男性更愛佯裝工作狂 職場得寵

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

想象有那麼一家奉行高效工作狂文化的頂尖專業服務公司，裏面的每個人都被要求立即爲客戶提供服務、隨時準備出差，並且幾乎每天晚上和週末都要待命。這會是一份折磨人的工作，但是在最頂尖的會計事務所、律所、投資銀行和諮詢公司，生活就是這樣的。

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

不過，有那麼一個見不得光的小祕密：其中一些人，尤其是男人，表面上交出了每週八九十個小時的工作時間，但可能只是在假裝。

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

波士頓大學奎斯特羅姆商學院(Boston University’s Questrom School of Business)的教授埃琳·裏德(Erin Reid)進行的研究顯示，至少在一家頂尖的諮詢公司，不少人採取了這樣的辦法。我們無從知道她在這家不具名的諮詢公司所得出的結論是否適用於更廣泛的職場。但她在學術期刊《組織科學》(Organization Science)上發表的這一研究成果，提供了一種思路，讓人瞭解職場對男女員工有何不同，以及一味強調長時間工作的進取文化或許會讓一些企業變得更糟。

Ms. Reid interviewed more than 100 people in the American offices of a global consulting firm and had access to performance reviews and internal human resources documents. At the firm there was a strong culture around long hours and responding to clients promptly.

在這家全球性諮詢公司的美國辦公室，裏德採訪了逾百名員工，並且可以查閱他們的績效評估資料和公司內部的人力資源檔案。這家企業有着很強的長時間工作和快速回應客戶需求的文化。

“When the client needs me to be somewhere, I just have to be there,” said one of the consultants Ms. Reid interviewed. “And if you can’t be there, it’s probably because you’ve got another client meeting at the same time. You know it’s tough to say I can’t be there because my son had a Cub Scout meeting.”

“客戶需要我去哪，我就得去哪，”裏德採訪的一名諮詢師說。“如果你沒法到場，那很可能是因爲已經有了另一名客戶要在同一時間見面。你知道很難把到不了是因爲兒子要參加幼童軍活動這樣的話說出口。”

Some people fully embraced this culture and put in the long hours, and they tended to be top performers. Others openly pushed back against it, insisting upon lighter and more flexible work hours, or less travel; they were punished in their performance reviews.

有些人全身心投入到這種文化中，花大量時間來工作，他們往往也是表現最好的人。另有些人則公開牴觸這種文化，堅持要求削減工作量、增加工作時間的彈性，或者減少出差；他們在績效評估上受到了懲罰。

The third group is most interesting. Some 31 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women whose records Ms. Reid examined managed to achieve the benefits of a more moderate work schedule without explicitly asking for it.

第三組人最有趣。裏德查閱的記錄裏，有31%的男員工和11%的女員工設法享受到了中等工作強度的好處，而他們並沒有直截了當地提出這種要求。

They made an effort to line up clients who were local, reducing the need for travel. When they skipped work to spend time with their children or spouse, they didn’t call attention to it. One team on which several members had small children agreed among themselves to cover for one another so that everyone could have more flexible hours.

他們儘量安排自己接待本地的客戶，從而減少出差的必要。當放下工作和孩子或配偶在一起時，他們會保持低調。有一個團隊，其中好幾名成員有年幼的孩子。他們一致決定互相照應，讓大家都能在時間上擁有更大的靈活性。

A male junior manager described working to have repeat consulting engagements with a company near enough to his home that he could take care of it with day trips. “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said, adding that he generally kept weekend work down to two hours of catching up on email.

一名較低級別的男性經理講述了他如何努力讓自己同一個離家不遠的公司反覆打交道，於是就能當天來回，搞定客戶的諮詢工作。“我儘量5點下班，5點半到家，吃晚飯，陪女兒玩，”他說。此外，他表示自己通常把週末的工作量減少到兩個小時的郵件查閱。

Despite the limited hours, he said: “I know what clients are expecting. So I deliver above that.” He received a high performance review and a promotion.

儘管沒有長時間工作，但他說：“我知道客戶們想要什麼，於是我給他們提供超出預期的服務。”他在績效評估中得到了不錯的反饋，並得以晉升。

What is fascinating about the firm Ms. Reid studied is that these people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues. For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads.

裏德研究的這一類人，按照她的術語來說，是“佯裝”成了工作狂。有趣的是，他們的績效評估和那些極爲上進的同事一樣出色。對那些善於僞裝的人來說，較少的工作量並不會帶來實質性的損害。

It calls to mind the episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza leaves his car in the parking lot at Yankee Stadium, where he works, and gets a promotion because his boss sees the car and thinks he is getting to work earlier and staying later than anyone else. (The strategy goes awry for him, and is not recommended for any aspiring partners in a consulting firm.)

這讓人想起了《宋飛正傳》(Seinfeld)裏的角色喬治·克斯坦薩(George Costanza)。他把車留在了洋基體育場的停車場，也就是他工作的地方。老闆看見了他的車，以爲他比別人早到晚退，所以就升了他的職。（這個方法對喬治來說後來出了岔子，也不推薦任何在諮詢公司工作的進取人士這麼做。）

A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods.

研究還發現，女性——特別是孩子尚還年幼的女員工——有大得多的可能性會通過較爲正式的渠道要求在工作上獲得更大的靈活性，比如說休完產假後明確減少工作量。而提出休陪產假要求的男性，他們的績效評估則似乎會受到影響，所以也許更加感覺到，需要通過那些非正式的辦法來抽時間陪伴家人。

The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.

結果是顯而易見的：那些明確要求削減工作量的人，其中大部分是女性，他們的績效評估會受到影響；而那些悄悄減輕工作量的人則不會。“請求原諒，而非許可”的準則看來在這裏是適用的。

It would be dangerous to extrapolate too much from a study at one firm, but Ms. Reid said in an interview that since publishing a summary of her research in Harvard Business Review she has heard from people in a variety of industries describing the same dynamic.

僅僅對一家公司進行一項研究就做出過多的推斷是有風險的，不過裏德在採訪中表示，自從在《哈佛商業評論》(Harvard Business Review)上發表了自己的研究摘要後，就收到了各行各業人士的反饋，表示情況確實如此。

High-octane professional service firms are that way for a reason, and no one would doubt that insane hours and lots of travel can be necessary if you’re a lawyer on the verge of a big trial, an accountant right before tax day or an investment banker advising on a huge merger.

無限進取的專業服務公司是有存在的理由的。如果你是一個馬上要庭審的大案的律師，一個即將迎來納稅日的會計，或是一個爲大型併購提供諮詢的投資銀行家，那麼沒人會質疑瘋狂加班加點和成日出差奔波的必要性。

But the fact that the consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive. The person working 80 hours isn’t necessarily serving clients any better than the person working 50.

然而，悄悄減輕工作量的諮詢師和真正每週工作至少80小時的人，兩者的績效評估同樣出色。這樣的事實就表明，沉重的工作量可能更多是在顯示員工對公司的投入程度，而並不代表他們真的更有成效。就服務顧客而言，每週工作80個小時的人的表現並不一定比50個小時的人更優秀。

In other words, maybe the real problem isn’t men faking greater devotion to their jobs. Maybe it’s that too many companies reward the wrong things, favoring the illusion of extraordinary effort over actual productivity.

也就是說，真正的問題可能並不是男性佯裝自己對工作有更大的投入，而可能是太多公司獎勵了錯誤的東西，過於青睞極爲努力的表象，而非實際的工作成效。