4天工作制使员工的工作效率提高了40%
4天工作制使员工的工作效率提高了40%
Workers at Microsoft Japan enjoyed an enviable perk this summer: working four days a week, enjoying a three-day weekend — and getting their normal, five-day paycheck. The result, the company says, was a productivity boost of 40%.
今年夏天，在日本的微软公司的员工享有一项令人羡慕的福利:每周工作四天，一周休息三天，还能拿到正常的五天工资。该公司表示，其结果是生产率提高了40%。
Microsoft Japan says it became more efficient in several areas, including lower electricity costs, which fell by 23%. And as its workers took five Fridays off in August, they printed nearly 60 percent fewer pages.
日本的微软公司表示，它在多个领域的效率都有所提高，包括电力成本下降了23%。由于该公司员工在8月份有5个周五休假，他们打印的纸张减少了近60%。
All of the employees who took Fridays off were given special paid leave, the company says. Encouraged by the results, it plans to hold a similar trial in the winter.
该公司表示，所有周五休假的员工都获得了特殊的带薪休假。受此结果鼓舞，该公司计划在冬季进行类似的试验。
Because of the shorter workweek, the company also put its meetings on a diet. The standard duration for a meeting was slashed from 60 minutes to 30 — an approach that was adopted for nearly half of all meetings. In a related cut, standard attendance at those sessions was capped at five employees.
由于每周的工作时间较短，公司还对会议进行了限制。会议的标准时长从60分钟减少到30分钟，几乎一半的会议都采用了这种方式。在相关的削减中，这些会议的标准出席人数被限制在5名员工。
In a blog post announcing the plan in July, Microsoft Japan said there was often no reason for meetings to run an hour, or to tie up multiple people from the same team.
今年7月，日本的微软公司在一篇宣布该计划的博客文章中表示，通常没有理由让会议持续一小时，或者让同一团队的多人都来开会。
Citing the need for a shift in time management, Microsoft also urged people to use collaborative chat channels rather than "wasteful" emails and meetings.
微软公司还以时间管理需要转变为由，敦促人们使用协作聊天渠道，而不是浪费时间的电子邮件和会议。
The news prompted excitement among many workers in Japan. A sampling of comments from the Asian news site ranges from "Here's to hoping my boss reads about this" to "So I guess me feeling like I'm ready to be done for the week by Wednesday ."
这一消息使许多日本工人感到兴奋。亚洲新闻网站上出现一些评论，如“希望我的老板能读到这篇文章”，“我觉得自己已经准备好在周三之前完成这周的工作了。”
Four-day workweeks made headlines around the world in the spring of 2018, when Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand trust management company, announced a 20% gain in employee productivity and a 45% increase in employee work-life balance after a trial of paying people their regular salary for working four days. Last October, the company made the policy permanent.
2018年春天，为期四天的工作周成为了世界各地的头条新闻。新西兰信托管理公司“永久守护”宣布，在对员工进行四天正常工作并给予正常工资的试验后，员工的工作效率提高了20%，工作与生活的平衡度提高了45%。去年10月，该公司将这一政策永久化。
The Microsoft trial roughly doubled Perpetual Guardian's productivity gain. But for now at least, the company isn't saying whether it will test the four-day workweek policy in other locations or consider making it permanent.
微软的试验使“永久守护”公司的生产率提高了大约一倍。但至少到目前为止，该公司还没有表示是否会在其他地方试行四天工作制，或是否会考虑将其永久化。
Noting that Microsoft Japan's "Work Life Choice Challenge 2019 Summer" was a pilot project, a Microsoft spokesperson tells NPR via email, "In the spirit of a growth mindset, we are always looking for new ways to innovate and leverage our own technology to improve the experience for our employees around the globe."
微软发言人通过电子邮件告诉NPR，日本的微软公司“2019年夏季的工作生活选择挑战”是一个试点项目，“本着增长思维的精神，我们一直在寻找创新和利用我们自己的技术的新方法，以改善我们全球员工的体验。”
Many employees might be heartened by the prospect of a three-day weekend, but trials like the recent one in Japan are still only drops in a very large bucket of companies and workers worldwide. While employers could now be more likely to experiment by shortening their own workweeks, workplace analyst and author Dan Schawbel says that for the time being, employees are more likely to focus on a more common workplace perk: flexibility.
很多员工可能会对三天周末的前景感到振奋，但像最近在日本进行的试验，对全球范围内的企业和工人来说，仍然只是杯水车薪。虽然雇主现在可能更愿意尝试缩短自己的工作周，但职场分析师兼作家丹•斯科贝尔(Dan Schawbel)表示，就目前而言，员工更有可能专注于一个更常见的职场福利:灵活性。
