办公室座位安排学问多

　　Office workers are being treated to a new game: musical chairs.

　　如今，办公室职员正被安排玩一个新游戏：抢椅子游戏。

　　By shifting employees from desk to desk every few months, scattering those who do the same types of jobs and rethinking which departments to place side by side, companies say they can increase productivity and collaboration.

　　公司方面表示，通过让员工每几个月调换一次座位、将从事同类工作的员工分散开来以及重新考虑让哪些部门坐在一起等方式，他们能够提高生产率并促进合作。

　　Proponents say such experiments not only come with a low price tag, but they can help a company's bottom line, even if they leave a few disgruntled workers in their wake.

　　支持者称，这类实验不仅成本低，而且有助于提高公司利润，虽然它们会引起一些员工的不满。

　　In recent years, many companies have moved toward open floor plans and unassigned seating, ushering managers out of their offices and clustering workers at communal tables. But some companies -- especially small startups and technology businesses -- are taking the trend a step further, micromanaging who sits next to whom in an attempt to get more from their employees.

　　近年来，许多公司转向开放空间格局，不指定固定座位，引导管理者走出办公室，并将员工聚在公用办公桌旁。但一些公司(尤其是小型初创公司和科技公司)将这种趋势又向前推进了一步，它们对座位安排进行微观管理，以提高员工的生产率。

　　'If I change the [organizational] chart and you stay in the same seat, it doesn't have very much of an effect,' says Ben Waber, chief executive of Sociometric Solutions, a Boston company that uses sensors to analyze communication patterns in the workplace. 'If I keep the org chart the same but change where you sit, it is going to massively change everything.'

　　Sociometric Solutions首席执行长本・瓦贝尔(Ben Waber)称：“如果我改变(组织系统)图，但你的座位保持不变，是不会产生很大效果的。如果我保持组织系统图不变，但调整你的座位，则会让一切产生巨大变化。”Sociometric Solutions是一家波士顿公司，该公司用传感器来分析工作场所的沟通模式。

　　Mr. Waber says a worker's immediate neighbors account for 40% to 60% of every interaction that worker has during the workday, from face-to-face chats to email messages. There is only a 5% to 10% chance employees are interacting with someone two rows away, according to his data, which is culled from companies in the retail, pharmaceutical and finance industries, among others.

　　瓦贝尔说，一名员工在工作日中的每一种互动都有40%到60%是与邻座展开的，从面对面交谈到电邮信息都是如此。他的数据显示，员工与相隔两排的同事进行互动的几率仅为5%到10%。该数据采自零售、制药和金融等行业的公司。

　　Companies should think carefully about whom they put where, according to experts who study office design and workplace psychology. Grouping workers by department can foster focus and efficiency, says Christian Catalini, an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, but mixing them up can lead to experimentation and the potential for breakthrough ideas.

　　研究办公室设计和工作场所心理学的专家们表示，公司应该认真考虑把什么人安排在什么位置就座。麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)斯隆管理学院(Sloan School of Management)的助理教授克里斯蒂安・卡塔利尼(Christian Catalini)表示，让员工按部门就座有助于提高专注程度和工作效率，但让不同部门的员工混坐能鼓励员工大胆尝试，还能激发可产生突破性创意的潜力。

　　MODCo Media, a New York advertising agency, has tested three different seating arrangements over the past few years. For about six months, the company intermingled its accountants and media buyers, hoping they would begin to absorb each others' skills through 'osmosis' and 'overhearing phone calls.'

　　纽约广告公司MODCo Media在过去几年里试用了三种不同的座位安排。该公司让会计和媒介采购员混坐了约六个月，希望他们能通过“耳濡目染”和“偷听电话”来相互借鉴。

　　The experiment ended up saving MODCo 'a couple hundred thousand dollars a year,' says CEO Erik Dochtermann, but it turned out badly for the accountants. The media buyers began to understand the financial side of the business so well that MODCo no longer needed a full accounting department. Now, the media buyers 'do the accountancy on the fly' and the company's chief financial officer checks their work, says Mr. Dochtermann.

　　该公司首席执行长埃里克・多克特曼(Erik Dochtermann)表示，这项实验最终让公司“一年节省了几十万美元”，但对会计来说却成了坏事。媒介采购员能够很好地理解业务的财务面，好到MODCo不再需要财务部的全班人马了。多克特曼称，媒介采购员现在会“就手做做会计工作”，公司的首席财务长会检查他们的工作。

　　Other seating configurations have helped inspire new products and expedited the training of new employees, he says.

　　他说，其他一些座位安排有助于促进新产品研发，并加快新员工培训速度。

　　At travel website Kayak.com, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Paul English has joked about developing an algorithm to capture all that goes into devising his seating plan for the engineering team.

　　旅游网站Kayak.com联合创始人兼首席技术长保罗・英格利希(Paul English)戏称，要开发一种算法来捕捉决定工程师团队座位设计方案的所有因素。

　　He uses new hires as an excuse to alter the existing layout and thinks carefully about each worker's immediate neighbors. He takes into account everything from his employees' personalities to their political views to their propensity for arriving at work early -- or, more important, their propensity for judging colleagues who arrive late.

