In a back street in San Francisco’s start-up dominated SoMa district, a rapidly growing business is busy studying how millions of employees behave each day. Its computers know in real time why a worker was hired, how productive they are and can even follow them as they move to a new job.		旧金山的苏玛区(SoMa)是初创企业的聚集地。在该区的一条后街上，一家快速成长的公司正在忙于研究数以百万计的雇员每天是如何工作的。这家公司的电脑系统能够实时判断出一名员工被聘用的原因，他们的劳动生产率如何，甚至在员工换了新工作以后也能继续跟踪研究他们。
Evolv is a leader in the nascent Quantified Workplace movement, where big data analytics companies are springing up to measure how we work. “Every week we figure out more things to track,” says Max Simkoff, Evolv’s co-founder and chief executive, who claims it can help improve productivity by at least 5 per cent in two-thirds of jobs.		Evolv是刚刚兴起的“量化办公场所”运动的领头羊；在这一运动中，用数据指标测量我们如何工作的大数据分析公司正如雨后春笋般大量涌现。Evolv联合创始人兼首席执行官马克思?西姆科夫（Max Simkoff）表示：“每周我们都能找出更多的跟踪指标。”他声称，这种做法有助于使三分之二的工作的劳动效率提高至少5%。
More than half of human resources departments around the world report an increase in the use of data analytics compared with three years ago, according to a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit. But many employees are still blissfully unaware of how information they may deem private is being analysed by their managers.		经济学人信息社(Economist Intelligence Unit)近期公布的一项研究表明，在世界各地的人力资源部门中，声称比三年前更多使用数据分析的比例超过了二分之一。但所幸很多雇员仍然一无所知，一些在他们看来或许是私人的信息正如何被他们的经理分析研究。
For its part, Evolv analyses more than half a billion “employee data points” from across 13 countries, seeking to identify patterns across companies and industries. These data points range from how often employees interact with their supervisor to how long it takes a worker to get to the office.		Evolv目前正在分析来自13个国家的超过5亿个“员工数据点”，试图从中找出不同企业以及行业的员工行为模式。这些数据点包括员工与上级领导互动的频率，以及员工到达办公室所需的通勤时间。
Evolv’s clients use them to help guide their hiring decisions, as well as to evaluate an employee’s performance throughout his or her career.		Evolv的客户运用这些数据点为自身的招聘决策提供参考，并评估员工在其整个职业生涯中的表现情况。
The company has so far focused on customer-facing industries such as retailers and call centres. One client is Kelly, an employment agency. It says it has seen a 7 per cent improvement in employee efficiency across the board by incorporating Evolv’s insights into its hiring policy.		到目前为止，Evolv将主要精力放在了直接面对客户的行业上，例如零售商和呼叫中心。该公司的客户之一是招聘机构Kelly。Kelly公司表示，将Evolv的观点融入自身的招聘政策之后，员工的整体工作效率提高了7%。
Novo1, a US company that runs customer call centres and has more than 2,000 employees, identified the characteristics of its most successful call operators and hired more people like them. This cut job interviews down to 12 minutes from an hour, reduced average call time by a minute and slashed attrition by 39 per cent.		Novo1是一家经营客户呼叫中心的美国企业，拥有超过2000名员工。该公司找出了旗下最成功呼叫操作员所具有的特点，并招聘了更多具备这些特点的员工。这使该公司得以将招聘面试时间从1小时缩短至12分钟，将平均呼叫时间压缩了1分钟，并使人员流失率下降了39%。
Another pioneering outfit is Sociometric Solutions, which puts sensors in name badges to discover social dynamics at work. The badges monitor how employees move around the workplace, who they talk to and in what tone of voice.		另一个走在前沿的公司是Sociometric Solutions。该公司在员工的姓名牌中置入感应器，以研究工作场所的社交状况。姓名牌能够监控员工在办公场所是沿怎样的路线走动的，与哪些人用什么样的语气交谈。
