信任你 還是監控你 Spotify and Amazon show modern work's sharp divide

When Spotify workers need a new keyboard, they go to a shelf and take one. There are no forms to fill in and no one to ask. There is just a sign saying how much each keyboard costs.

當Spotify的員工需要一個新鍵盤時，他們就到架子上去取一個。不需要填什麼表格，不需要問誰去要。只有一個標籤顯示每個鍵盤多少錢。

Kristian Lindwall, whose title at the music streaming company is “agile coaches team lead”, told us this at a human resources conference in Barcelona last week.

不久前在巴塞羅那舉行的一次人力資源大會上，Spotify的“敏捷教練團隊主管”克里斯蒂安•林德沃爾(Kristian Lindwall)告訴了我們這一點。

His talk was about Spotify giving teams autonomy. His job seemed to be to help the teams, but not to hover over them. “People are self-motivated and they want to do great work,” he said.

他演講的主旨是Spotify給予團隊自主權。他的工作似乎是幫助各個團隊，但不凌駕於他們之上。“員工們自我激勵，他們想做成大事，”他說。

Setting up elaborate approval processes for workplace equipment not only interfered with that aim; it ended up costing more. “It’s cheaper to give someone a keyboard than for people to go through two sets of approvals that take a week,” he said.

建立繁複的辦公設備審批程序，不但干擾了上述目標的達成，而且最終會產生更大的成本。“跟讓員工花兩週時間走完兩套審批程序相比，直接給他一個鍵盤更省錢，”他說。

Judging by reviews on the Glassdoor jobs website, some employees find these autonomous teams “chaotic”, with “duplicate and uncoordinated efforts”. But 87 per cent say they would recommend the company to a friend.

從員工點評網站Glassdoor上的評議看，有些員工覺得這些自治團隊“雜亂無章”，“重複勞動，彼此間缺乏協調”。但87%的人表示，他們會把Spotify推薦給朋友。

As a consumer, I find Spotify’s service entirely satisfactory. But I feel the same about Amazon, which only 64 per cent of employees would recommend to a friend, according to Glassdoor. Employee reviews — “people making minor mistakes are punished; breaks are limited, exhausting the workforce and making people hate work” — reflect recent press coverage, which Amazon contests, stating that it used detailed data to monitor both managers and lower-level employees’ performance.

作爲消費者，我認爲Spotify的服務完全令人滿意。但是，我對亞馬遜(Amazon)有同樣的感覺。根據Glassdoor的數據，願意向朋友推薦亞馬遜的員工比例僅爲64%。員工評議——“犯小錯就受到懲罰；工間休息時間有限，讓大家感到精疲力盡，憎恨工作”——反映出了不久前媒體報道的內容，即亞馬遜使用詳盡的數據監控管理人員和更低層級員工的表現。亞馬遜對這一報道提出了異議。

Spotify trusts you; Amazon monitors you. The companies are both stars of the digital age, while also illustrating the sharp divide in today’s world of work. Some companies give their workers freedom while others use modern technology to track their every move.

Spotify信任你；亞馬遜監控你。這兩家公司都是數字時代的明星企業，同時也呈現出如今職場世界的嚴重分化局面。有些公司給予員工自由，也有些公司使用現代技術跟蹤員工們的一舉一動。

Traditionally, this trust divide existed inside companies rather than between them, according to an excellent and prescient 2001 paper by Cambridge’s Judge Business School and the Stockholm School of Economics. Managers were trusted, but workers were not.

根據劍橋大學(University of Cambridge)賈奇商學院(Judge Business School)和斯德哥爾摩經濟學院(Stockholm School of Economics)在2001年發表的一篇富有遠見的高質量論文，傳統上，信任度方面的鴻溝存在於公司內部，而不是公司之間。管理人員受到信任，下屬員工不被信任。

Max Weber, the great German analyst of organisations, “identified the fact that senior figures in bureaucracy operate with discretion, since it is they who formulate, rather than follow, rules,” the paper said.

