2023年经济学人 什么是好的办公室福利?（在线收听）

商业版块

Bartleby

巴托比专栏

What makes a good office perk?

什么是好的办公室福利？

When companies tighten their belts, they look first to discretionary spending.

当企业勒紧裤腰带时，他们首先考虑的是可自行决定的支出。

Meta got rid of free laundry for its workers last year.

Meta去年取消了为员工提供的免费洗衣服务。

In January Google announced a round of lay-offs that included 27 in-house massage therapists.

今年1月，谷歌宣布了一轮裁员，其中包括27名公司内部按摩治疗师。

Salesforce, another tech firm, has axed its contract with a Californian “wellness retreat”, where employees would have done God-knows-what with each other.

另一家科技公司Salesforce已经取消了与加州一家“健康疗养地”的合同，天知道员工在那里干什么。

The chopping of such benefits has been christened the “perkcession”.

这种砍掉福利的做法被命名为“福利衰退”。

But just as perks get cut in bad times, so they return in the good.

但就像福利在不景气的时候会被削减一样，等日子好过了，福利又会回来。

Eventually you can expect to read articles about a “perkcovery”.

终有一天，你可以读到关于“福利回归”的文章。

What makes a good perk?

什么才是好的福利呢？

Dispensability is part of the point.

其中一点是福利是可有可无的。

This is not like a salary or a health-care plan; if it cannot be cut, it is not a perk.

福利不同于工资或医保，如果是不能免去的，那就不算福利。

Views on what counts as a discretionary benefit can shift over time.

对于什么是自行决定的福利，人们的观点可能会随着时间的推移而改变。

Before the pandemic being allowed to work from home every so often was seen as a perk.

在疫情之前，允许偶尔居家办公被视为一种福利。

Anyone who still describes it that way has failed to grasp how much the world has changed for white-collar workers.

如果有人仍然这样描述居家办公，那么这个人就没有意识到，对于白领来说，世界已经发生了多大的变化。

By the same token many of the perks that are now being cut were designed for a pre-pandemic world of long weeks in full offices.

出于同样的原因，现在被砍掉的许多福利都是为疫情前的工作情况设计的：满满当当的办公室和漫长的工作周。

Last month Google warned that services at snack bars and cafeterias were being reviewed because attendance patterns had changed.

上个月，谷歌警告称正在重新审视小吃餐吧和食堂的服务，因为员工出勤模式发生了变化。

Working out which perks are valuable to workers is hard.

要弄清哪些福利对员工来说是有价值的并不容易。

Asking employees may not always yield good answers.

询问员工可能并不能总是得到好的答案。

A poll conducted last year for Trusaic, a software firm, asked American workers what perks they would like to see introduced: the top answer was hangover leave.

去年为软件公司特鲁萨克进行的一项民意调查询问了美国员工，他们希望看到推出什么福利：排名第一的是宿醉假。

Perks that sound great in theory may not work out that well in practice.

理论上听起来很棒的福利在实践中可能效果不会那么好。

Several firms, Goldman Sachs and Netflix among them, tout the fact that they offer members of staff unlimited holidays.

包括高盛和网飞在内的几家公司吹嘘说，他们为员工提供无限制的假期。

But other companies have abandoned the policy because the absence of clear rules leaves employees unsure how much time they can really take off; some take less than they did under a fixed allocation of vacation days.

但其他公司已经放弃了这项政策，因为没有明确的规定，员工就不确定他们真正可以休息多长时间，有些人比之前有固定假期时休假更少了。

Perks should reinforce a culture, not be undermined by it.

福利应该巩固企业文化，而不是被企业文化所破坏。

Firms should not be offering employees access to advice on financial well-being if they pay worse than everyone else.

如果员工的薪酬比其他人都低，那么公司就不应该给员工提供财务健康方面的建议。

They should not be touting mindfulness courses if they expect employees to work until they drop from exhaustion.

