本集內容

The future of the office 辦公場所的未來

學習要點

有關 “working from home（在家辦公）” 的詞匯

邊看邊答

According to Tushar Agarwal, what are companies and people demanding more of?

文字稿

Remember this? This is what an office looks like. During the pandemic, millions of people swapped their large open-plan offices for their living rooms. Now, some companies say their employees need never come back in.

還記得這是什么嗎？這是辦公大樓。在新冠病毒疫情期間，數以百萬計的人從大型開放式辦公室搬到了自家客廳里工作。現在，一些公司表示，他們的員工再也不用回到辦公室上班了。

Brynn Harrington, Vice President of People Growth, Facebook
Facebook believes that remote work is the future. We think in the future we're going to increasingly take work to people versus need to bring people to work. We also want to be able to give our employees choice to live and build lives in places that they love ---– and we want to increase our ability to hire from places around the world, not just places where we currently have offices.

布琳·哈靈頓     臉書（Facebook）員工成長副總裁
“臉書認為未來將是遠程工作的時代。我們認為未來會更多地把工作帶給人們，而不是需要讓人們去辦公室工作。我們也希望能讓員工選擇在熱愛的地方安居樂業、創造生活，另外，我們想提高在世界各地招聘的能力，而不僅僅是在目前設有辦公室的地方招聘。”

Nina Nanji, BBC correspondant
But isn't everyone fed up with working from home by now? Some people must be desperate to get back into the office.

尼娜·南吉     BBC通訊員
“可是大家現在不都已經厭倦在家辦公了嗎？肯定有些人很想回到辦公室去。”

Brynn Harrington, Vice President of People Growth, Facebook
It's really interesting! In our data we're seeing that some people are having an amazing experience while they're working from home, and some people are really struggling. So, the big picture takeaway is that this is a really, really personalised thing for people.

布琳·哈靈頓     臉書（Facebook）員工成長副總裁
“有趣的是，我們的數據顯示，有些人很享受在家辦公，但有些人卻感到很吃力。所以，放眼全局，我們意識到這是一件因人而異的事情。”

Facebook estimates that more than half of its staff could work remotely in the coming years, but it insists the move is not about saving costs. And it says it's committed to keeping its offices – like this one – open.

臉書估計，未來幾年內，超過一半的員工將可以遠程工作，但堅稱這樣做并非為了節省成本。該公司說將盡力保持辦公室的開放，比如這棟大樓。

Other tech giants such as Microsoft and Twitter have also indicated staff could stay remote – even after lockdowns ease. On Wall Street, they seem less enthusiastic about the idea. The boss of Goldman Sachs rejected working from home as a new normal – labelling it an 'aberration' instead. There are also fears it could create more inequality.

微軟（Microsoft）和推特（Twitter）等其它科技巨頭也表示，員工即使在封鎖解除后也可以繼續遠程工作。但華爾街的公司似乎不那么熱衷于這個想法。高盛集團（Goldman Sachs）的老板拒絕將在家辦公視為新常態，而是稱其為 “反常態”。也有人擔心允許員工在家辦公會造成更多的不平等。

Professor Nick Bloom, Economist, Stanford University
The problem is, if you're working from home five days a week and most of the rest of the team is in the office, you're likely to lose out in terms of promotions and, you know, pay increases. And looking at the data, it's clear that we see a much higher share of particularly women with young kids, disabled people, people living very far from the office that look like they're going to choose to work from home for five days a week.

尼克·布魯姆教授     斯坦福大學經濟學家
“問題在于，如果你每周在家工作五天，但團隊中其他大部分成員卻在辦公室工作，那你很可能在升職加薪方面吃虧。從數據上看，有小孩的女性、殘疾人士、住得離辦公室很遠的人居家辦公的比例很高，估計他們會選擇每周在家工作五天。”

For many companies, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle – with workers splitting their time between office and home.

對許多公司來說，答案可能介于二者之間，即員工們把時間分在辦公室和家中。

Tushar Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Hubble
The office does have a future, we believe the future is hybrid. We believe the future is flexible. The demand for flexible workspace has just gone through the roof. Just in the month of March, we're back to about sixty to seventy percent of pre-Covid levels, and actually huge amounts of companies that are demanding flexible space used to be in traditional lease space, so now people want more and more flexibility than ever before.

圖沙爾·阿加瓦爾（Tushar Agarwal）     Hubble 公司聯合創始人兼首席執行官
“辦公室還是有未來的，我們認為未來的辦公場所是兩者兼存。我們相信未來是靈活的。人們對靈活辦公空間的需求已經猛增。僅在三月份，我們就回到了疫情前水平的60%到70%，其實，很多現在要求靈活空間的公司過去都是在傳統租賃空間內辦公的，所以現在人們比以往任何時候都更需要靈活變通。”

One thing's clear – the world of work will look very different to how it did before this crisis.

有一點顯而易見，未來的職場萬象將與這場危機前的情況截然不同。

詞匯

struggling 吃力地做

aberration 反常現象

splitting 分開

hybrid （兩種事物的）混合

through the roof 飛漲，激增

問題答案

Flexibility. Companies want more flexible space and people want more flexibility than ever before.