假如工作更像遊戲，員工的生產力能否提高？

BetterWorks, of Palo Alto, California, makes office software that blends aspects of social media, fitness tracking and video games into a system meant to keep employees more engaged with their work and one another. With the software, employees and their bosses set goals and log their progress on a digital dashboard that everyone in their company can see and comment on.

加州帕羅奧圖BetterWorks公司生產的軟體將社群媒體、體能追蹤和電玩遊戲等面向混合成一個系統，要讓員工更投入工作和彼此互動。有了它，員工和老闆設定目標並將進度記錄在數位儀表板上，公司人人都能看見並發表評論。

圖擷自BetterWorks

The firm has raised about $15.5 million from investors, including John Doerr, the wellknown venture capitalist.

該公司已從投資人籌得1,550萬美元，包括知名創投家約翰杜爾。

A critic might describe it as a white-collar spin on an old idea — workplace efficiency — that used to be performed by punch clocks and assembly lines. But Mr. Doerr, who has instilled similar concepts in many of the tech companies he has invested in, is betting that the same ideas will be adopted far beyond Silicon Valley.

批評者也許認為，這是白領階級對職場效率表現在打卡鐘和生產線此一觀念的新瓶裝舊酒。但是杜爾已灌輸類似觀念到自己投資的多家科技公司，他認為同樣的觀念能遠播矽谷之外。

“I think we’re going to see more and more systems in this field of quantified work, or people science, that are going to make the most valuable resource that we have — which is our team — more effective,” he said .

杜爾說：「我認為我們將在量化工作或人類科學的領域，看見愈來愈多的系統，將讓我們擁有的最寶貴資源，就是我們的團隊，更有效率。」

Silicon Valley companies are known for casual work clothes and generous employee perks like free lunches , but they share corporate America’s affinity for dogmatic processes and mind-numbing acronyms. The Valley’s tech companies excel at turning those dreary processes into something useful.

矽谷企業以輕便的上班穿著和免費午餐等大方的員工好康著稱，但也沿襲美國企業喜好武斷的程序及超無聊縮寫字的傾向。矽谷的科技公司擅長將這些枯燥的過程變成有用的東西。

“The big picture is how to make all this stuff more data- driven,” said Kris Duggan, the chief executive of Better- Works. Mr. Duggan who founded Badgeville, whose software turns work tasks into badges and a leader board in an effort to add elements of games to work. His new company blends that game-playing sensibility with hard-core metrics.

「重點是如何讓一切更由數據驅動，」BetterWorks執行長克里斯．竇根表示。竇根是「獎章村」公司創辦人，該公司生產的軟體將工作任務變成獎章和積分板，試圖將遊戲成分加入。竇根的新公司融合了玩遊戲的感覺與嚴格的評量標準。

Using BetterWorks software, workers set goals, like “Sign 10 new customers by May,” and enter them into an internal system that can be viewed by other employees . Co-workers can give each other encouragement (“cheers”) or shaming (“nudges”). A worker’s profile shows a digital tree that grows with accomplishments and shrivels with poor productivity.

使用BetterWorks的軟體，員工設定目標，像是「5月前簽下10名客戶」，並鍵入內部系統，其他員工也看得到。同事可彼此鼓勵（歡呼）或漏氣（刺激）。員工基本資料展示一棵數位樹，隨工作績效高低而成長或枯萎。

The impulse to find ways to make people work harder is hardly new. Factories have long cajoled their people to compete with one another so that, through a combination of peer pressure and ambition, they do more work.

設法刺激人們更賣力工作，算不上新鮮事。工廠早就透過同儕壓力和企圖心雙管齊下的方式，誘使員工彼此競爭，提高生產力。

Karen Levy, a fellow at the Data and Society Research Institute in New York, did a three-year study on performance tracking in a decidedly old-line business: trucking. Over the last two decades, the industry has used GPS and other technologies to measure how fast drivers are going and how suddenly they brake, with the goal of getting goods delivered quickly but not so quickly that drivers waste gas.

紐約數據與社會研究院的研究員凱倫．李維，對無疑屬老牌行業的卡車貨運業做過三年的工作表現追蹤研究。過去20年間，業界使用衛星定位裝置等科技評量司機的車速和煞車有多突然，目標是貨物快速送達卻不浪費汽油。

To make drivers more efficient, companies post scoreboards in the break rooms or mail bonus checks to spouses so that they get competitive pressure from home as well as work.