　　他以新聘员工为理由对现有的布局进行调整，并仔细斟酌每一位员工的邻座。他将员工性格、政见、提前上班的倾向(还有更重要的一点是评价同事迟到行为的倾向)等种种因素纳入考虑范围。

　　'If I put someone next to you that's annoying or there's a total style clash, I'm going to make your job depressing,' he says.

　　他说：“如果我把一个讨厌的人或者与你风格完全不合的人放在你旁边，那么我会让你的工作变得很郁闷。”

　　Young Chun, a product designer at Kayak, is one of Mr. English's ambassadors in his pursuit of an office with 'a balance of energy.' A self-professed member of the 'loud' contingent of Kayak employees, she was recently dispatched to the mobile group, where she estimated 90% of the workers were quiet, to get them to be more vocal.

　　Kayak的产品设计师永川(Young Chun)是英格利希的办公室“能量平衡”行动大使之一。永川自诩为Kayak员工中“爱说话”小分队成员，最近她被派遣到移动业务组(她估计这里90%的员工都很安静)，任务是让他们多说点话。

　　'The first week that I was down there I was like, 'Oh my god, I could hear a pin drop here,'' she says.

　　她说：“到那里第一周我的感觉是：‘天哪，我能听得见大头针落地的声音。’”

　　It took a few weeks, but Ms. Chun says she was able to get the group to open up and start chatting. Her mission accomplished, she was soon switched to another section of the office.

　　永川花了好几周时间，但她说，在她的努力下，移动业务组开始无拘无束地聊天了。她的任务完成了，然后很快被调到了办公室的另一处区域。

　　Aspects of a worker's disposition can, in fact, be contagious, according to Sigal Barsade, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. 'People literally catch emotions from one another like a virus,' she says. Her research has found that the least-contagious emotional state is one marked by low-energy and sluggishness. The most contagious is a calm, relaxed state -- which she nicknamed 'the California condition.'

　　宾夕法尼亚大学(University of Pennsylvania)沃顿商学院(Wharton School )管理学教授西加尔・巴萨德(Sigal Barsade)称，员工的性格特征其实是有感染力的。她表示：“不夸张地说，情绪就像病毒一样让人交叉感染。”她的研究发现，感染性最弱的是以低能量和慵懒为特征的情绪状态。感染性最强的是冷静、放松的状态――她将其昵称为“加州状态”。

　　People with similar emotional temperaments work best together, Ms. Barsade says. But if a manager is trying to get a stressed-out worker to brighten up, the best strategy is to surround her with lots of cheerful, energetic people.

　　巴萨德说，性情相似的人最适合在一起工作。但如果管理者试图让压力很大的员工放松一些，最好的策略是让许多快乐、充满活力的人坐在这位员工周围。

　　Constantly shuffling people around has its consequences, however. Ms. Barsade says that moving from desk to desk can make workers feel like they have little control over their environment. And some seating experiments can cause a backlash.

　　然而，不断调整座位也会产生问题。巴萨德称，让员工从一张办公桌搬到另一张办公桌会让他们感觉无力控制环境。一些调换座位的实验还会遭到激烈反对。

　　For about four years, employees at HubSpot Inc., a marketing-software company based in Cambridge, Mass., switched seats randomly every three months. The seating strategy was meant to reflect the lack of hierarchy at the company, which it says was especially helpful in recruiting Millennials. Eventually, the company added some structure to the arrangement, splitting workers into loud and quiet groups.

　　总部位于马萨诸塞州剑桥(Cambridge)的HubSpot Inc.是一家营销软件开发公司，该公司在四年左右的时间里每三个月随机调整一次座位。采用这种排座策略的用意是反映公司没有等级之分，该公司称，这对招聘千禧世代特别有帮助。该公司最终在安排中加入了一些系统性因素，将员工分成爱说话群体和不爱说话群体。

　　But when HubSpot decided to group its executives in one part of the office, the employee feedback was negative. The executives felt more efficient and liked being able to chat without having to arrange formal meetings, but the employees felt the higher-ups were too far removed. The setup was reversed after six months.

　　但当HubSpot决定让高管集中坐到办公室的一处区域时，员工给出的反馈却是负面的。高管们感觉这样坐效率更高，他们还喜欢无须安排正式会议就能随意聊天，但员工们觉得上司们高高在上。该公司在六个月后取消了该安排。

　　Employees have the moving process 'down to a science,' says HubSpot Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Dharmesh Shah, unplugging their phones and rolling file cabinets to their new spots swiftly.

　　HubSpot首席技术长兼联合创始人达尔梅什・沙阿(Dharmesh Shah)称，员工们对换座位这件事已经驾轻就熟了，他们会迅速拔下电话，将文件柜推到新的座位上。

　　But having grown to more than 600 workers, the company is facing a new problem: no one can remember who sits where.

　　但该公司的员工如今已经超过了600人，目前他们正面临着一个新问题：没人能记得住谁坐在什么地方。