僱員真的有自主休假話語權嗎?

Imagine working for an employer who treated you like a grown-up and let you take as much holiday as you liked. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

想象一下，你的僱主把你當作一個成年人，讓你想休多少假就休多少假。這不是很棒嗎？

This is the deal Sir Richard Branson is extending to his private staff, and almost everyone has judged it very lovely indeed. Last week, he wrote a blog post extolling his own smart move and in the comments below he was deemed to be showing the way to a better future. Sir Richard isn’t the first to introduce this policy – for years Netflix has been declining to monitor how much time its people take off – but he is the first to see how much good publicity can come from it.

這是理查德•布蘭森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)提供給手下員工的待遇，幾乎每個人都認爲這個主意的確棒極了。上週，布蘭森在一篇博客中讚美了自己的明智之舉，在文章下面的評論中，他被認爲指明瞭一條通向更美好未來的道路。布蘭森不是第一個引入這種政策的人，數年來美國視頻流服務商Netflix一直實行不記錄員工休假天數的政策，但他是第一個發現這種政策能帶來多少好名聲的人。

“It is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week or a month off,” he explained, his words accompanied by a photo of him lolling in a hammock, smartphone in hand, the Caribbean Sea lapping beneath him, and the fronds of a palm tree almost touching the locks of his hair.

“員工自己可以決定，是否（以及何時）想休幾小時、一天、一週或一個月的假，”布蘭森解釋道。文字旁的照片上，他懶洋洋地躺在一張吊牀上，手裏拿着智能手機，身後是加勒比海，棕櫚樹的葉片幾乎碰到他的一綹綹頭髮了。

Alas, there is a catch to all this sunshine and sand. Sir Richard goes on to explain that staff will only take time off when they “feel a hundred per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project”.

唉，這些陽光和沙灘可是有陷阱的。布蘭森接着解釋說，員工只有在“百分之百確信自己和所在團隊手頭項目進展良好”的情況下才會決定休假。

Suddenly the deal looks like a staggeringly poor one for the people who run the entrepreneur’s office. In all the decades that I have worked, there has never been a single moment when I was 100 per cent comfortable that I was on top of everything. I can’t believe it is any different at Virgin.

突然間，這種待遇對那些爲這名企業家打工的人成了一個極其糟糕的主意。在我幾十年的工作生涯中，我從來沒有百分之百確定自己完全掌控一切事情。我無法相信在維珍(Virgin)集團事情會有什麼不同。

The trouble with modern work is that it is endless. You are never through it, which means that judging when to take a break is very difficult indeed. A fixed holiday entitlement tells us it is OK to take a break – even though our work is far from done.

現代工作的問題在於它是無窮無盡的。你永遠無法完成它，這意味着判斷何時可以休息一會真的非常困難。固定的休假天數告訴我們，就算我們遠遠沒有完成工作，休息一下也是可以的。

When it comes to holidays, we are pulled in two different directions. The more disaffected we are, the more holiday we want to take; the more ambitious, the more we’re inclined to take none at all.

談及假期，我們可以分成兩路人。我們對工作越不關心，我們就越想休更多的假；而我們在工作上越是雄心勃勃，我們就越傾向於完全不休假。

In neither case should the choice be left entirely to us. Those who would rather be on permanent holiday need to be told to come to work; those who can never bring themselves to take a break need to be told to take one.

任何一種情況下，選擇都不應該完全留給我們自己。那些希望永遠休假的，需要告訴他們去工作；而那些永遠不會自己選擇休息一會的，需要告訴他們去休假。

It is possible that the no-fixed-holiday policy might work if we all had a clear idea of what an acceptable amount of holiday looked like. But we don’t have a clue. It varies not only between people but between countries. In Europe we like a great deal of it – particularly in France where workers take a delightful 30 days – while in the US no one believes in holidays at all. The normal amount is 10 days, but only wimps actually take that. What is thought reasonable also varies between sectors – some teachers view anything less than three months as an outrage – and even between companies in the same industry.

