Remember this? This is what an office looks like. During the pandemic, millions of people swapped¹ their large open-plan offices for their living rooms. Now, some companies say their employees need never come back in.

还记得这是什么吗？这是办公大楼。在新冠病毒疫情期间，数以百万计的人从大型开放式办公室搬到了自家客厅里工作。现在，一些公司表示，他们的员工再也不用回到办公室上班了。

 

Brynn Harrington, Vice² 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 versus³ 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·哈灵顿     脸书（Facebook）员工成长副总裁

“脸书认为未来将是远程工作的时代。我们认为未来会更多地把工作带给人们，而不是需要让人们去办公室工作。我们也希望能让员工选择在热爱的地方安居乐业、创造生活，另外，我们想提高在世界各地招聘的能力，而不仅仅是在目前设有办公室的地方招聘。”

 

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通讯员

“可是大家现在不都已经厌倦在家办公了吗？肯定有些人很想回到办公室去。”

 

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·哈灵顿     脸书（Facebook）员工成长副总裁

“有趣的是，我们的数据显示，有些人很享受在家办公，但有些人却感到很吃力。所以，放眼全局，我们意识到这是一件因人而异的事情。”

 

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.

脸书估计，未来几年内，超过一半的员工将可以远程工作，但坚称这样做并非为了节省成本。该公司说将尽力保持办公室的开放，比如这栋大楼。

 

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 'aberration⁴' instead. There are also fears it could create more inequality.

微软（Microsoft）和推特（Twitter）等其它科技巨头也表示，员工即使在封锁解除后也可以继续远程工作。但华尔街的公司似乎不那么热衷于这个想法。高盛集团（Goldman Sachs）的老板拒绝将在家办公视为新常态，而是称其为 “反常态”。也有人担心允许员工在家办公会造成更多的不平等。

 

Professor Nick Bloom, Economist⁵, 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 promotions⁶ 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·布鲁姆教授     斯坦福大学经济学家

“问题在于，如果你每周在家工作五天，但团队中其他大部分成员却在办公室工作，那你很可能在升职加薪方面吃亏。从数据上看，有小孩的女性、残疾人士、住得离办公室很远的人居家办公的比例很高，估计他们会选择每周在家工作五天。”

 

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

对许多公司来说，答案可能介于二者之间，即员工们把时间分在办公室和家中。

 

Tushar Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Hubble

The office does have a future, we believe the future is hybrid⁷. 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 flexibility⁸ than ever before.

图沙尔·阿加瓦尔（Tushar Agarwal）     Hubble 公司联合创始人兼首席执行官

“办公室还是有未来的，我们认为未来的办公场所是两者兼存。我们相信未来是灵活的。人们对灵活办公空间的需求已经猛增。仅在三月份，我们就回到了疫情前水平的60%到70%，其实，很多现在要求灵活空间的公司过去都是在传统租赁空间内办公的，所以现在人们比以往任何时候都更需要灵活变通。”

 

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

有一点显而易见，未来的职场万象将与这场危机前的情况截然不同。

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