2019经济学人考研英文文章阅读一三五

Research suggests happy employees are good for firms and investors 研究表明，快乐的员工对公司和投资者都有好处

There is an old joke about a new arrival in Hell,who is given the choice by Satan of two different working environments.In the first,frazzled workers shovel huge piles of coal into a fiery furnace.In the second,a group of workers stand,waist-deep in sewage,sipping cups of tea.

有个老笑话讲的是一个刚下地狱的人，撒旦让他在两种不同的工作环境中做出选择。在第一个房间里，疲惫不堪的工人们要将大堆大堆的煤铲进炽热的火炉中。在第二个房间里，一群工人站在齐腰深的污水中，啜饮着茶。

The condemned man opts,on balance,for the second room.As soon as the door closes,the foreman shouts“Right lads,tea break over.Time to stand on your heads again.”

这个有罪之人在经过权衡后最终选择了第二个房间。门一关上，工头便喊道：“伙计们，茶歇时间到了，是时候再倒立了。”

Terrible working conditions have a long tradition.Early industry was marked by its dirty,dangerous factories(dark,satanic mills).In the early 20th century workers were forced into dull,repetitive tasks by the needs of the production line.However,in a service-based economy,it makes sense that focusing on worker morale might be a much more fruitful approach.

恶劣的工作环境有着悠久的传统。早期工业以其肮脏、危险的工厂（黑暗、邪恶的工厂）为标志。20世纪初，由于生产线的需要，工人们被迫从事枯燥重复的工作。然而，在服务型经济中，将注意力集中于员工的斗志可能是一种更有成效的方法，这是有道理的。

Proving the thesis is more difficult.But that is the aim of a new study which examines the relationship between happiness and productivity of workers at British Telecom.

想要证明这一理论是很困难的。但一项新的研究正以此为目的，该研究调查了英国电信员工的幸福感与工作效率之间的关系。

Three academics—Clement Bellet of Erasmus University,Rotterdam, Jan-Emmanuel de Neve of the Saïd Business School,Oxford,and George Ward of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—surveyed1,800sales workers at11British call centres.

三位学者（鹿特丹伊拉斯姆斯大学的克莱门特·贝雷、牛津大学赛德商学院简·伊曼纽尔·德内夫和麻省理工学院的乔治·沃德）对英国11家呼叫中心的1800名销售人员进行了调查。

All each employee had to do was click on a simple emoji each week to indicate their level of happiness.Those workers were charged with selling customers broadband,telephone and television deals.In total the authors collected adequate responses from1,161people over a six-month period.每位员工每周只需点击一个简单的表情符号来表达他们的快乐程度。这些员工负责向客户销售宽带、电话和电视服务。在6个月的时间里，研究人员从1161人那里收集到了充足的反馈。

The results were striking.Workers made13%more sales in weeks when they were happy than when they were unhappy.This was not because they were working longer hours;in happy weeks,they made more calls per hour and were more efficient at converting those calls into sales.

结果让人感到惊讶。员工在感到快乐时的销售额比不快乐时要多13％。这并不是因为他们工作的时间更长了；在快乐的那几周里，他们每小时能打出更多的电话，而且能更有效地把这些电话转化为销售额。

The tricky part,however,is determining the direction of causation. Workers may be happier when they are selling more because they anticipate a bigger bonus,or because successful sales pitches are less stressful to make than unsuccessful ones.

然而，确定因果关系则是一个棘手的问题。当员工的销售额更大时，他们可能会更快乐，因为他们会有更高的预期奖金，或是因为推销成功比推销失败所产生的压力更小。The academics tried an ingenious way to get round this causation problem by examining a very British issue—the weather.Workers turned out to be less happy on days when the weather in their local area was bad and this unhappiness converted into lower sales.

于是，几位学者尝试用一种巧妙的方法来解决这一因果问题，即天气这一非常英式的问题。结果发现，当员工所在地区天气不好时，他们会变得不快乐，这种不快乐又会转化为销售额的下降。

Since they were making national calls,not local ones,it is unlikely that customer unhappiness with the weather was driving the sales numbers.So it was worker mood driving sales,not the other way round.