為了讓司機更有效率，公司在休息室張掛積分榜或寄額外津貼的支票給司機的配偶，讓司機從家裡和職場都感受競爭壓力。

One of the main ways people become more productive is by using their supposed downtime to do even more work. Many drivers did things like loading, unloading and inspecting their trucks during federally required breaks .“If you distract workers with the idea that they are playing the game, they don’t challenge the rules of the game,” she said.

提高人們生產力一個重要方式是運用閒暇時間去做更多工作。許多司機在聯邦法令規定的休息時段裝卸貨、檢查車輛。「如果你讓員工覺得是在玩遊戲，他們就不會挑戰工作規範。」李維說。

Companies like BetterWorks are importing similar concepts to office jobs where performance is more subjective.

BetterWorks這樣的公司正將類似觀念引進表現好壞評斷更為主觀的內勤工作。

BetterWorks charges a monthly $15 fee for each user and has “seven figures” in revenue, according to Mr. Duggan. The software is cloud-based, allowing employees to use it across various devices.

據竇根表示，BetterWorks向每個用戶收取15美元的月費，營收達「七位數」。由於是雲端應用軟體，員工可以透過不同裝置使用。

But what if too much measurement makes people angry? That question is at the heart of another start-up, Culture Amp, an Australian company that makes a sort of worker- polling system , essentially a set of continuous, anonymous surveys that lets companies know how their workers are feeling and rates them against other companies in the same industry.

但是萬一評量太多，把人給惹毛了該怎麼辦？這個問題是另一家新創公司成立的宗旨。澳洲Culture Amp公司製造一種員工意見調查系統，主要是一套連續、不記名的調查，讓公司知道員工感受如何以及員工對自家公司和業界其他公司的評比。

That way theywill know when everyone is about to quit.

透過這種方式，公司可以知道何時應該罷手。

長期以來，中國的官僚體系始終是一座令人手足無措的迷宮，由「有關部門」、紅色的關防和面無表情的公務員組成。

Supplicants ricochet from one government office to another, sometimes across the country, in their quest for the permits needed to get through daily life.

辦理日常生活所需的許可證時，低聲下氣的申請人在政府機構間東奔西跑，有時候甚至得穿越全國。

To get a license plate for a new car, for example, a resident of Beijing must win a pass in a lottery in which the odds of success are less than 1 percent. Women often obtain permits allowing them to give birth after they wed, but they usually expire after two years. Unmarried women are ineligible for them. Just starting a new job and registering for public benefits can mean amassing a small mountain of documents .

例如，買車得先有車牌，北京居民必須參加抽籤（譯註：大陸用語為「搖號」），中籤率不到1%。女性結婚後通常能夠獲得准生證，但有效期往往只有兩年。未婚女性沒有資格申請准生證。哪怕只是開始新工作並登記公共福利，可能也得備齊堆積如山的文件。

As its ranks grow, China’s middle class — wired, ambitious and worldly — is increasingly unwilling to tolerate such obstacles, the vestiges of a capricious Mao-era bureaucracy that still holds sway .

中國中產階級的規模越來越大，他們會上網、有抱負，見多識廣，越來越不願意忍受這樣的障礙。這是反覆無常的毛澤東時期官僚體系的遺緒，依然影響人民生活。

For many educated city dwellers, it is this system, more than censorship and propaganda, that serves as a grinding reminder of the Communist Party’s dominion over their lives.

對於許多受過教育的城市居民來說，這套繁文縟節比新聞強制審查和宣傳伎倆，更讓他們記得生活仍受共產黨宰制的不堪。

“The government isn’t thereto make our lives easier,” said Daisy Li, a media producer who has applied nine times for a passport for her daughter, whose father is Scottish. “They’ve set up all those rules so the people are easier to control.”

「政府的存在不是為了讓我們生活得更方便。制定這些規定是為了更方便控制民眾。」說這話的是媒體製作人黛西．李，她為女兒申請過九次出入境許可證，女兒的父親是蘇格蘭人。

圖片來源／ingimage

Analysts say such frustrations feed public discontent at a time when the party is trying to bolster its appeal by combating corruption and vowing to ease the constraints on small businesses. President Xi Jinping’s motto for cutting through bureaucracy in government is: “Deal with it instantly.”