如果我們都能清楚地知道可以接受的假期天數是多少，“不固定假期”政策或許是可行的。但我們毫無頭緒。可接受的假期天數不僅有人與人之間的差異，國與國之間也是不同的。在歐洲，我們期望有很多假期，特別是在法國，法國的工作者每年可以享受令人愉悅的30天假期。而在美國，根本沒人相信假期這回事。美國的正常假期是10天，但只有沒出息的人才會真的休假。行業不同，被認爲合理的假期天數也不同，一些老師認爲少於3個月的假期是令人憤怒的。即使是在同一個行業，公司與公司之間也不一樣。

Given all this, when we take a new job we need to know what the going rate is. If our employers won’t give us a hint, we have to work it out ourselves. A no-policy rule does not mean that no one is counting, but that we will all start monitoring each other’s holidays obsessively in order to work out how much to allow ourselves. It will take a brave person to book two weeks in the sun if their boss always settles for a long weekend.

考慮到這一切差異，當我們找到一份新工作的時候，我們需要了解公司的相關規定是什麼。如果我們的僱主不給我們任何提示，我們就必須自己搞清楚。不固定假期的政策並不意味着沒人計算你休了多少天，而是意味着我們會開始互相密切關注其他人的假期，以搞清楚我們自己能休多少天。如果老闆總是用一個長週末（週末前後加上一兩天——譯者注）花掉年假，員工要有足夠膽量纔敢去陽光燦爛的度假勝地歡度2星期的假期。

Sir Richard says he hopes the scheme will be soon be copied by all his subsidiaries. But here I spot another catch. Is he really going to tell Virgin stewardesses, who currently are not at liberty to choose their own shade of lipstick, that they can take off as much time as they like? Or does he mean that the enlightenment will spread only as far as managers – which doesn’t sound terribly enlightened at all?

布蘭森表示，他希望所有的子公司很快就能效仿這個做法。但我在這裏發現了第二個陷阱。他真的會告訴維珍的女空乘她們想休多少假就休多少假嗎？這些空乘連選擇自己脣膏色澤的自由都沒有。或者說他的意思是這個開明的舉措只惠及經理層？那聽上去就一點也不開明瞭。

Although the deal itself is a dud, it does have logic on its side. Netflix points out that as we no longer expect people to work 9 to 5, and we trust them to work from home, it is madness to cling to the idea of fixed holidays. This is quite right. But it still doesn’t make it a good idea, at least not for the employee. Flexible working has been the worst deal for professional workers – and the best one for their employers – that there has ever been. Productivity soars, not because everyone is happy to be given freedom, but because they find they never stop working. Netflix reports that its choose-your-own holiday policy has made productivity go up even further. I can quite believe it, and don’t approve one bit.

儘管這種待遇本身是一張空頭支票，它的確有它的邏輯。Netflix指出，既然我們不再期望人們朝九晚五地工作，而我們又信任他們可以在家工作，還固守固定假期的觀念就神經不正常了。這說得很對，但依然不是一個好主意，至少對員工來說不是一個好主意。彈性工作制對專業的員工來說是有史以來最壞的待遇，而對僱主來說是最好的事情。生產率上升了，不是因爲每個人都對自己被賦予的自由感到高興，而是因爲他們永遠無法停止工作。Netflix還報告，採用“自選”假期政策後，生產率進一步提升。我相信這回事，但我對此完全不贊同。

This doesn’t mean the traditional way most employers approach holiday – keeping a minute track of all absences – is the right one. Excessive monitoring is almost always a bad idea. And the notion of an annual entitlement that cannot be carried over so that people end up taking holiday when it suits no one – that makes no sense, either. The answer is simple. Companies should state how much holiday people are expected to take, and then leave it up to them to take roughly that amount, give or take a day or two, as they see fit.

這並不意味着絕大多數僱主對待休假問題的傳統方式——詳細記錄員工的離崗時間——就是正確的。過度監控通常是個糟糕的主意。而年假無法保留至未來年份，致使人們在對誰都不合適的時候休假——這個規定也沒有道理。答案很簡單。公司應該清楚地聲明它期望員工休假多少天，並讓員工大致上休那麼多天假，員工可以隨自己心意增添或者減少一兩天。