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The role of physical proximity in the workplace
工作场所中物理近距离的作用
Seeing people in person matters. Information pours off them: not just what they say but how they say it and whether they listen. Relationships form more naturally. It's much harder to look a person straight in the pixels.
与人面对面交流很重要。信息从他们身上倾泻而出：不仅是他们说的话，还有他们说话的方式以及他们是否在倾听。这时关系形成得更自然。要直视一个像素人脸则困难得多。
An array of studies have demonstrated how much proximity matters in the workplace. One paper published in 2020 by Diego Battiston of Stockholm University and his co-authors looked at how the police force in Manchester fields emergency calls.
一系列研究已经表明，在工作场所中彼此接近有多么重要。2020年，斯德哥尔摩大学的迪亚戈·巴蒂斯顿及其合著者发表了一篇论文，研究了曼彻斯特警察如何处理紧急呼叫电话。
Their process involves two people. A handler takes the call and writes up the incident. An operator then allocates police officers. Some operators happened to be in the same room as the handler who had taken down the call details.
处理过程涉及两个人。一名接线员接听电话并记录下事件。然后一名操作员分配警察。一些操作员碰巧与记录下通话细节的接线员在同一个房间。
Because they could talk face-to-face, these operators were able to extract salient details and allocate police officers to cases more quickly than those who were left to scan descriptions for themselves.
因为他们可以面对面交谈，所以相比那些只能自己查看书面记录的操作员，这些操作员能够更快地提取重要细节并将警察分配到案件中。
A subsequent reorganisation, permanently separating the two types of workers, resulted in an 8% increase in average response times to violent crimes.
后来进行了一次重组，将这两类人员永久地分开，导致警察对暴力犯罪的平均响应时间增加了8%。
This is not an argument for mandating that everyone comes into the office five days a week and sits in a single, jam-packed room. Proximity can exact costs as well as produce benefits.
这并不是说要强制所有人每周五天都到办公室，都坐在一个拥挤的房间里。彼此接近既会产生好处，也会必然带来成本。
One trade-off relates to output. In the Manchester police force, handlers who spent more time talking to operators had less time free to take new incoming calls.
其中一个利弊权衡涉及到产出。在曼彻斯特警察局，与操作员交谈时间更长的接线员，他们用于接听新来电的空闲时间会更少。
Employees should be capable of negotiating such trade-offs for themselves. But managers can help or hinder.
员工应该有能力自己处理这些利弊权衡。但管理者可能起到帮助或阻碍作用。
If handlers are being evaluated on how many calls they field, they have less reason to help operators; Mr Battiston and his colleagues duly found evidence suggesting that handlers helped less when they were coming up for their annual performance reviews.
如果根据接听电话的数量来评估接线员，那么他们就没有太多理由去帮助操作员；巴蒂斯顿及其同事也相应地发现了证据，表明接线员在即将进行年度绩效审查时提供的帮助更少。
Although proximity can bring members of teams together, it can also come at the expense of interactions with outsiders.
虽然近距离可以使团队成员聚集在一起，但也可能以牺牲与外界的互动为代价。
One more paper, by Sharique Hasan of Duke University and Rembrand Koning of Harvard Business School, looked at a boot camp for entrepreneurs in India, in which participants were randomly assigned to teams.
杜克大学的沙里克·哈桑和哈佛商学院的雷姆布兰德·科宁发表的另一篇论文研究了印度的一个创业者训练营，在这个训练营中，参与者被随机分配到不同的团队。
They found that teams with members who already knew each other were much less likely to interact with neighbouring teams, compared with those whose members had few prior connections.
他们发现，相比于成员之前不太相互认识的团队，成员已经相互认识的团队与邻近团队互动的可能性要小得多。
Proximity is more useful as a glue than a solvent.
看来近距离的黏合剂作用比溶剂作用更大。
