工作场所之争：回家还是坐班？

    有一段时间，在家工作是一项时髦的企业福利。百思买（Best Buy）的“只看成果工作环境”(Results Only Work Environment)计划允许企业员工在任何地方、任何时候工作，曾经赢得媒体的盛赞。美国联邦政府接受远程办公，部分是因为远程办公可以实现紧急情况下的人员迅速组织。而且，多项研究显示，远程办公有助于提升工作表现和员工留任率。

    但过去一年，情况发生了变化。众所周知，雅虎(Yahoo)新任CEO玛丽莎•梅耶尔已经宣布取消公司的远程办公安排。她在4月份的一次演讲中承认，“人们独处时的生产效率会更高”，但“群处时的合作性和创新性会更好。一些优秀点子正是产生于两种不同想法的碰撞。”

    通过碰撞实现创新的理念正在日益流行；今年在得克萨斯州奥斯汀举行的South by Southwest Interactive Festival嘉年华就有不少关于这个话题的小组讨论，而包括谷歌(Google)和Zappos等在内的一批公司正在重新设计办公室，希望激发更多的不期而遇和思想碰撞。

    当然，电梯里的不期而遇需要发生在公司总部的办公室，而不是穿着睡衣在家中时。

    那么，在家工作和在办公室工作，到底哪种更好？

    答案是，这个问题很难说，因为两者都各有利弊。

    当然，很多工作没法远程完成。大部分医疗手术和牙科手术仍然需要现场操作，大多数老师都需要在教室里授课。但有不少信息工作不受时间和地点的限制。2013年美国人时间利用调查(2013 American Time Use Survey)发现，拥有大学学历的美国就业者有38%会在工作日时在家处理部分、甚至全部的工作。

    免除员工上下班途中的奔波是一项很有吸引力的福利，不同的调查都发现，大部分人对此都很感兴趣。同时，不用开车上下班也具有环保效应。对于46项调查的综合研究发现，远程办公能带来更多的工作满意度，降低离职意愿，而且在一定程度上并不影响到工作场所的员工关系质量。在另一项研究中，杨百翰大学(BYU)的研究人员分析了IBM分布于75个国家的24,436个雇员，试图发现到何种程度才会导致25%的员工报告工作与家庭生活之间的冲突。在家工作、同时有权自主设定工作时间的人们每周的工作时间达到57个小时的时候才会有相当一部分人感受到工作与家庭问题之间的压力。而那些必须在规定时间内在办公室上班的人们，38个小时就会达到上述水平。

    不过，在家工作也存在弊端。对冲基金公司Metropolitan Capital Advisors共同创始人兼总裁、《费尔曼法则》（Finerman's Rules）一书的作者卡伦•费纳曼曾经尝试过在家办公。她说：“就我而言，在家工作什么也干不好。”家里的功能区分较少，工作时间会被非工作事务侵占，而且孩子们——她有4个孩子——也会不合时宜地打断她的工作。

    作为一个老板，她表示，她理解人们有时需要在家工作，但“这不是我的首选”。

    “如果有一些紧急事务需要立刻讨论，我们不需要到处找人在哪儿，”她说。“共处和互动很重要。”她还发现“远程管理很困难，”就像一个代课老师要管好课堂秩序一样。

    For a while, working from home was the hip corporate perk. Best Buy got glowing press for its Results Only Work Environment in which corporate employees could work anytime, anywhere. The federal government embraced telecommuting arrangements, in part for the ability to regroup in emergencies, and several studies showed that telecommuting had upsides for performance and retention.

    But over the past year, there's been a shift. Yahoo's (YHOO) new CEO, Marissa Mayer, famously shut down the company's telecommuting arrangements this winter. In an April speech, she acknowledged that "people are more productive when they're alone," but also claimed "they're more collaborative and innovative when they're together. Some of the best ideas come from pulling two different ideas together."

    The notion of innovation via serendipitous encounters is gaining popularity: this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas featured panels on the topic, and companies including Google (GOOG) and Zappos are redesigning their office space to spark more chance meetings.

    Needless to say, serendipitous meetings in the elevator require being in a corporate headquarters, not in your pajamas at home.

    So, is it better to work from home or the office?

    The answer is that it's complicated, with upsides and downsides for both.

    To be sure, many jobs can't be done remotely. Most medical and dental procedures still need to be done in person, and most teachers need to be in their classrooms. But much information work isn't time- and place-specific. The 2013 American Time Use Survey found that on the days they work, 38% of employed Americans with college degrees do some or all of their work from home.

    Skipping the commute is a desirable perk, with various surveys finding a majority of people interested in the option. There are environmental benefits to taking cars off the road. One meta-analysis of 46 studies found that telecommuting was associated with more job satisfaction, less desire to leave an employer, and -- at modest levels -- had no effect on the quality of workplace relationships. In another study, researchers from BYU analyzed 24,436 IBM (IBM) employees in 75 countries to identify the point at which 25% of employees reported work-family conflicts. People with the ability to work from home and set their own hours could work 57 hours per week before a significant chunk experienced work-life stress. For those who had to be in the office at set hours, that break point occurred at 38 hours.

    But there are downsides, too. Karen Finerman, co-founder and president of Metropolitan Capital Advisors and author of Finerman's Rules, tried working from home. "For me, working from home was literally the worst of everything," she says. There were fewer boundaries, with work bleeding into non-work hours, and kids -- she has four -- interrupting at the most inconvenient times.

    As a boss, she says she understands if people need to work from home sometimes, but "it is not my first choice.

    "If there's something very timely we need to talk about right away, not having to track someone down is helpful," she says. "Serendipity is important, that interaction." She's also found that "it's hard to manage people virtually," likening it to what gets done in a classroom when there's a substitute teacher.