higher employee engagement, satisfied and happy employees, greater feelings of citizenship towards the organisation and greater productivity through longer working hours at the workplace”.
人們眼中的好處包括“減少員工流失、提高員工敬業度、使員工感到滿意和愉快、增強普通人對公司的好感，以及因上班工作時間延長而提高生產率”。
Some companies have gone as far as welcoming spouses under “referral programmes” in which staff can recommend friends to their human resources departments for recruitment, the study finds. The outsourcing industry says it does not “encourage or discourage” office romances but tolerates them when they develop.
調查發現，一些公司甚至歡迎員工的配偶通過“推薦計劃”加入公司。根據此類計劃，員工可向人力資源部推薦自己的朋友。外包行業表示，“不鼓勵也不阻止”辦公室戀情，但一旦發生辦公室戀情，會採取容忍的態度。
Francisco D'Souza, chief executive officer at US-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions, says the company draws the line only when relationships occur between people in a direct “reporting line”. “We have plenty of husbands and wives working for us and that's good.”
在美國上市的Cognizant Technology Solutions的首席執行官弗朗西斯科·德蘇佐(Francisco D'Souza)表示，公司唯一不能容忍的是上下級之間的戀情。“我們有很多員工是夫妻，這很好。”
Office romances are to be expected in such a youthful industry. “If you work with a workforce so young – 80 per cent of our population is under 25 – that's something that's in the air,” says Pratik Kumar, executive vice-president of human resources at Wipro, India's third biggest software outsourcing company.
在這個年輕人集中的行業，辦公室戀情是可以預期的。“如果一起工作的人都這麼年輕——我們80%的人不到25歲——這種事就會很普遍。”印度第三大軟件外包公司Wipro的人力資源執行副總裁帕拉提•庫瑪爾(Pratik Kumar)表示。
Many employees in the industry hail from small, conservative communities in India's vast hinterlands and feel liberated when they come to big cities such as Bangalore or Mumbai.
該行業的許多職員來自印度廣大內陸地區保守的小地方，來到班加羅爾或孟買這樣的大城市，讓他們感覺像是得到了解放。
Wipro even has an internal matrimonial site where would-be suitors can seek partners among the workforce of 96,965. Wipro's gender balance roughly matches the sector average of 65 per cent male.
Wipro甚至設有一個提供婚介服務的內部網站，想找對象的人可以通過這個部門在本公司的96965人中尋找伴侶。該公司的性別比例大致保持行業平均水平，即男性佔65%。
One risk from such openness, of course, is emotional drama between employees. Mr Kumar says Wipro has an “ombudsman's process” for sorting out staff disputes that sometimes has to resolve romantic tussles.
當然，這種開明做法存在一個風險，即員工之間可能上演情感劇。庫瑪爾表示，Wipro有一個處理員工糾紛的“調查程序”，有時不得不解決情感糾紛。
“Do we get issues? Yes, we do. Sometimes these issues can appear very silly,” he says.
“我們遇到問題了嗎？是的。有時問題還十分愚蠢，”他表示。
The ISB study also cautions that Indian companies need to be mindful of potential problems such as sexual harassment – one issue that has given inter-office romance a bad name in the west.
印度商學院的調查還指出，印度公司需警惕一些潛在問題，如性騷擾——在西方，這個問題已給辦公室戀情招來壞名聲。
Indian legal guidelines on harassment require companies to maintain a “complaint cell” for women to report abuses. But the ISB finds that nearly a third of employees surveyed thought their company did not have such a cell or had not heard of one.
印度性騷擾法規要求企業成立“騷擾投訴處”，接待女性員工的投訴。但印度商學院發現，近三分之一的受訪者認爲，自己所在的公司並沒有這種設置，或者自己從未聽說過。
Such dangers aside, Indian parents probably do not need to be alarmed. When it comes to tying the knot, it seems traditional concerns such as caste quickly return to the fore.
拋開這些隱患不談，印度的父母們或許無需擔憂。當發展到談婚論嫁時，種姓等方面的傳統顧慮似乎很快又佔了上風。
Ms Tejaswani says: “I used to bore my mother talking about him [Mr Karthik]. So when the time came, it wasn't difficult at all convincing them. And since caste also was not an issue, his parents, too, agreed.”
泰賈斯瓦尼婭表示：“我過去常在我母親耳邊嘮叨卡蒂克的事情。因此當時機成熟時，說服他們就一點都不難了。而既然種姓方面也不存在問題，他的父母也就同意了。”