One client, Bank of America, discovered that its more productive workers were those allowed to take their breaks together, in which they let off steam and shared tips about dealing with frustrated customers.		Sociometric Solutions的客户之一美国银行(BofA)发现，工作效率更高的员工是那些被允许一起享受工间休息的人，他们可以趁此机会发发牢骚，并分享有关如何应付心存失望的顾客的小窍门。
The bank took heed and switched to collective breaks, after which performance improved 23 per cent and the amount of stress in workers’ voices fell 19 per cent.		美国银行注意到了这一现象，并转而施行集体工间休息。在此之后员工的表现提升了23%，而员工说话语调所反映出的压力水平则下降了19%。
Ben Waber, Sociometric Solutions co-founder and chief executive, thinks the badges can be deployed far beyond sales and customer service. He sees big opportunities in pharmaceuticals, for instance, where productivity is hard to measure because new drugs might emerge only once in a decade: “The rest of the time, they have no idea.”		本?瓦贝尔(Ben Waber)是Sociometric Solutions的联合创始人兼首席执行官。他认为，姓名牌可以运用到比销售和客户服务更广的许多领域中去。例如，他在制药公司身上就看到了很大机遇。制药公司的劳动生产率难以衡量，因为推出一种新药可能需要整整十年，而在“其他时间，制药公司并不知道员工在干些什么”。
Another company, Steelcase, which puts sensors in office furniture and buildings to see how workers interact, thinks the real opportunity for workplace monitoring is far from the call-centre floor – in opaque creative departments and even boardrooms, where time is especially precious.		另一家公司Steelcase在办公家具以及办公楼中置入感应器，以观察员工之间如何互动。该公司认为，工作场所监控的真正机遇绝不在呼叫中心，而是在不太透明的创意部门甚至董事会会议室，董事们的时间尤其宝贵。
David Lathrop, its director of research and strategy, says the sensors are now so cheap they can be put “practically everywhere”, arguing that employees could benefit by tracking their own performance.		大卫?莱斯罗普(David Lathrop)是Steelcase的研究和战略主管。他表示，目前感应器的价格是如此低廉，以至于他们可以将感应器放在“几乎任何地方”。他指出，员工可以通过跟踪自身表现而受益。
Improving the productivity of top executives “has a disproportionate effect on the company”, he adds.		他补充称，提升高级管理层的劳动生产率“对于整个公司的业绩有着异乎寻常的影响”。
Advocates say quantifying the workplace is especially useful in areas where there are often culture clashes: such as cross-border teams and acquisitions.		倡导者们指出，将工作场所数字化尤其适用于经常出现文化碰撞的领域：例如跨国团队合作以及收购。
For example, clients of Polycom, a video conferencing company, can already replay their recorded meetings. Stuart Monks, its group vice-president for technology and architecture, wants to go further and let customers analyse that information.		比如，视频会议公司Polycom的客户现已能够重放他们的会议录像。该集团负责科技和建筑行业的副总裁斯图尔特?蒙克斯(Stuart Monks)希望走得更远，使客户能够进一步分析这些信息。
Mr Monks says within Polycom, the HR department has been able to use the data to ascertain that a group in one continent was not understanding a team in another.		蒙克斯表示，在Polycom公司内部，人力资源部门已经能够借助数据来判断位于一个大洲的工作小组与位于另一大洲的团队之间存在理解障碍。
Not everyone is convinced that the growing use of technology to monitor workers’ productivity offers an un-equivocal improvement, however.		但并非每个人都相信，越来越多地运用技术手段来监控员工的工作效率是一种无可争议的进步。
Teresa Amabile, a professor and director of research at Harvard Business School, says it could be “very positive” or “very negative” depending on the existing workplace culture.		特蕾莎?阿马比尔(Teresa Amabile)是哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的教授和研究主管。她指出，技术监控既能带来“非常积极”的效果，也能造成“非常负面”的影响，具体情况取决于企业现有的办公室文化。
