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One possibility is that managers are less certain of their team’s commitment and are holding more meetings to check on them. Another is that managers call so many meetings to validate their own existence when they are not in the office. However, the academics suggest the greater need for meetings is the result of the greater difficulty of co-ordinating employees when they are working remotely—another hint that the process is inefficient. When working remotely, employees also spend less time being evaluated, trained and coached.
其中一种可能原因是管理者们不放心他们团队的投入，因此通过召开更多会议来监督他们。另一个可能性是，不在办公室的管理者们通过召开多次会议来证明自己的存在感。然而，学者们认为，会议需求的增加是由于远程工作时协调员工的难度加大，这也同样暗示了远程办公过程的效率低下。进行远程工作的员工接受评估、培训和指导的时间也更少。
This seems a raw deal for the employees. They received no more money for the overtime. Although they saved commuting time, this did not offset the extra hours spent in meetings. Not all workers behaved the same way. Those who had worked at the company the longest tended to be more productive, suggesting that they found it easier to navigate the hazards of home-working. Employees with children worked around 20 minutes a day more than those without, implying an even greater fall in their productivity, presumably because they were distracted by child-care duties.
这样的方式对员工来说似乎并不公平。他们没有收到加班费。虽然他们节省了通勤时间，但也并不能抵消额外的会议时间。并非所有员工的行为方式都一样。那些在公司工龄最久的人往往更有效率，这表明他们更容易克服居家办公的危险。相较于没有孩子的员工，有孩子的员工每天的工作时间要多出约20分钟，这意味着他们的工作效率下降的更多，大概是他们因为照顾孩子而分心了吧。
So does this mean companies will abandon remote working altogether, even its hybrid version? The academics point out that the staff at the firm under study are nearly all college-educated and their roles “involve significant cognitive work, developing new software or hardware applications or solutions, collaborating with teams of professionals, working with clients, and engaging in innovation and continuous improvement”. Such work may have posed a particular challenge in remote settings, compared with occupations like responding to customer calls, say, where employees may work to a scripted set of replies.
那么，这是否意味着公司将完全放弃远程工作模式，甚至放弃远程办公的混合版本？学者们指出，被研究公司的员工几乎都受过大学教育，他们的职务“包括重要的认知工作、开发新的软件或硬件应用程序或解决方案、与专业团队合作、联络客户以及参与持续的创新改进工作”。与接听客户电话这样员工按照给定话术进行回复的职业相比，这类工作在远程环境中可能会带来特殊的挑战。
It is hardly surprising that there would be some teething and co-ordination problems involved with remote working. The practice was, after all, imposed suddenly. The study stopped last August and one wonders whether employees have learned to use their time more efficiently since then. And the research shows that employees were able to achieve as much output with slightly less “focus time” than they had at the office. The real source of inefficiency—surprise, surprise—was the time spent in meetings. And the answer is simple; don’t call as many, and keep them short.
远程工作会出现一些初期困难和协调问题，这并不奇怪。这种做法毕竟是突然强制实行的。研究于去年8月停止，人们不禁要问，员工自那以后是否学会了更有效地利用时间。研究表明，远程办公的员工们的“专注时间”比在办公室时的更短，却能获得同样多的产出。想不到吧，效率低下的真正根源是会议时间。答案很简单；不要召开那么多次会议，而且要简短。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