分析家指出，在共產黨試圖通過肅貪、矢言減少對小企業的限制以增強號召力之際，這種挫折感對民怨是火上加油。習近平精簡政府繁文縟節的口號是：「馬上就辦」。

Keeping the middle class happy, China’s leaders have come to realize, is vital for the party’s long-term survival. Concerns about potential social unrest starting within the urban elite are not far-fetched.

中國領導人逐漸意識到，讓中產階級開心，攸關共產黨的長期生存。擔憂社會動盪可能從城市精英階層開始，並非無的放矢。

Aware of the public’s mounting exasperation, the government has gradually eased some restrictions. Yet, like recent changes to the country’s onechild policy, they come with additional reams of paperwork. One well-traveled joke suggests that approval for a second child takes so long to obtain that couples should begin applying before they conceive — or else the baby might arrive first.

察覺民怨日增，政府逐漸放鬆某些限制。但就像中國最近對一胎化政策的調整，伴隨法令鬆綁而來的是額外的大量文書作業。一個廣為流傳的笑話稱，申請生第二胎需要的時間太長了，夫婦雙方應該在懷孕前就開始申請，不然孩子可能會比准生證先到來。

Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese politics at Claremont Mc- Kenna College in California, described the nation’s bureaucracy as a time-tested mechanism for control that functions as “an unmovable layer insulating the top leader from popular pressure.

加州克萊蒙特麥肯納學院的中國政治專家裴敏欣說，中國的官僚體系是一種經過時間考驗的控制機制，在「最高領導人與公眾壓力之間，充當著不動如山的隔離層」。

“In China, after you go through the red tape, you often don’t get an outcome or an explanation,” he said. “The system is designed to allow bureaucrats to do nothing and get away with it,” he said.

「在中國，走完繁文縟節後，你往往也得不到一個結果或解釋，」他說。「制度的設計使官僚能夠什麼都不做，並且還能免責。」

The head-spinning tangle of regulations infuriates many ordinary Chinese. At the heart of their ire is the hukou, or family registration, an onerous system akin to an internal passport that often tethers services like public education, subsidized health care and pensions to the birthplace of a Chinese citizen’s parents — even if he or she never lived there.

紛紜雜沓，令人頭暈目眩的規章讓中國一般民眾惱火，其中最令他們惱火的是戶口制度，它類似境內護照系統，時常將中國公民獲得公共教育、醫療補助、退休金，與其父母的出生地掛鉤，即使當事人未曾在那裡生活過。

Created in the 1950s and designed to restrict the flow of rural villagers into large cities, the hukou system has become widely detested in recent years. Hundreds of millions of migrants have flocked to work in China’s booming metropolises, and critics say the system makes them second-class citizens and subjects them to widespread discrimination in schooling, housing and employment.

建立於1950年代的戶口制度旨在限制農村人口湧入大城市。近年來，戶口制度廣受惡評。數億人口遷居中國繁榮的大都市工作，批評者說戶口制度讓這批人淪為二等公民，在教育、住房和就業方面廣受歧視。

One recent afternoon, Li Ying, 39, sat in a fluorescent-lit Beijing government office, waiting for her number to be called so she could apply for a temporary residence permit that would allow her 6-year-old son to enroll in school.

最近的某個午後，39歲的李穎（音譯）坐在北京一家政府機構日光燈照明的辦公室裡，等著叫號，以申請一個暫住證，好讓她6歲的兒子入學。

Although Ms. Li moved to Beijing with her parents as a child in 1981, her hukou is registered in a distant town, meaning her son will be shut out of the city’s public schools without the permit.

儘管李穎從1981年還是兒童時就隨父母遷居北京，她的戶口卻在一個遙遠的小鎮。這意味著如果得不到許可，她的兒子就進不了公立學校。

Among the 14 required documents, Ms. Li must provide her hukou certificate, proof of residence, a diploma, a job contract, a marriage license, her husband’s identity card, his hukou, a certificate proving that she has only one child and a company document detailing her work performance and tax payments.

在14種必備的文件中，李穎需要提供的東西包括，她的戶籍證明、居住證明、學歷、勞動契約、結婚證、她丈夫的身份證、他的戶口、證明她只有一個孩子的證件、公司出具證明她工作表現和納稅記錄的文件。

“What a headache,” she said . “Red tape is good for the government but not for us Chinese people.”

「真是傷腦筋。」她說：「繁文縟節有利於政府，卻不利於中國老百姓。」