如果企业希望员工工作到筋疲力尽为止，那么他们就不应该吹嘘他们提供正念课程。

And perks should be motivating to the widest possible group.

福利应该激励尽可能广泛的群体。

Snack cupboards filled with calorific goodies are some people’s version of a sugary paradise, and others’ idea of obesogenic hell.

装满高热量美味零食的小吃柜是一些人眼中的甜蜜天堂，也是另一些人心目中的肥胖地狱。

If your perk is a source of controversy, it’s probably not right.

如果你的福利是引起争议的来源，那么这个福利可能并不合适。

The framing of a perk matters, too.

福利的设定也很重要。

Mental accounting is a concept that was coined by Richard Thaler, a behavioural economist, to describe how people put different values on money depending on context.

心理账户效应是行为经济学家理查德·塞勒首创的一个概念，用来描述人们如何在不同情况下对金钱赋予不同的价值。

A discount on a small purchase feels more significant than the same amount off a big-ticket item, for example.

例如，数额相同的折扣，用于买小件东西比买大件东西让人感觉更有意义。

Helping people with things they resent paying for can also be more effective than doling out treats.

帮人们处理他们不愿花钱去做的事，也可能比直接给钱更有效。

In “Mixed Signals”, an enjoyable new book on incentives, Uri Gneezy describes an experiment he conducted with three academics in Singapore, in which taxi drivers there were rewarded if they did a certain amount of exercise.

在一本关于激励的有趣新书《混合信号》中，乌里·格尼兹描述了他与三名学者在新加坡进行的一项实验，在实验中，如果出租车司机做了一定量的锻炼，他们就会得到奖励。

Some drivers were given $100 in cash and others were given a credit equal to the value of a much-disliked rental fee they had to pay to the firm that owned the taxi.

一些司机获得100美元的现金，其他司机可以抵免他们必须支付给公司的一笔他们很讨厌的租赁费（因为出租车为公司所有）。

The rental credit proved much more motivating to drivers.

事实证明，租金抵免对司机的激励作用要大得多。

Employers who offer help with pet insurance or student-loan debt repayments may be onto something.

提供宠物保险或学生贷款债务偿还方面帮助的雇主可能会得到不错的效果。

Perks also work best if they are noticed.

如果福利被人注意到，也会让福利发挥最好的作用。

Employees can quickly become habituated to something that is unvaryingly available.

员工很快就会习惯于一成不变的可获得的东西。

Ben and Jerry’s offers its staff three pints of ice cream and frozen yogurt a day; that risks being a benefit which fades into the background, even if its employees are less likely to.

本杰瑞冰淇淋公司每天为员工提供三品脱冰激凌和冷冻酸奶，这一好处可能会逐渐变得不起眼，尽管这家公司的员工们可能不会这样想。

Time-limited seasonal benefits are a good answer to this: some firms let their people knock off early on Friday afternoons during the summer, for example.

有时间限制的季节性福利是解决这一问题的好办法：例如，一些公司允许员工在夏季的周五下午提前下班。

By the time the days lengthen and the weather warms, that perk might help to keep good employees in their posts.

等到白天变长，天气变暖时，这种福利可能有助于留住优秀员工。

No employer should mistake perks for the things that really matter to their staff.

任何雇主都不应该把福利误认为是对员工真正重要的东西。

Research into what workers value most reveals the same priorities: stimulating work, being recognised by their managers, good wages.

研究表明员工最看重的东西和这些东西有同样的优先顺序：能激发兴趣的工作、得到经理的认可、丰厚的工资。

When it comes to office environments, too, basics like natural light count for more than a massage.

当谈到办公环境时，像自然光这样的基本条件也比按摩服务更重要。

But perks can help at the margins.

但福利可以在边缘地带提供帮助。

If you are going to dole them out, the trick is to find something that is both discretionary and meaningful.

如果你打算赠予福利，诀窍就是找到既可自行决定，又确实有意义的东西。