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Companies aren't leaving serendipity to chance.
俗话说，缘份天注定，但一些公司不这么想。
Firms are thinking up new ways to encourage interactions among employees who normally don't work with each other. The hope is that these casual face-to-face chats among people with different skills might spark new ideas, lead to new solutions or at the least, increase workplace camaraderie.
这些企业正在思考新方法，鼓励那些打算老死不相往来的员工相互沟通，希望拥有不同技能的员工通过面对面的交谈来碰撞出新的思想火花，产生新的解决方案，或者退一步讲，至少可以让工作氛围更和谐。
To make those connections happen, some firms are taking a scientific approach─collecting and analyzing data about their teams and mathematically computing the likelihood that employees will meet. In some instances, they are squeezing workers into smaller spaces so they are more likely to bump into each other. In others, they are installing playful prompts, like trivia games, to get workers talking in traditional conversational dead zones, such as elevators.
为促进员工交流，一些公司正在采取科技手段──收集并分析团队成员的个人数据，从数学角度计算他们愿意相互接触的可能性。举例而言，一些公司缩小办公面积，让员工更容易碰到其他同事;另一些公司则安装好玩的设备，如益智问答屏幕等等，从而让员工在电梯等传统的沟通真空区有话可聊。
But despite all the buzz around serendipity─several panels at the popular tech conference South by Southwest Interactive discussed the topic─it is hard to know for sure whether any of these efforts really work. The real challenge, companies and workplace scholars say, isn't merely connecting workers with their colleagues so much as it is connecting them with the right ones.
打破员工沟通壁垒的努力可谓盛极一时──South by Southwest Interactive时尚科技大会上就有好几个专家小组讨论这个话题──但很难确定这些方法到底有没有效果。研究公司与职场管理的学者们表示，真正的挑战并不在于仅仅让员工们互相碰面，而在于把那些能够相互契合的员工凝聚起来。
'The most productive relationships are difficult to engineer,' says Jason Owen-Smith, a University of Michigan sociologist who studies employee collaboration.
密歇根大学(University of Michigan)研究员工协作领域的社会学家詹森•欧文-史密斯(Jason Owen-Smith)说：“最富有成效的员工合作关系是难以设计并人为促成的。”
Designs for Google Inc.'s GOOG -0.50% new headquarters, expected to be completed in 2015, set out to maximize casual employee conversations, which the firm says were responsible for innovations such as Gmail and Street View. 'We want it to be easy [for] Googlers to collaborate and bump into each other,' says a Google spokeswoman.
谷歌公司(Google Inc.)新的总部大楼预计于2015年建成，其设计初衷就是将员工之间的非正式交流最大化。谷歌公司表示，谷歌邮箱(Gmail)和谷歌街景(Street View)的创意正是来自这种非正式交流。公司发言人说，“我们希望谷歌员工能够相互协作，有面对面的沟通和交流。”
Not surprisingly, the plans are driven by Google's obsession with data. One feature: Every worker within the 1.1 million-square-foot, multilevel complex is expected to be within a 2½ minute walk from each other. The firm and its architect, NBBJ, looked at how fast people can walk and measured the diameter of the space from multiple angles. (An 'infinity-loop'-shaped pathway slopes through the building, connecting employees to each other.) In addition, the floor plan is narrower than typical offices, keeping teams in sight range of one another.
不出意料的是，正是谷歌对于数据分析的痴迷在其中扮演了重要角色：在这座占地面积110万平方英尺(约10.22万平米)的多层综合型总部大楼里，每个员工走到另一个员工那里的时间预计不超过两分半钟。谷歌公司及其总部大楼设计者NBBJ建筑设计事务所观察员工们的步行速度，从不同角度测量办公空间的直径长短。(整座大楼有一个环形的步行通道贯通上下，将不同楼层的员工连接到一起。)此外，公司的办公布局也要比一般写字楼更紧凑一些，从而让不同的团队能够彼此看到对方。
Studies have found that having colleagues work in close proximity to each other does correlate with increased collaboration. Researchers at the University of Michigan studying 172 research scientists recently found that when the scientists shared the same buildings and overlapped in their daily workplace walking patterns─moving between lab space, office space, and the nearest bathroom and elevator─they were significantly more likely to collaborate: For every 100 feet of 'zonal overlap,' collaborations increased by up to 20%.