論文指出，德國組織管理分析大師馬克斯•韋伯(Max Weber)“發現了一條事實，即官僚機構中的高層人物在工作中擁有自主權，因爲他們是規則的制定者，而不是遵從者”。

Senior figures did not always deserve that trust, of course. In any event, the idea that some should be above the rules began to break down in the 1960s and especially in the 1980s, with the rise of the idea of corporate culture.

當然，高層人物並非總是配得上這份信任。無論如何，有些人應當凌駕於規則之上的觀念從上世紀60年代開始瓦解，尤其是進入上世紀80年代之後，隨着“公司文化”這種理念的崛起，這種觀念的瓦解更是迅速。

Popularised by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, corporate culture “was understood as an anti-bureaucratic move” that aspired to substituting values for rules, the Cambridge/Stockholm paper said.

論文指出，湯姆•彼得斯(Tom Peters)和羅伯特•沃特曼(Robert Waterman)在《追求卓越》(In Search of Excellence)一書中普及了公司文化的理念，它“被理解爲一種反官僚主義運動”，希望以價值觀取代規定。

Those values bound everyone in the company together, both workers and managers. It meant employees could be empowered and “less directly managed”. Rather than establishing rafts of rules, employees were educated in the culture. They grasped the values and could then be left to get on with their work without excessive oversight.

那些價值觀把公司裏的每個人——普通員工和管理人員——都團結到一起。這意味着，員工可以獲得自主權，“受到更少的直接管理”。公司不必建立重重規則，而是用文化來教育員工。員工理解了價值觀之後，就可以自己去完成工作，無需太多監督。

It was not always this way. Many companies still had plenty of rules. But this was the ideal. Now the old corporate culture model is breaking down under the strain of global competition, an end to final salary pensions, insecure employment, agency working and outsourcing.

過去並非總是如此。現在許多公司仍然設有大量規則。但推行公司文化曾經是理想的管理方式。如今，在全球競爭壓力、最終薪資養老金制度終結、以及靈活僱傭合同、勞務派遣和外包的影響下，舊有的公司文化模式正在坍塌。

If people are no longer secure in a company then everything changes. “Why should individuals be committed to the values of an organisation to which they have only a fleeting attachment?” the paper’s authors say.

如果人們在公司中的飯碗不再穩固，那麼一切都會發生變化。“如果個人只是暫時在某一組織中工作，那麼他們爲何應當承諾忠於該組織的價值觀呢？”論文作者們表示。

Amazon’s close monitoring is one response; Spotify’s autonomous teams are another. Why would its people in their autonomous teams behave in a trustworthy way? Because, in a world in which they will probably move around, their own reputations, their personal brands, are a vital asset.

亞馬遜的嚴密監視是一種對策；Spotify的自治團隊是另一種對策。自治團隊的成員爲何應當以一種值得信任的方式行事？這是因爲，在一個他們很可能將到處流動的世界裏，他們自己的名聲和個人品牌是一種至關重要的資產。

When you move on, you want to be remembered as someone who was trusted. The more skilled and mobile you are, the more your employer will believe your reputation matters to you.

當你奔赴新前程時，你希望有人記住你是個值得信任的人。你的技能越高、流動性越大，你的僱主就越相信，你的名聲對自己非常重要。

Everyone’s reputation matters to them, but not everyone is as mobile or has skills that are rare or transferable. The further down the work ladder you are, the more employers will believe you need to be controlled.

每個人的名聲對自己都很重要，但並非每個人的流動性都那麼大、或者擁有稀罕或可轉移的技能。你在職場階梯上的地位越低，僱主就越相信，有必要對你進行控制。

There is a class element to this. The new world of work is horribly divided. Egalitarian corporate culture was just a passing moment.

這其中存在一個“階級”元素。新的職場世界分化非常嚴重。平等主義的公司文化只是一個轉瞬即逝的階段。