Monitoring can work if the teams, departments or whole offices using the software or devices have what she calls “a high degree of psychological safety”.		如果团队、部门、所有办公室使用的软件或者设备拥有她所说的“很高的心理安全度”，那么监控就能产生积极效果。
If people feel able to experiment, potentially fail and learn from those lessons, then they can be motivated by gaining a better understanding of how they spend their days.		如果员工感到自己可以尝试，就算遇到失败也能从中汲取教训，那么让他们更好了解自己是如何度过工作时间能够激发他们的工作动力。
But she warned that the technology was still in its early days and could be “too crude” an instrument to rely on. “There is definitely a danger of seeing technology as a silver bullet,” she says.		但她警告称，监控技术仍然处于发展初期，并且作为一项技术或许“过于粗糙”以至于让人难以信赖。她指出：“将监控技术看作万能灵药无疑是有风险的。”
Lew Maltby, president of the US National Workrights Institute, says electronic monitoring could be a “very valuable tool” for employers, by providing evidence for sexual harassment suits or assessing productivity in data entry jobs, for example.		美国全国工作权利学会(National Workrights Institute)主席卢?莫尔特比(Lew Maltby)表示，电子监控对于雇主而言可以是一种“很有价值的工具”，例如在性骚扰诉讼中提供证据，或者评估数据录入岗位的工作效率。
But he says most employees “haven’t got a clue” about the extent to which their emails are already monitored, or about the information their employer can access from their work computer and smartphone.		但他指出，雇员对于自己的电子邮件受监控的程度——也就是说雇主能从他们的工作电脑、智能手机中获取多少信息——“并不知情”。
Employees may have little in the way of legal grounds for challenging an extension of this data gathering. He says there was a spate of legal cases in the US a few years ago about the monitoring of work computers and employees lost every one of them.		雇员可能缺少法律依据来挑战这种数据收集范围的拓展。他指出，几年前美国曾经出现过大量有关工作电脑监控的法律诉讼，每一次都以雇员败诉而告终。
“No employee has ever won an in-vasion of privacy case based on an employer monitoring their computer,” he says.		他表示：“到目前为止，尚没有雇员打赢过基于雇主监控工作电脑而侵犯雇员隐私的官司。”
Even those who are involved in the growing industry believe there needs to be more discussion about when and how the data are used. Professor Andrew Knight from Washington University in St Louis works with data from both Evolv and Sociometric Solutions to study workplace behaviour.		即便是那些参与到这一快速增长行业中的人也认为，有必要对数据在何时以及如何使用展开更多讨论。来自圣路易斯的华盛顿大学(Washington University)的安德鲁?奈特(Andrew Knight)教授正在运用Evolv和Sociometric Solutions的数据，以研究员工在办公场所的行为模式。
But he thinks constant monitoring is a “scary image for the future” that could “remove some of the authenticity of those [workplace] relationships”.		但他认为，持续不断的监控是“一种令人毛骨悚然的未来图景”，可能“导致办公室人际关系中某些发自真情的部分消失”。
Steelcase’s Mr Lathrop may be busy thinking up innovative places in which to slip sensors, but he does consider the potential impact on employees. In the wake of the Edward Snowden affair, he says people may have been temporarily put off by what they see as an infringement of their privacy. But he thinks that will fade.		Steelcase的莱斯罗普或许正在忙着思考还能在哪些未曾想到过的地方植入感应器，但他确实也在考虑这种做法对于员工可能造成的影响。他说，在爱德华?斯诺登(Edward Snowden)事件之后，人们可能会对在他们看来属于侵犯个人隐私的做法产生暂时的抵触情绪。但他认为这种反感会逐渐消退。
“It is easy to paint a creepy scenario about this,” he says. “But it is also possible to create quite a positive scenario – where people benefit directly.”		他指出：“把技术监控描绘成一幅令人不寒而栗的图景很容易。但技术监控也能创造出非常积极正面的环境——人们能够从中直接受益。”