一些研究发现，让员工在近距离范围内工作有助于提升团队协作。密歇根大学的研究人员对172名从事研究工作的科学家进行调查，发现了一个有趣的现象：那些在同一栋大楼工作、每天低头不见抬头见(在往返于实验室、办公室、距离最近的洗手间和电梯的路上相遇)的科学家，他们之间的协作可能性显著增加。每增加100平方英尺(约9.3平米)的“重合区域”，其协作程度就会增加多达20%。
The more frequently you see and bump into a colleague, the more likely you are to eventually strike up a conversation, says Dr. Owen-Smith, the lead author of the study. 'If that person knows stuff you don't, that process can lead to information transfer,' he says.
这份研究报告的主笔人欧文-史密斯说道，你遇见一个同事的频率越高，就越有可能最终攀谈起来，“如果对方知道一些你不熟悉的东西，信息传输就这样产生了。”
Online retailer Zappos is encouraging employee collisions in its new 200,000-square-foot downtown Las Vegas headquarters, which it expects to occupy this fall. Inspired by dense cities, which allow for more interactions than sprawling suburbs, Zappos will allot workers about 100 square feet per person, instead of the 150 square feet in its current suburban office. Break rooms will be 'really small, so people literally collide,' says Patrick Olson, Zappos's senior manager of campus development. (The smaller space per person is also a cost-saver, to be sure.)
在线零售商Zappos在拉斯维加斯市中心新建了一座占地20万平方英尺(约1.86万平米)的总部大楼，预计在2013年秋季投入使用。因为看到密集的城市布局比稀疏的郊区布局更容易促发人际交流，受此启发，Zappos分配给每个员工的办公面积约为100平方英尺(9.3平米)，有意增加员工在总部大楼中的相遇的机会，而其目前位于郊区的办公大楼人均办公面积为150平方英尺(约14平米)。Zappos公司负责办公地产规划的资深经理帕特里克.奥尔森(Patrick Olson)说道，新大楼的员工休息室“非常非常小，人们真的就是低头不见抬头见”。(当然，缩水的人均办公面积也能节约成本。)
The headquarters are also designed to put its 1,500 staffers in close contact with the city at large. The company is closing off a skybridge connecting the parking garage to the office building, so workers will have to walk a longer route to get to the office, passing pedestrians along the way. Zappos is also opening up its lobby as a free co-working space, like a trendy hotel lobby, so that employees can mingle with workers from other companies and visitors. In its elevators it hopes to install digital games, such as trivia challenges, to help break awkward silences, says Mr. Olson.
Zappos设计的总部大楼还有意让其1,500员工增加与这座城市亲密接触的机会。公司关闭了停车场通往办公大楼的天桥，员工只能绕远走去办公室，沿途要经过不少公共人行道。公司还开放了一楼大厅作为自由的协作空间，就像颇具格调的酒店大堂一样，员工们可以与其他公司的人以及来访者在这里沟通交流。Zappos还打算在电梯内安装益智问答等电子游戏，从而有助于打破让人尴尬的沉闷，奥尔森说道。
'Those ground-floor connection points, we see that as magic,' says Mr. Olson, who switched from a technology job to a real-estate job after a chance conversation with his current boss and met his fiancé by bumping into her at a work event.
奥尔森说：“我们认为，这些随处可见的沟通节点是具有魔力的。”奥尔森自己就是受益者之一：他原先从事技术工作，有一次无意中与现在的主管交谈，随后转而从事地产规划;他的未婚妻也是在一次工作聚会中偶遇的。
Other firms are trying ice breakers to bring workers closer together. David Rose, a researcher at MIT's Media Lab, has teamed up with the design firm Gensler and exhibit-design firm Tellart to design a series of interactive installations expected to be set up later this year in the Portland and San Francisco offices of tech firm Salesforce.comCRM +1.09% and eventually in other companies as well.
另一些公司正在尝试一些“破冰”工具以拉近员工之间的距离。戴维•罗斯(David Rose)是麻省理工学院(MIT)媒体实验室(Media Lab)的研究人员，他与建筑设计公司Gensler和展览设计公司Tellart一起，设计出了一系列互动设备，预计将于今年下半年安装在技术企业Salesforce.com的波兰和旧金山的办公室中，并逐步推广到其他企业。
Among the installations is a 'lunch button' kiosk, which matches up employees with common interests to have lunch together that day. And there is a 'conversation portal'─a two-way videoconferencing system attached to the end of a long cafe table─to help 'spark informal conversation' among diners from offices around the world, Mr. Rose says. Another is a 'conversational balance table' where an animated floral display provides instant feedback on whether someone is hogging a conversation.
