据我所知，英国《金融时报》从来没有被一个超验的冥想爱好者管理过这份报纸似乎也没有任何管理者认为，解决办公室争吵的最佳方法是让大家围坐成一圈，长时间地讨论问题As far as I know, the Financial Times has never been run by a transcendental meditation devotee. Nor does it seem to have any managers who think the best way to fix an office squabble is to get everyone to sit down in a circle to h ash it out.，下面我们就来说一说关于工资管理系统的任务?我们一起去了解并探讨一下这个问题吧!
工资管理系统的任务
据我所知，英国《金融时报》从来没有被一个超验的冥想爱好者管理过。这份报纸似乎也没有任何管理者认为，解决办公室争吵的最佳方法是让大家围坐成一圈，长时间地讨论问题。As far as I know, the Financial Times has never been run by a transcendental meditation devotee. Nor does it seem to have any managers who think the best way to fix an office squabble is to get everyone to sit down in a circle to h ash it out.
我看不出这种局面会很快变化，但在其他地方，冥想、咒语和正念运动似乎正以惊人的速度渗透到企业界。从谷歌(Google)和英特尔(Intel)到塔吉特(Target)和通用磨坊(General Mills)，正念计划到处涌现。亿万富翁、全球最大对冲基金桥水(Bridgewater)的创始人雷•戴利奥(Ray Dalio) 40多年来天天抽出时间冥想。他鼓励员工也这么做，并认为冥想是他成功的“最大因素”。I cannot see this changing any time soon but elsewhere, meditation, mantras and the mindfulness movement in general seem to be penetrating the corporate world at an astonishing clip. Mindfulness programmes have now sprouted everywhere from Google and Intel to Target and General Mills. Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, has been meditating daily for more than 40 years. He encourages his staff to do the same and thinks meditation is “the biggest ingredient” of his success.
领英(LinkedIn)首席执行官杰夫•韦纳（Jeff Weiner，另一位冥想爱好者）相信“富有同情心的管理”，并喜欢以这个思路聘用员工。美国云软件集团Salesforce把禅宗僧侣带到公司与员工座谈，并在其大厦内创建了专设正念空间。那么围坐呢？根据公司正念专家利亚•魏斯(Leah Weiss)的一本书，这是洛杉矶房地产公司Decurion Corporation解决问题的方式。她在斯坦福大学商学院( Stanford Graduate School of Business)讲授“富有同情心的领导”，她那本书的书名在很大程度上概括了她的思想：《我们如何工作：活出你的目标，赢回你的理智，拥抱每日的磨炼》(How We Work: Live Your Purpose, Reclaim Your Sanity, and Embrace the Daily Grind)。LinkedIn’s chief executive, Jeff Weiner (another meditation enthusiast), believes in “compassionate management” and likes to hire accordingly. Salesforce, the US cloud software group, brings in Zen Buddhist monks to speak to staff and has created special mindfulness spaces in its buildings. And circle-sitting? That is how problems are solved at Decurion Corporation, a Los Angeles real estate company, according to a book by Leah Weiss, a guru of corporate mindfulness. She teaches “compassionate leadership” at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the title of her book pretty much sums up her thoughts: How We Work: Live Your Purpose, Reclaim Your Sanity, and Embrace the Daily Grind.
魏斯认为，人们可以通过培养目标感和拥抱正念，来找到工作的意义和乐趣。Ms Weiss thinks one can find meaning and joy at work by developing one’s sense of purpose and embracing mindfulness.
我承认，我是带着一种恐惧感接近这本书的。每当我读到有关在工作中寻找目标的论述时，就会想起一位在美国的公务员朋友，她过去在电脑屏幕上贴两个便利贴。一个写着“医疗保险”。另一个写着“抵押贷款”。她的工作并不是世界上最糟糕的，但就像其他许多打工者一样，她对工作也没有期望太多——这在我看来似乎非常合理。I admit I approached the book with a sense of dread. Whenever I read about finding purpose in work, I think of a civil servant friend of mine in the US who used to have two Post-it notes stuck on her computer screen. One said “health insurance”. The other said “the mortgage”. She didn’t have the worst job in the world but like a lot of other workers, she did not expect too much from it either, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
说到这里，我有一些非常聪明的朋友，他们非常推崇冥想和正念应用程序。这显然对他们很有用，再说取笑任何能缓解工作压力的事物似乎都很无礼。Saying that, I have some very clever friends who swear by meditation and mindfulness apps. This clearly works for them and it seems churlish to poke fun at anything that eases the stress of working life.
然而，魏斯的书有什么地方一直让我心烦。直到我读了斯坦福大学商学院另一位教授写的另一本新书，我才意识到让我心烦的是什么。Yet something about the Weiss book kept annoying me. It wasn’t until I read another new book — by another Stanford business school professor — that I realised what it was.
杰弗里•费弗尔(Jeffrey Pfeffer)的《为工资而死》(Dying for a Paycheck)认为，办公室白领职位的工作压力太大了，以至于它们可能像体力劳动那么不健康。强制推行加班加点、不可预测的工作日程、无情的裁员以及其他“整人”做法的有毒雇主造成的“社会污染”，意味着疲惫不堪、受损的员工被抛向本已捉襟见肘的公共卫生和福利体系。Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Dying for a Paycheck argues that white collar office jobs have become so stressful they can be as unhealthy as manual labour. The “social pollution” of toxic employers who impose long hours, unpredictable work schedules, relentless lay-offs and other ills on their staff means burnt-out, damaged workers are being dumped on to strained public health and welfare systems.
费弗尔提供了一系列解决方案，首先是衡量不健康工作场所的代价，并揭露作恶者。他没有建议的一件事是更多的正念，他为什么要这样做？首先，正念无助于改变压力的根本原因：糟糕的管理。正念还会便利地将福祉负担从造成压力的雇主身上转移到试图应付压力的员工身上。更糟糕的是，它也许会导致某种“幸福漂白”：雇主们一边披上关心员工的外衣，一边又用糟糕的管理方式伤害他们。Mr Pfeffer offers a list of solutions, starting with an effort to measure the toll of unhealthy workplaces and highlighting offenders. One thing he does not suggest is more mindfulness, and why would he? For one thing, it does nothing to alter the underlying cause of stress: bad management. It also conveniently shifts the burden of wellbeing from the employer causing stress to the employee trying to deal with it. Worse, it allows what you might call “well-washing”: employers who cloak themselves in a veneer of caring for their workers while hurting them with bad management practices.
想想美国安泰保险集团(Aetna)吧。在其首席执行官本人遭遇健康问题后，该公司开始更多地关注员工福祉，具体做法包括提高工资、改善员工医疗计划并且（不可避免地）提供正念计划。然而，正如费弗尔所指出的那样，安泰保险集团也通过提早退休计划或裁员缩小了员工规模，尽管裁员被认为对健康严重有害。我相信这不是孤例。Consider Aetna, the US health insurance group. After its chief executive had his own brush with health woes, it began to focus more on employee wellbeing, raising wages, improving its staff medical plan and offering — inevitably — mindfulness programmes. Yet as Mr Pfeffer points out, Aetna has also downsized its workforce with early retirement offers or lay-offs, even though the latter are known to be seriously bad for people’s health. I am sure it is not alone.
所以，下次当你读到一家公司提供冥想室和正念计划的消息时，别急着鼓掌，要问一问：这家公司真的对员工福祉感兴趣吗？抑或它只是又一种幸福漂白剂？So next time you read about a company offering meditation rooms and mindfulness programmes, hold the applause and ask this: is it seriously interested in its workers’ wellbeing? Or is it just another well-washer?