罗斯说，在这些互动设备中，有一种名为“午餐按键”(lunch button)的显示设备，能把拥有共同兴趣爱好的就餐者配对起来共进午餐;还有一种名为“交谈门户”(conversation portal)的双向视频对话系统，安装在长条咖啡桌的末端，促成全世界不同办公地点的就餐者“谈天说地”，。此外，还有一款“平衡交谈桌”(conversational balance table)，如果有人喋喋不休，不让别人说话，桌子附带的屏幕就会跳出一幅动画，给予实时反馈。
And workers in Salesforce.com's Portland office may eventually enter and exit through 'voting doors,' in which a question is displayed such as 'Cake or pie?' or 'Is your work tapping into your inner genius?' for which staffers must choose a 'yes' or 'no' door to walk through. Salesforce.com declined to comment on the plans.
Salesforce.com波兰分部的员工可能还会体验一种名为“投票门”(voting door)的设备。通过这道门时，他们必须以“是”或“否”的方式来回答一个问题，如“要蛋糕还是派?”，或者“你从事的工作是否发挥了你的内在潜质?”等等。Salesforce.com不愿对此计划予以置评。
Efforts don't always have to cost a lot of money. In the last two years National Public Radio has held six 'Serendipity Days' in which about 50 employees from different departments, including digital, engineering, HR and news, volunteer to come together and think of new ideas and projects over a two-day period. One idea behind the program is to 'work with groups you wouldn't ordinarily work with through the course of your week,' says Lars Schmidt, NPR's senior director of talent acquisition and innovation, who says in past sessions he has helped develop a new social-media training program for staff.
增加员工沟通协作并不一定要花很多钱。近两年来，美国国家公共广播公司(National Public Radio，缩写NPR)举办了六次“缘份碰头会”(Serendipity Days)，每次邀请50名来自不同部门的员工志愿者，包括数码、工程、人力和新闻部门等，在两天的时间里一起思考新的创意和项目。NPR负责人才招募和创新管理的资深主管拉斯•舒米特(Lars Schmidt)说，这种机制的一个初衷是“让平时没机会一起共事的人形成一个协作团队”，通过这几次的碰头会，他已经为员工协助开发出一个新的社交媒体培训项目。
At Boston marketing agency CTP, employees swap desks and offices each summer. The company started the initiative to encourage more cross-departmental contact between creatives and account executives, who don't normally sit near each other and interact much.
在波士顿一家市场营销机构CTP公司内，员工每年夏季都要互换办公桌和办公室。公司的这一举措是为了鼓励策划人员和客户经理有更多的跨部门接触，因为他们通常不坐在一起，也缺乏足够的交流。
Attempts to engineer serendipity aren't entirely new. Steve Jobs famously designed the Pixar headquarters with central bathrooms so that people from around the company would run into each other. And firms have increasingly adopted open plans and even unassigned seating to get workers mingling more widely. In announcing its recent telecommuting ban, Yahoo Inc. YHOO -1.74% noted in a staff memo that incidental encounters in the hall or around the cafeteria can lead to new insights.
打破员工沟通壁垒的举措算不上是什么新鲜事物。史蒂夫.乔布斯(Steve Jobs)执掌皮克斯动画工作室(Pixar)期间，对总部大楼做了一项令人瞩目的设计：把洗手间从分散转为集中，促使全公司的员工在几个中央洗手间里碰面。越来越多的公司采用开放式办公布局，甚至不指定工位，从而促进更广泛程度的员工融合。最近雅虎公司(Yahoo Inc.)宣布禁止远程办公，并在一份员工备忘录中指出，员工在大堂或咖啡厅的偶遇有助于激发新的想法。
But most companies are 'still really primitive at this,' says Greg Lindsay, a visiting scholar at New York University who studies interactions in the workplace. 'They compress people in the same space, put in a coffee machine and just hope that something good happens.'
不过，大多数企业“对此还处于懵懂状态”，纽约大学(New York University)研究职场互动的访问学者格莱格•林赛(Greg Lindsay)说，“他们压缩人均办公面积，在办公室里摆上一台咖啡机，然后就期待出现什么神奇的转机。”
